CAPTION: Laura Elkman, a Crush employee, and Crush co-owner Laura Macris are happier now that they have a plan to foil shoplifters, who have been targeting their shop.

Just before closing on Friday, February 29, Laura Macris and Rebecca Penner realized they had better keep an eye on a customer. “She was dodgy,” said Macris, who with Penner owns Crush, the clothing boutique on Charles Street. Slender and about five and a half feet tall, with blonde hair and blue eyes, the woman had red cuts around her nose.
Macris said the woman had chatted with her and Penner and then moved over to the men’s section of the shop. The owners heard a sound like shelving hitting against the wall, and Penner went to investigate. She saw one of the shop’s $150 sweatshirts in the woman’s Victoria’s Secret bag.
As the woman tried to leave, Penner confronted her. “Can I have the sweatshirt?” she asked.
At first the woman would not hand it over. But when Penner said she would call the police, the woman took out the sweatshirt and left.
Afterward, Macris and Penner realized that they were missing two men’s shirts and a sweater. They figured the woman took the items by stuffing them under her coat.
But shoplifters weren’t finished at Crush.
On March 4, Macris saw an empty hanger on a rack and realized she was missing a $288 dress. She remembered a stocky, brown haired woman in her early twenties who had told them she lived in the North End and had taken merchandise on her own into a fitting room. She bought a shirt, said Macris, who thought the purchase could have been made to distract her from noticing the missing dress.
Crush, which occupies the basement space at 131 Charles, wasn’t the only retail shop targeted in the last two weeks. Just above them on the first floor is Pixie Stix, the clothing store for pre-teens.
On March 1, someone came in and removed about $3,000 worth of jeans from a stand near the door, said Aimee Falgout, the shop’s manager. She said there were several customers in the shop at the time, and she was busy, but still keeping an eye out. Nevertheless, she did not see the thief, and whoever it was took the time to rearrange some merchandise so that she wouldn’t immediately notice a bare shelf.
She said it seemed as if they were in a video. “I felt as if someone put us on ‘pause,’ ” she said. And when the hand pressed “play,” the jeans were gone.
In another recent incident, she saw a woman several storeowners recognize as a shoplifter put Pixie Stix merchandise into bags. She called the police and as they arrived, the woman threw the merchandise into a flower box and disappeared.
The recent theft seems to be concentrated at the Charles Street end of the street. Shopowners think that end is more vulnerable because it seems more isolated than other Charles Street blocks and because the shoplifters may arrive by T or believe arriving trains will provide a quick getaway.
Second Time Around, the basement shop at 99 Charles, has also had an uptick in shoplifting. “In the past month there has definitely been a pickup in empty hangers,” reported Mandy Zobel, the shop’s manager. Zobel is especially alert for shoplifters and caught one last year, but hasn’t been able to nab anyone in recent weeks.
The police have been responsive to reports, say shop owners, who are now calling for an officer to patrol on foot, especially at the Charles Circle end of Charles Street.
Falgout said the email and phone tree that the Beacon Hill Business Association established has been helpful, but it is not enough. “A policeman on foot would be a deterrent,” she said.
It doesn’t look as if the police can offer help anytime soon. The neighborhood had mounted patrols for awhile, said Area A-1 Captain Bernard O’Rourke, but they were pulled off Beacon Hill, where despite the recent shoplifting incidents, crime in general is low. They were moved to Dorchester, which has become a hot spot for trouble. O’Rourke said he expects the mounted officers to return sometime soon, but he couldn’t say when.
Officer Ray D’Oyley is assigned to Cambridge Street between about 4 and 11:45 p.m., said O’Rourke.
Meanwhile, O’Rourke said businesses can get advice about how to better protect their stores through a security check with Sgt. Tom Lema, who can be reached at 617-343-4627.
Penner and Macris have already taken matters into their own hands. Penner visited the police station on Sudbury Street, looked through mug shots and identified the woman who took the three items.
And last week Penner and Macris held a session for their staff in which they discussed ways to make Crush safer. From now on, as part of their strategy, they plan to have two people at all times staffing at their shop.

