Thursday, 4:30 PM
Emergency phones installed in city parks
(Pat Greenhouse/Globe Staff)
Mayor Thomas M. Menino tried one of the new emergency phones today in Franklin Park while Police Commissioner Edward F. Davis (left) and Superintendent Dan Linskey watched.
By Megan Tench, Globe Staff
Twenty emergency phones will be installed in parks throughout Boston, linking people to the police department with the touch of a red button. The blue 9-foot high cylindrical structures are part of an effort to increase safety in parks, which have often become scenes of nighttime violence.
Mayor Thomas M. Menino and Boston Police Commissioner Edward F. Davis unveiled one of the new phones today in Franklin Park, where the body of 19-year-old Dominique Samuels was found badly burned and beaten in April 2006.
When Menino pushed the red button on the phone, there was no immediate response.
"Hello? Hello? Can you hear me?" Menino said as news cameras rolled behind him. He pushed the button again, and after a few seconds a female dispatcher at the Boston Police Department responded, "Everything OK over there?"
Davis called the phones a strategy similar to those used on college campuses.
Once the red button is pushed, he said, "A blue light comes on and police respond immediately, and they are here in a few minutes to make sure everything is fine."
Another phone has been installed in Harambee Park. The remaining units will be placed over the next few weeks at Boston Common, Elliot Norton Park, Central Square in East Boston, Malcolm X. Park, Jamaica Pond, and the Fens in the Back Bay.
