Beacon Hill residents will see an increased police presence in the area following an armed robbery on Pinckney Street that occurred in the early evening hours on President’s Day. Boston Police Captain Bernard O’Rourke said police patrols began on February 17, one day after the incident, and are continuing on a daily basis throughout the neighborhood.
The added vehicular and foot patrols are in direct response to the February 16 random incident in which 53-year-old Beacon Hill resident William Knowlton was surrounded by seven males in the middle of the street and instructed to turn over the cash in his wallet. Knowlton was also robbed of his Blackberry that had fallen to the ground as he made a successful attempt to bolt away from the group.
The seven males, all believed to be mid-to-late teenagers, were wearing bandana-like masks over their faces and one of them brandished a knife during the incident.
At the time of the robbery, Knowlton, an attorney at the prestigious law firm of Ropes and Gray in Boston, was returning home from an area restaurant where he had purchased a take-out dinner for his family. As he was walking in the middle of the street and up the hill on Pinckney Street at approximately 8:10 p.m., Knowlton noticed a group of seven young men walking down the sidewalk toward him.
As Knowlton approached his home, he realized the group had stopped, turned around and formed a semi-circle near him in the middle of the street. It was clear at that point that the group had bad intentions, said Knowlton.
“I think they were in the neighborhood to cause trouble,” he said.
The confrontation then grew ominous as one individual told Knowlton to “give us what you got” and another individual pulled out a knife and showed it to Knowlton.
Knowlton immediately took out his wallet and displayed the cash, with one of the men ordering him to put it down, on the street.
After Knowlton placed a $5 bill and a $1 bill on the street, one member of the group asked him if that was all the cash ($6) he had on his person. The group then surrounded Knowlton in a full circle, but left a small opening in it, prompting the quick-thinking Knowlton to make a run toward his townhouse.
“I reached into my pocket, grabbed my house keys and I just ran as fast as I could to my front door,” said Knowlton. “As I was running up the steps and to my front door, my Blackberry fell out of my holster. They grabbed that [Blackberry] and decided that they had enough and they ran down the street.
“If I had remembered that I had my Blackberry on me, I would have given it to him,” said Knowlton. “I probably took some risk by running, but I thought I could make it and the incident had the potential to get really out of hand.”
Knowlton’s wife and a neighbor across the street called the Boston Police Department, who responded within minutes. Two police cruisers and at least two undercover officers arrived on the scene.
“The police were very responsive and very helpful,” said Knowlton. “I rode around in the cruiser with the officers, looking for the group, but I was unable to find them. The response from the police was excellent and people should feel very good about that.”
As he looks back at the nightmarish incident, Knowlton said he’s bothered by the fact that a group as large as seven perpetrators were involved, especially at the time of day the incident occurred.
“You tend not to think that 8 o’clock at night is that risky a time period, but I guess you can’t think that anymore. I don’t,” said Knowlton.
Beacon Hill residents should notice the extra police presence as officers, in their vehicles and on foot, guard the streets for extended periods of time, supplementing regular patrols.
“We tell our officers to spend time in the area for up to an hour and we specifically mention Pinckney and Mount Vernon streets and that particular area up and down the streets,” said O’Rourke. “We ask the officers to be aware of any groups of kids, teenagers particularly, or any type of groups, and we also ask the neighborhood to be on the lookout when they do see groups of kids to give us a call.”
O’Rourke described the February 16 incident as very rare for the Beacon Hill section.
“We have an occasional robbery there but most of the robberies we do experience occur in the Boston Common or just off the Boston Common,” said O’Rourke. “For one to happen in the center of Beacon Hill, especially up on the hill, is somewhat rare. We do not get that many robberies up there.”
O’Rourke said police detectives have been looking at videotapes from the area and other sections of the city, hoping to discover a development or pattern that might lead to the apprehension of the individuals involved in the robbery.

CAPTION: Peter Morrisey and Juan Uribe, Monika Pauli, both of Pauli Architects.