CAPTION: Suzanne Besser, executive director of the Beacon Hill Civic Association, and Beverly Dammin, board member, review the schedule for the group’s evening with authors series, Authors Among Us: An Evening of Books, Brie, and Beaujolais, that will commence on April 7 at The Hampshire House, 84 Beacon St.

Mount Vernon Street resident Beverly Dammin, a board member in the Beacon Hill Civic Association, looked through her neighborhood and noticed a wealth of literary talent – famous authors and those who are on the brink of breaking through in the competitive world of book writing.
Dammin thought it would be a good idea to bring the authors and residents together for an evening of discussion and socializing at a location in the neighborhood.
“I thought an evening with local authors series would be a wonderful idea for the Beacon Hill Civic Association because it’s a pretty literary neighborhood to begin with,” said Dammin. “I felt a gathering like this would give people pleasure – and since it’s such a computer age nowadays, it would be nice to go back to books.”
Dammin made her proposal at a meeting of the BHCA and it met with overwhelming support. This week Dammin and the BHCA officially named the series: Authors Amongst Us: An Evening of Books, Brie and Beaujolais and the monthly series will all come to fruition on Monday, April 7 in the Oak Room at The Hampshire House, 84 Beacon Street.
Charles E. Rounds Jr., a Suffolk University law professor and author of Loring: A Trustee’s Handbook, will be the guest author at the first event. “The book is what all attorneys in the field of trust law use,” said Dammin. “He [Rounds]will talk about the complex issues of what a trustee or executor needs to know.”
Dammin said the second guest author will be Beacon Hill resident Joshua Kendall, who will talk about his new book, “The Man Who Made Lists,” the story of Peter Mark Roget who wrote the famous Roget’s Thesaurus. Kendall will appear at The Hampshire House on Monday, May 12.
Peter Thomson Jr., son of BHCA member Peter Thomson Sr., will be the guest author on Wednesday June 4. Thomson, the former senior editor of Living on Earth, will talk about his book, “Sacred Sea: A Journey to Lake Baikal.”
The series will break for the summer months before Charles Rowan Beye, a Distinguished Professor of Classics Emeritus, author of “Odysseus: A Life,” makes a guest speaking appearance on Monday, Sept. 8.
Constance Leeds, a Back Bay resident, will appear on Wednesday, October 8 to talk about “The Silver Cup,” the story of a year that transforms the lives of three medieval teenagers.
Isabelle Storey, author of Walker’s Way: My Life With Walker Evans, will be the final speaker in the series at a date to be determined in November. Evans was a prominent news and documentary photographer.
“Our authors series is open to everyone who would like to come,” said Dammin, who thanked BHCA Executive Director Suzanne Besser for her assistance in helping to launch the series. “The authors will speak about their inspiration for writing the book and why they became interested in the topic. Some of the authors have asked to read passages from their book while other authors have said they’d like a question-and-answer period, and perhaps we’ll have a lively discussion or two.”
Besser said the price for each event is still to be determined.

Karin and Charles Dumbaugh, Acorn Street, posed in front of original letters by John Adams with Peter Drummey, Stephen T. Riley Librarian at the Massachusetts Historical Society. The society, located at 1154 Boylston Street, is holding an exhibit through May 31 called “John Adams: A Life in Letters.”

