Boston community leaders proposed a new plan to tackle the open-air drug market at and around Mass and Cass that focuses on getting addicts off the streets, out of jail and into recovery in order to avoid last summer’s crowding and chaos. The three-pronged “choice-based” approach is built around recovery, judicial and public safety initiatives. It aims to “fill in the gaps” in the city’s current “fragmented” response system that has created the perception for addicts frequenting the troubled area that their only two options are detox or jail, Boston City Councilor John FitzGerald said Wednesday as the working group he co-chairs was announcing their new plan. “The whole goal is to get people into long-term recovery and make sure they’re not falling through the cracks,” Sue Sullivan, executive director of the Newmarket Business Improvement District and another co-chair, told the Herald. “From my perspective, I would say that it’s inhumane if we allow people to stay on the streets and not help them. “It doesn’t do anyone any good. It doesn’t do the person themselves any good. It doesn’t do the residents and businesses any good,” Sullivan added. The new plan was put forward by representatives from a South End, Roxbury and Newmarket community working group that focuses on Mass and Cass. It seeks to integrate public safety and public health interventions to clean up the open drug use, dealing and crime that has festered for years at and around the intersection of Massachusetts Avenue and Melnea Cass Boulevard.…
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