For the past three weeks, the Beacon Hill Business Association has offered its members helpful advice from several marketing and public relations professionals as part of a “Survival Marketing” series.
The snow didn’t stop Beacon Hill business owners from turning out on Wednesday evening, February 18, to hear Peter Morrissey, founder and CEO of Morrissey & Company. Morrissey runs a reputation-management and public relations firm based on Beacon Hill, with worldwide clients.
On Wednesday, February 11, Michael Ward of Ward & Company PR spoke with the group on “Revving up your PR in a sputtering economy.” A 30-year veteran of the Boston PR scene, Ward discussed the changing local media landscape and the emergence of social networking as a public relations (PR) tool. Ward offered a menu of low-cost or no-cost PR techniques small business owners can use to raise their visibility during tough economic times.
Lynn Switanowski, of Creative Business Consulting Group, spoke on February 4, offering advice on how stores can compete in the changing retail marketplace. Switanowski recommended retailers consider their customer base and whether they are mainly Baby Boomers, Generation X or Generation Y. She discussed the consumer traits of each and how to market to them.
The economy was on everyone’s mind, but these experts dispensed advice that can be applied in both good times and bad.
As Peter Morrissey so aptly put it, “You as business owner are in control of the whole customer experience. Don’t leave anything up to chance. Make sure you are going to the nth degree for your customers.”

CAPTION: Chiara Rhouate.

A local mom can tell you – all politics is local. Chiara Rhouate was a stay-at-home mom of two, whose convictions about good education and a solid community activated her organizational skills. Within two years, she became one of the driving leaders behind the idea for a new area public school, and the leader of the West End Community Center. Last month, she and other area parents met with city councilors Michael Ross and Sal LaMattina, and last week, Rhouate and other members of the Coalition for Public Education parents met with Mayor Thomas Menino to officially present their petition that proposes building a new school at the current site of the Government Center Garage, currently under consideration for development. "The meeting was good," said Rhouate. "We achieved the goal of demonstrating that a school in our area is wanted by the coalition, the families of the West End, North End and Beacon Hill. He said a group like this had never come together before.
While the school superintendent and the mayor see the need for a new school in the area, the economy is upstaging their concerns. "They are in the midst of closing schools," said Rhouate, "but the conversation will continue with a follow- up meeting next month." Rhouate has two children who will attend public schools soon, and like many parents, she's unhappy that their chances of attending a local school – the Eliot or the Quincy – are only 50 percent, because of the Boston schools lottery system. Another school would give the area parents a better chance at attending a school within walking distance, they said.
Rhouate and her husband, Mustapha, are the parents of two little girls, Sara, 5, and Sabrina, 4. They live in one of the West End towers, at Whittier Place. Her parents were both “Old West Enders” - her mother lived on North Anderson Street. Her grandfather's photo is part of the exhibit at the West End Museum.
Rhouate had lived in the Back Bay since 1997, with her grandfather, William J. Dullah, another West Ender. They moved to the West End in the summer of 2005, looking for something slightly more affordable. They were also looking for something that was more of a neighborhood, and thought of all the stories her family had told of the old West End. "My grandfather was living then. He was 92, and it was a nice thing that we were moving back to the West End," she said.
When she became a mom, she made good on wanting a neighborhood and helped form a parents group with a few other mothers, in 2006, the West End Parents Group (WEPG).
"When the weather is nice, you run into kids and their parents walking along the path, or at one of the playgrounds, but during the winter, when we all know each other's children's name, but don't have a name or number of the parent, we are stuck inside by ourselves," said Rhouate.
So they started monthly playgroups. Through donations, they rented rooms, brought snacks and toys to share, and the kids were able to play together. "And the parent's would get a little adult conversation, a place to ask advice, and a community of neighbors," said Rhouate.
When the West End Civic Association started talking about creating a community center, Rhouate and another WEPG mom became involved. In turn, they found a permanent space for their playgroup and began meeting weekly.
"That was huge for us," said Rhouate. "We didn't have to keep asking for donations to pay for the rooms, and we could offer a more regular play date."
Because she was organized and fairly vocal, she was soon asked to join the board of the new West End Community Center, led by Duane Lucia. She learned about programming, and her parent group started to grow in numbers. She impressed everybody there and recently succeeded Lucia as president of the West End Community Center.
Thanks to Rhouate's efforts, today there are 132 families who are members of the community center, and the parents group now meets twice a week, along with a monthly weekend play date in the colder months. The families with younger children seem to use the center more, since the older kids have school activities and other groups outside of the West End, but that doesn't stop Rhouate from coming up with ideas that can also involve older neighborhood children.
The challenge of creating an active community center is to bring residents out of their tower apartments and into forming a community where people are looking out for each other, for them to know their neighbors’ names.
The West End was once a tight working-class neighborhood of mostly Italian and Jewish residents, until in the late 1950s a Boston urban renewal project razed the 46-acre neighborhood, displacing almost 3,000 families. The city erected five residential high rise complexes that attracted many of the old neighborhood, or their children and grandchildren. And a new group of transplants has also taken hold. Like years before, many are from around the world, but now they are Italian, Russian, Pakistani, Indian, French, Irish, Canadian, German, Japanese, Chinese, Colombian, and Venezuelan. Rhouate was born in Korean, adopted by Irish American and Italian-American parents. Her husband is Moroccan. "I think exposing people to these different cultures will only make us stronger," she said.
But many of the new residents are busy professionals, some of whom work at the nearby medical facilities and government buildings. Families, professionals, seniors – they all keep busy schedules that can make socializing difficult. Unlike the old neighborhood, there's no stoop to sit on, it's hard to have a barbecue in the back yard, and there's no front yard to hold yard sales. It's harder to get to know your neighbors.
But she's up to the challenge. Rhouate is planning open poetry readings, showing episodes of "Don't Retire, Inspire,” meetings for community seniors, family music classes, an enrichment drop-in program for children ages 10-16, a real estate workshop on March 3, and a WECC international bake sale fundraiser in May "to share some of the cultures and stories of our community," she said.
They have genealogy classes returning in the spring, a softball team, self-defense classes, dance classes and Qui Gong in the works. She's also thinking about a twice-a-year yard sale that will not only clear apartments of clutter, but provide another chance for neighbors to socialize.
A lot of West Enders are planning their fourth Annual West End Children's Festival August 15, led by new director Augusta Alban. And if there's anything else residents want, they can let Rhouate know via the Web.
"It's through these community-based fundraisers that we hope to unite the community, and raise funds for more programming," said Rhouate. "My goal now is to fill the community center with as many programs and workshops for as many West Enders as I can. We are a diverse community, in both age and ethnicity. I want to have them all in the community center."
Ambitious? Yes, she admits. And following in the shoes of her predecessor, the energetic Duane Lucia, is a little daunting, she said, but she's up for the challenge. "I enjoy being at the beginning of the process of building the community center. I think seeing it full will be a great thing. It's a physical accomplishment because I can see it being accomplished."
For someone who gave up a job in the food industry – she was a manager at Morton's and Carberry's Bakery -- to become a full-time mom, she admitted, "I'm a lot busier than I expected. It's a lot more fun that I thought it would be. I miss the restaurant world in a lot of ways, but I'm happy where I ended up."