The Suffolk University Task Force discussed the Master Plan for the university as well as for its two pending projects, one at 20 Somerset Street on Beacon Hill and The Modern Theater Project on West Street. at its regular meeting last Tuesday night.
This was the first public meeting since the Boston Redevelopment Authority’s (BRA) request for responses from the public on these projects. The agency has received more than 44 letters from people expressing their views about them.
During the meeting, spokesmen from Suffolk University outlined some of residents’ main concerns on these specific projects and the Master Plan. The general consensus from Gerald Autler, senior project manager for the BRA, is that the project at The Modern Theater is very acceptable and has been very responsive to abutters’ concern.
“There has been no negative impact. We applaud Suffolk University. Everything we hoped would happen, has happened, “ he said.
The redevelopment of 20 Somerset Street still raised some members’ concerns.
Task Force member Rob Whitney questioned how many students could possibly be working in the building at one time.
Suffolk University official John Nucci pointed out that the building will be used as a combination of art classes and general classrooms. He said there will be 10 general classrooms capable of handling 40 students each and another 20 rooms which will each hold 8 to 25 students.
Nucci mentioned that with the addition of 20 Somerset Street, the university will be closing classrooms on Temple and Derne streets. The Fenton Building will become faculty offices.
“There will be on average a decrease of 786 students per day in this area,” Nucci said. “There will be a 364-hour decrease in class meeting hours,” he added.
Suffolk University officials pointed out that their goal would be to have 5,000 full-time undergraduates through 2018 and that their future uses of all buildings reflect this number. Suffolk University currently has slightly more than 4,500 full-time students.
But what about new dormitories?
Eventually, building more dormitory housing for students was another point for discussion.
Suffolk University currently houses more than 1,200 students in its dormitories. For the remainder of Suffolk University students living off –campus, Suffolk has instituted a very strict student behavior policing effort, which has drawn praise.
“There has been a huge improvement in student behavior and student issues on both Beacon Hill and North End,” said Karin Mathiesen of City Councilor Michael Ross’ office.
Other proactive steps that Suffolk has taken to mitigate the impact of students on year-round residents of the area include working with students to limit parking of cars on the streets, a mandatory class for all freshmen that stresses the importance of appropriate behavior in residential neighborhoods, and establishing committees to work with neighborhood groups on quality of life issues, such as trash complaints.
Nucci also pointed out that the university has entered into new non-expansion zones in both upper Beacon Hill and Downtown Crossing.
The university recently signed a non- expansion agreement with the Upper Beacon Hill Civic Association (UBHCA).
An UBHCA representative said, “This shift from classrooms to faculty space will have a profound impact on the Temple and Dern streets area. Office space does not create a nuisance in the neighborhood.”
The next meeting is planned for sometime in April, and it was agreed that it will be held in a Suffolk University building that university officials seek to replace with the newer 20 Somerset St. building.
Rep. Marty Walz noted that this was extremely useful in the case of Berklee College, when residents saw the overcrowding of buildings the music school wished to replace.

The Boston Zoning Commission unanimously approved an amendment that has been spearheaded by Councilor Michael Ross to limit the number of unrelated college students living in an apartment to only four. Before a packed conference room with more than 100 proponents and opponents in attendance the commissioners heard testimony on the matter for more than three hours on Wednesday.
Many of the proponents repeated the arguments that the quality of life has deteriorated in their neighborhoods as speculators buy these large single family houses and multi family homes and fill them with students who sometimes number as many as ten students living in a single residence.
“This is a victory for Boston families,” Ross said. “Boston is a college town and we need to act and function and have certain regulations in place to protect residents of the city.” Ross pointed out that many other cities have regulations in place to limit the number of the students in a residential unit. He also citied that local universities and colleges only are able to presently house about 50% of the student population. In data from 2006, Ross pointed out that about 70% of Kenmore rental units are occupied by students while in Back Bay about 11% and in Beacon Hill about 8%.
“I have witnessed the impact on our neighborhoods and have seen great streets turned into school ghettos forcing families to move out,” said Captain Evans who oversees Back Bay and Fenway police district. He further related how he has responded to scenes of parties and has seen as many as 12 students living in a single apartment. He further stated that these uncontrolled parties drain police resources.
“This is rent control’” said one opponent of the measure. Another opponent stated that this is a measure to regulate the market.
One opponent pointed out that the city will be forced to give abatements to the building owners who will now have the full use of their building limited. In recent transactions with speculators paying high prices for these properties, tax bills have risen on some properties from $2,500 to more than $13,000 over the last six years.
Dot Joyce, a spokesperson for Mayor Thomas Menino said, “As with other zoning violations, the Inspectional Services Department will develop an enforcement strategy to respond to any property owner reported or found to be in violation of the code. We will work with local colleges and universities to educate students and property owners to adhere to the letter of the law.” Menino is expected to sign the amendment shortly.
Support for this measure passed the city council unanimously last December. At the hearing, all city councilors or their representatives appeared to voice their support of the measure.
One student from Northeastern speaking against the amendment stated that this will not solve the behavioral problem of the students.
“We have waited too long,” Jeff Doggett from Northeastern University said. “This amendment will not only support the neighborhoods but will protect the students.”

