From Antigua Observer

BOSTON, Jul. 26, CMC – After an outcry from neighbors, elected officials and the Boston Police Department officials here say this year’s Caribbean J’ouvert will be shortened.

The early morning celebration scheduled for August 29 will be cut nearly in half in an effort to contain what authorities say had become a chaotic and unpredictable event.

“It’s one reason and one reason only: public safety,” said Police Commissioner William Evans. “J’ouvert has outgrown its size and our ability to make sure it goes off safely. I’m not about being the anti-fun type guy. But I’m concerned about the children.”

In the past, the celebration has stretched from Morton Street to Columbia Road and lasted for about four hours. This year, organizers said, it will start on Talbot Avenue — just about the halfway point on the old route.

“I personally feel that having the J’ouvert, it’s a privilege, it’s not a right,” said Shirley Shillingford, president of the Caribbean American Carnival Association of Boston Inc., which organizes the Caribbean festival and, this year, will run J’ouvert.

“We have to do everything in our power to make it safe, and also to be understanding to the community”, she added.

When J’ouvert began more than 20 years ago, said one of its founders, Andre Modestee, it was during a “crazy” period in the city, when attendance at the Carnival celebration was dropping in part because of high crime.

“We’re being picked on,” he said. “This is people having fun. We deserve to have fun because we’re taxpayers of the Commonwealth.”

Officials, however, said that residents have complained for years about the celebration because of the rowdy crowds it drew, the Globe said.

“People were literally urinating in people’s yards, making a lot of noise,” said state Representative Russell E. Holmes, who represents the neighborhood where J’ouvert is celebrated and who helped create the new rules.

But, according to the Boston Globe, the final straw was the death of Dawnn Jaffier, 26, just after 8 a.m. on August 23, 2014.

Two men have been indicted on murder charges for engaging in the gunfire that sent bullets flying through the crowded street; the shots hit Jaffier and another woman several blocks away. The second woman survived.

Police statistics show flare-ups in crime in the city each year on the weekend J’ouvert is celebrated.

The statistics have revealed that in 2014, there were eight nonfatal shootings, six nonfatal stabbings, and one homicide.

For more on this story go to: http://antiguaobserver.com/bostons-caribbean-jouvert-shortened/