The West Roxbury Civic Improvement Association (WRCIA) met with and welcomed former Boston Police Department (BPD) District E-5 Sgt. Nicole McMullin to her new position of District Captain.

“I am officially now the captain District E-5,” she said, to applause from the WRCIA. “I am taking over from Captain Michael Hegarty who has moved on to another position and as of this Monday, I have officially taken over the position.”

McMullin immediately thanked the WRCIA for a discussion from its most recent meeting where residents brought up the issue of drivers parking facing the wrong way on residential streets. She said, because of that meeting, the department will now be issuing warning stickers to offenders.

“We just want to show you we’re committed to working together,” she said.

“Quick question, how many of those warnings do I have to get before I get a ticket?” said WRCIA Vice President Marty Keogh, to laughter from both the gathered officers and membership.

McMullin emphasized that the department wants to correct behavior and not collect fines.

“We’re taking input, this is a back and forth, but typically we want to be putting out that warning first and move to citations after,” McMullin. “From the last meeting, you might recall, we know these are families and don’t want to necessarily move to citations. It’s not about making the money, it’s about changing behavior and making our neighborhoods safe.”

“What do you guys think – how many should we issue before citations?” said BPD Superintendent Nora Baston.

Officers said the citations would come as a last resort if those parkers continue to park facing the wrong way.

In more serious crime news, BPD Officer Mark Lowe gave the monthly crime report and said while overall crime is down 33 percent, as reported in last month’s WRCIA article – https://tinyurl.com/56wk3zs2 – there were a couple of high-profile cases in the neighborhood. The most notable was an incident on Feb. 17 where thieves broke into the G&G Auto Repair and stole seven key fobs, which they presumably used to steal four of the vehicles parked at the lot. He said two of the cars were immediate recovered from the Ohrenberger School Parking Lot and the other two were later found on Feb. 19 at 5050 Washington Street.

Lt. Detective Michael Curran said detectives were able to find suspects at Crown Point Laundromat and found one individual, a juvenile, involved in another crime stealing tobacco products and lottery tickets from a previous break in at Prestige and one of the fobs.

“We continued the investigation and got the name of one of the individuals, the second of three, got an arrest warrant on him and he was arrested last week,” he said. “We’re still trying to identify the third individual.”

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E-5 Community Service Officer Nicole England also gave some tips regarding scams during the meeting, and stressed two major red flags: the biggest one is urgency. She said scammers will always try to get you to do something as fast as possible, and so will threaten, urge to secrecy or require that you hurry through any interaction. England said that the best thing to do is to call back the organization you think a scammer may be impersonating, like say if your bank says it needs your social security number or similar, call your bank directly and inquire as to what’s happening.

The second is to ask advice. Many times the scammers will appear to be a debt collector or person of authority, and will ask information in the guise of legally-permissible actions. She said to always ask advice, either of family members, neighbors, or the Community Service Office at E-5 as well. She said it’s important to remain calm and to not rush into any actions.

Also, Baston said for next meeting they will try to bring service dogs to showcase for residents, which she said is a very popular event for the schools when they bring the dogs. She emphasized that community policing and building relationships are the department’s primary goals when out in the community and not actively stopping crime. She said these kinds of outings, as well as events like National Night Out and similar, are how the department is looking to build trust with residents.

She added the department now has baseball-style trading cards, but did not comment on how rare or sought after her card may be.

Also at the meeting Boston Public Health Commission (BPHC) representative Katherine Reilly came by to distribute information on environmental and occupational health issues, basically lead and cancerous materials (the department deals with lots more types of dangers that cannot be reasonably listed here, but those are the two major ones).

Reilly said they are focused now on lead abatement, particularly houses with lead paint, as the chips and dust from the paint can easily find their way into the mouths of young children. She said the city has programs to help homeowners and renters deal with such paint issues, which can be found at https://tinyurl.com/5n8zbmrn

Lastly, Keogh said May is election month for the WRCIA and a the group’s next meeting, April 14, the group is inviting any interested persons to toss their hat(s) into the ring. Keogh emphasized that the WRCIA’s biggest asset is its core membership, and that while crowds have been known to come to meetings for the big one-off issues – the West Roxbury Lateral Pipeline, Roxbury Prep, the Centre Street Bike Lanes, the Redlands Road Sheter, etc. – it’s the core group that makes such forums and outlets for civic interaction possible.

“Some people just get involved and get out, and I get it. We have hockey right now – I’m missing hockey right now and I hate missing anything with my kids, but having said that, if anybody’s interested, come to the meeting,” he said.