This Thursday marks the fifth anniversary of the U.S. invasion of Iraq.
The following tongue-in-cheek editorial ran in The Beacon Hill Times on March 18, 2003, just before the invasion. It attracted more letters and phone calls than any editorial ever published in this newspaper. About 90 percent of them said, “thank you for saying what I’ve been thinking.” The other 10 percent called the Times staff socialists and worse.
We said we would reprint this editorial every year until America’s soldiers were home and safe. At the time we didn’t realize that we’d still be reprinting this after five years.
This will be the last year, however, that this editorial will run. While it turns out that our 2003 suspicions were correct, the fact that a significant number of Americans were suspicious from the beginning that a ruse was being perpetrated on us won’t matter any more. By next year we will have a new president and, we hope, a new policy.
There are 307 days left in the George Bush presidency, or as writers constantly say, “failed presidency.” Let’s hope the United States survives those days.


Now, tell me again, why is it we’re going to war?
By the time you read this, our country may be at war. Let’s see if we understand this: We’re declaring war on Iraq because they have “weapons of mass destruction” that they are going to use on us. But then we have learned that their missiles have a problem: their range is considerably less than halfway around the world. How can they deliver these “weapons of mass destruction” if their missiles can’t reach us? And isn’t it that other country, North Korea, the one that is ready to make a bomb and has a long-range missile? Since the U.S. is not bothering them instead, we must have our facts wrong.
Let’s try another tack: we’re declaring war on Iraq because that country harbors Al Qaeda terrorists. That’s another piece of info we must be getting wrong. We recently caught a very bad terrorist sleeping in a suburb in Pakistan. And isn’t it in Pakistan where the CIA thinks bin Laden sometimes hides? We wonder why we’re not going after Pakistan if that’s where the terrorists seem to be. Have we actually found any Al Qaeda operative in Iraq or any connection, other than being glad, that Saddam might have had with September 11? We also are a little concerned that we’ve forgotten the job we have to finish in Afghanistan. But what do we know? We’re just running a little neighborhood newspaper. We don’t know the big picture.
Another possibility is that we’re declaring war on Iraq because Saddam Hussein is a bad guy. There’s no disagreement there. But there are a lot of bad guys in the world — Robert Mugabe comes to mind — who hurt their neighbors and their own people. They are all over Asia and Africa and there are a few in South America. But maybe Saddam is the mother of all evil dictators and his methods are so worse than leaders in the Ivory Coast, Liberia, Rwanda, etc., etc., that we must take him out first.
Perhaps this isn’t about bad leaders, terrorist bands or unthinkable weapons. This might be this administration’s idea about how to best invigorate the economy. The former titans of industry now running our country surely know about economies. They know how to make a buck, and they’d like it if pesky people like us weren’t always trying to get them to share their wealth with our fellow Americans who didn’t get the benefits of birth, education and health that they received. But they’ve owned baseball teams and run oil companies, so they must know what they are doing. If everyone worked as hard as they have done and with as much insight into how to run a good business, we’d have a good economy. Besides, didn’t war boost our economy in 1942?
Our leaders’ economic theory must show that war will bring more buyers into the antique stores on Charles Street, that war will cause women to buy more shoes at Moxie. They probably have a theory that in wartime, moms and grandmoms will hustle right into Red Wagon to outfit their progeny in clothing appropriate to our warlike times. There must be a formula they use that calculates that if we go to war, five more people will eat dinner at 75 Chestnut or ten 25-year-olds will get take-out pizza at Harvard Gardens.
War used to be bad because it killed people and wrecked what we now call the environment. But it no longer seems to kill Americans. We managed the Gulf War and the one in Afghanistan with few American casualties. Now our young men and women in combat fatigues seem happy, even jaunty, as they board the planes to go off to war as the television cameras roll. We’re pretty sure almost all of them are coming back. As a civilization, we’re past the times when body counts — at least American body counts — are in the thousands.
Since we have a hard time understanding exactly why all this is going on, we hope somebody does. Colin Powell, Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld must know more than we do. Since our understanding is incomplete, we have to trust that they know what is best for us. We remember another group of aging men who knew more than we did and what was best for us. They were led by a capable, former industrial titan named Robert McNamara. He’s the guy who did so well for us in Viet Nam.