anyone know what's going on?

[thespian.livejournal.com]

So I went to call the police about my upstairs neighbour (they occasionally come home from clubbing at 3 am, and forget that they do not live in a club). When I called for a non-emergency dispatch, I was told that 'It will likely be over an hour before anyone could come and see to it; we have a large emergency in the west end of the city, and all the police are over there.'

Anyone know what it is? I told her, of course, not to put in my call, because this is astonishingly unimportant compared to anything where people might be hurt or at risk. But I'm curious if anyone knows what has tied up all of Somerville's police at this hour.

Comments

[vonelftinhaus.livejournal.com]

Information is not %100 but the police had the area around Diva Lounge taped off with crime tape including the entrance to chester st and part of the street behind Diva. Some time around or close to 2 there was a situation with a car and possible shots fired.

[ron_newman]

Yikes, I walk there every day, and it's always crowded with people.

Wicked Local Somerville (Somerville Journal) blog has this:

Shooting in Davis Square
Posted on February 8, 2009 by Kathleen Powers

Chester Street was closed off very early this morning — around 2:30 a.m. — as officials investigated reports of a shooting on Herbert Street.

More to come as I have it.

Nothing on the regular Somerville Journal website yet.

[pensivewombat.livejournal.com]

i don't know anything about why the cops couldn't come to your place, but i'm wondering: are your upstairs neighbors comprised of three guys and one girl who bring live DJ's into their house on weeknights?

Because if so, i lived below them for a year and it was awful. i feel your pain! :P

i always wondered where they moved...

[m00n.livejournal.com]

But... we don't have shootings in Davis Square!!!

[pearlythebunny.livejournal.com]

It's on the Journal's site now:

http://tinyurl.com/dfynma

[laryu.livejournal.com]

I live on Herbert St... and must have slept right through this. Yikes.

[http://users.livejournal.com/_mattt/]

I appreciate the effort of the Somerville Journal, but could they please proofread their article before posting it? It's almost unreadable.

[cos]

Ugh, you're right! Reading the first two paragraphs, I'm already confused about the who did what. Ungrammatical and ambiguous.

[ron_newman]

A shot B, then B hijacked a taxicab to try to run over A. Didn't seem that complicated to me.

Scary, though. I can't remember ever hearing of a shooting in Davis Square for the entire 16 years I've lived here.

(btw, the writer of that article is the newspaper's editor)

Repeat offender?

[ron_newman]

The Journal article identifies the arrested man as Marcel Laurol of Malden. But it appears that he used to live in Somerville, and has been arrested at least twice before in Cambridge: in 1993 for assaulting an undercover drug officer with intent to murder, and in 1999 for assault and battery at the MIT Student Center.

(Thanks to a Universal Hub commenter for finding these past arrests. You may alsow enjoy another UHub commenter's description of a proposed game, 'Grand Theft Auto - Davis Square')

Scary

[coeceo.livejournal.com]

Thats pretty scary, I thought I was in a safe neighborhood.

Re: Scary

[vonelftinhaus.livejournal.com]

You are very safe in Davis and in Somerville. I have always felt safe regardless of time- this is a very unfortunate event that has occurred. I know that in my 13 1/2 years here and like Ron stated above his 16 years we have heard of nothing like this occurring in Davis; sure there is violence and disputes from time to time around the city- But this extreme and very rare and I hope everyone here and in the city will make a best effort to get past this and show everyone that this is not "our Somerville".

gang banging Diva

[pch1.livejournal.com]

things have been getting a little scetchy at Diva on Saturday nights. Walking by there later at night, it's like gangsters paradise with their hiphop night. Don't get me wrong, I love hiphop, but it's a little unsettling walking down elm st. with kids dressed like gang bangers everywhere.

[dominika-kretek.livejournal.com]

We need to seriously reevaluate the way development of late-night businesses is happening in the Square. The argument up to now has been about noise, which is easy to bring up and easy to dismiss. I have felt that the nighttime atmosphere on Elm Street has shifted quite a bit in the last few years, but again, that's a subjective judgment.

Now, however, I think it is starting to become clear that even small changes in the way late-night establishments are run can lead to significant concrete outcomes. It seems to me that there's been an increase in vandalism, noise, and disorderliness, but now we have this incident and also the incident where someone was thrown through the window of Poor Little Rich Girl. Something has shifted in the dynamic, something that makes these kinds of incidents more likely.

An obvious candidate for reevaluation is the recent extension of closing times for some businesses, but in the past that discussion has been so charged that it has been fruitless. We need to do real research, real investigation in how to prevent these kinds of incidents while keeping businesses vibrant. We cannot let our discussion devolve, as it has in the past, into "Get off my lawn!" and "Blue-nosed NIMBYs don't know what's good for business" name-calling. (See the debate about Golden Light.) I don't see why it can't be possible to have later closing times and to keep the Square safe at the same time, but it won't happen if the debate gets shut down before it even gets started.

The issue may not even be later closing times per se; my sense is that if they had been extended ten or fifteen years ago, we might not have seen the same shift back then. If we are seeing the result of a confluence of issues, then we will need a comprehensive, multipronged solution. Not a piecemeal, issue-of-the-week approach. I think we should seek the advice of disinterested people with expertise in the subject.

But something is changing, and I think it is in the interest of both the residents and the businesses to work together to find out what it is and how to fix it. If not, the residents may lose the neighborhood they thought they had, and the businesses may suffer an ill-considered and destructive backlash. We cannot bury our heads in the sand and pretend that these are minor questions of personal taste.

[kennygster.livejournal.com]

I think that you make a lot of good points. Too bad it is buried in an older post. It might be worth its own entry. It's also possible that a lot of readers don't even know there was a shooting in Davis Square (since it isn't in the subject area of the entry).

[ron_newman]

Very good point. After reading your comment, I made a new post, specifically about the shooting.

[ron_newman]

Does Diva Lounge have a 2 am license? I thought it was just the Burren and Joshua Tree in Davis Square.

[icecreamempress.livejournal.com]

There was a shooting in front of the yellow stucco building next to Ace Wheelworks back in the late 1980s. (I know because I moved into that building in one week later.)

I'm not sure if that's officially southeast Davis or northwest Porter Square, though.

2am?

[vonelftinhaus.livejournal.com]

I am not sure either if Diva actually does have a 2am license- I am sure a quick call to The Licensing Commission clerk will answer that 617-625-6600 ext. 4107