On a recent warm, sunny day in Oak Lawn Cemetery, those buried in the ground rested in peace.
A couple of mourners moved among the rows of graves, stopping to stand quietly in the company of their lost loved ones, laying down a flower here, a rock there, or just pausing, head down, sinking into some combination of memory, grief and, hopefully, comfort.
This tranquility, though, is not always the case in Oak Lawn, where authorities claim a “recent uptick in gang activity” following multiple gravesite vandalisms, including a stolen headstone. Authorities and, more directly, cemetery management, are now grappling with how to figure out how to put a stop to this — without themselves cutting off the people who want to visit their loved ones.
Oak Lawn Cemetery, a relatively small burial ground on Cummins Highway at the confluence of Hyde Park, Roslindale and Mattapan, splashed into the news when the Herald reported feuding gangs vandalizing gravestones — and even stealing one.
Here’s how the incidents at the graveyard have gone, per police reports backed up by cemetery staff and community sources.
On March 27 around 11 p.m., someone — community sources say people affiliated with a gang out of the old Bromley Heath projects in Jamaica Plain — knocked over the headstones of D’Andre King-Settles, Michael I. Ross and John P. Cesar — all people who had been shot to death, and King-Settles before he even turned 18. Cops wrote in a report that three people knocked over the three headstones before eventually leaving.
Then came the retaliation two days later, when, per community sources, people affiliated with the Mission gang out of the projects on Annunciation Road behind police headquarters came and knocked over the headstone of Gerrod Brown Jr., who was shot to death as just age 16. They then picked up the headstone, threw it in the trunk of a car, and brought it back to Annunciation Road, where cops found it shortly after it was reported missing.
The theft of the gravestone and its brief residence on Annunciation Road made the rounds on social media, enflaming tensions further between the gangs.
Three people are charged with the gravestone theft — young men who cops say had their court-mandated ankle bracelets from past charges on as they vandalized the graveyard.
Then, in the middle of the afternoon on April 21, plainclothes cops from the Youth Violence Strike Force — the gang unit — swarmed the graveyard, closing in on a man who they said had been seen shortly beforehand with a gun. After a series of pat-frisks and minor tussles, per the police report, officers found four guns, two on the backseat passengers and two in the car’s glove compartment. Weapons charges ensued for the men, who police said had the guns illegally.
Cemetery manager Todd Burne, taking a walk around the cemetery with the Herald, could only shake his head.
“They don’t really have respect for the people here,” Burne said.
He said he’s weighing security options, such as closing the gates at specific times and enforcing noise rules more stringently, though he doesn’t want to keep people out who just want to come in and be respectful, so there’s a balance. He doesn’t want to tell the “hundreds of mom and dads,” many working-class people of color from the surrounding neighborhoods that they can’t come mourn when they wish.
As Burne talked and walked, a funeral procession came through, bringing another body to its final resting place amid the shadow-dappled grounds.
If you spend enough time here, an unsettling reality begins to set in: Many of the birthdates on the gravestones are from the past couple of decades — kids born in the 1990s, 2000s and even 2010s. Young faces smile out from images inset on the stones, indicating places where young bodies lie at rest.
It’s not universally true, but too many of these young people died by violence — often at the hands of others around the same age.
This is at least part of the reason why there periodically are problems here, Burne said. Some of it’s almost incidental — kids in the life come by to remember their friends and loved ones, maybe are drinking, as evidenced by the nip bottles that Burne has to clean up often, and run into a rival crew whose original intentions at the graveyard were equally as innocuous. Then friction can start.
After all, Burne said, he doesn’t really think there’s that much of an uptick overall — though the gravesite vandalisms are new and shocking — “It’s just that they’re getting caught more, maybe.”
The walk around the graveyard passes by some of the headstones. King-Settles’ is back up, as are Ross’ and Cesar’s. The cops have hung onto Brown’s after they retrieved it, leaving a gap in the line of headstones like a missing tooth.
Burne shook his head again, and asked to no one in particular, “Why can’t you let them rest in peace?”
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Boston cemetery grapples with ‘uptick’ in gang activity - Boston Herald
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