Just beware …

E-mails among neighbors were flying last week as news of the armed robbery of Bill Knowlton outside his home on Monday night became known in the neighborhood.
Fortunately, Bill wasn’t hurt and lost only $6 and his Blackberry.
In the 1970s, there was a movie “Death Wish” starring Charles Bronson, who went looking to be mugged and then was always able to best the muggers. That was only in the movie, though.
A victim can only relate to the eerie effect of time moving slowly as the robbery scene unfolds. What seems like minutes only takes a few seconds to happen.
No one likes to feel powerless. No one likes to feel like an easy mark and just hand over the money. We like to think that we are the character Charles Bronson portrayed in the movie. However, being passive is exactly what experts tell us to do in this type of situation.
Make no mistake - times are bad and getting worse. Crime will increase as the economy continues to tank. This increase in crime in our neighborhood can be partly explained by the decrease in crime on the Common, which didn’t disappear but moved to adjacent neighborhoods. Downtown and Copley Square saw a rise last year in robberies. Beacon Hill will also experience an increase in crime as has the West End, where three people have been assaulted in the last week.
The good news is that police presence in our neighborhood will increase and hopefully catch these thieves. The other good news is that these thieves usually return to the scene trying to get new victims, which makes the apprehension of these muggers almost assured.
In the end, even if these muggers are caught, we urge all residents to look at the tips on page 1, on how to avoid being a victim. We also urge all residents not to act like Charles Bronson, because you will lose and could possibly lose more than just a few dollars in the process.