City wants violators to sweat small stuff

The dog wants to roam free in the park? That will be $25. Feel like skateboarding on the fountain at Copley Square? Make the check out for $100. Got an impulse to freak out pedestrians by using a laser pointer to draw circles around them as they walk by? An expensive pastime, at $300.

Bostonians may be used to getting slapped with fines for illegal parking. But bad behavior will soon cost city residents, too. Armed with new citation books, police are to begin issuing tickets for scores of transgressions of city ordinances: from loud, late-night parties and improperly stored trash to posting handbills in certain public places and using laser pointers in public.

The tickets, carrying fines of $10 to $300, are the latest in a series of crime-fighting moves mounted by the city, as officials seek solutions to a wave of violent crime.

Mayor Thomas M. Menino and Police Commissioner Kathleen M. O'Toole, who announced the program at a park in West Roxbury yesterday, said neighborhoods free of annoyances are likelier to be free of more serious crimes.

Tickets are an effective way for police to cover a lot of ground without getting mired in the paperwork of arrests and court dates, they said.

Menino vowed that police will ticket aggressively under the program.

''When a few careless people fail to do their part, it detracts from the quality of life that most residents work so hard to maintain," Menino said. ''And that's not fair, and it will not be tolerated."

The recent rise in shootings and homicides has forced city leaders to focus on violent crime, but O'Toole said that residents at every neighborhood meeting she attends also want to know what she's doing about the ''so-called little things," from littering to graffiti.

''If we don't address small infractions in a timely manner, then we send the message to the criminals that we might overlook the bigger infractions," she said.

Boston police have had the authority for years to write citations in lieu of filing formal complaints in court. But the citation system was poorly understood by many police officers and the courts, forcing officers to issue warnings only for minor offenses or to spend hours at their desks filing formal complaints and police reports, said Lieutenant Daniel Linskey, commander of the Special Police Division and a member of the mayor's crime council.

Under the new system, police will carry booklets of new citation forms that take minutes to fill out, and include a list of the most common offenses. Police will receive training on how to handle the new citations.

Court officials, who had sometimes balked at the citation process in the past, have agreed to cooperate, O'Toole said.

''If an officer comes across an infraction, such as someone walking a pit bull without a leash, that officer can issue a citation on the spot," the commissioner said. ''Instead of making an arrest, which can take an officer off the street for several hours, the officer simply cites the person. This gives the officers on the street more time to respond to emergency calls for services."

O'Toole emphasized that the citations do not replace the option for officers to arrest suspects in some situations. In the case of a noisy keg party, for example, officers could arrest the party organizers but choose to issue citations to any minors caught drinking in the backyard, said Police Superintendent Robert Dunford.

Citations can be issued only for violations of city ordinances, not state laws, but there are hundreds of ways to get them. Stripping parts from abandoned cars, for example, or fixing your car in public for nonemergency reasons. Record companies and other businesses that paste ads on abandoned buildings or lampposts could face a $300 fine for each illegal posting. Bike messengers working without a license are looking at a $100 ticket.

Linskey said some of the fines were set years ago and may not be high enough to deter violators; for example, suburbanites who bring their household trash to Boston so they won't have to pay for its disposal in their hometown face a $10 fine on the first offense.

As a result, police may work with the mayor's office and the City Council to increase them, Linskey said.

All the fines will go to the city's general fund, but Dunford said the point of the program is not to raise money, but rather to make Boston's neighborhoods pleasanter places to live.