More information is slowly emerging about the temporary midday shutdowns of Somerville’s Central Library that were announced earlier this week, though specific details about the events that prompted the changes still remain elusive.
A city statement released Tuesday said the public library, which is located on Highland Avenue near Somerville High School, would be temporarily closed from 2 to 4 p.m. on Mondays, Tuesdays, Thursdays and Fridays after Labor Day, and from 11:30 a.m. to 2 p.m. on Wednesdays.
That statement said the temporary closures were being made “to better understand the needs of our community, and to work towards enhancing the City’s resources and programming to create spaces that provide local teens a place where they feel safe, welcome, and have the opportunity to engage in programming that feels meaningful and exciting for them.”
Another city statement, provided to GBH News on Thursday, struck a less upbeat note. It said the closures were being implemented because “[r]ecently, the Central Somerville Library has faced challenges that have raised concerns about the safety and well-being of both staff and visitors.”
Asked about the exact nature of those challenges, a city spokesperson replied: “While we are not disclosing the specific details of each incident, we can say that there have been repeated situations” that have raised safety concerns.
“These challenges prompted us to take precautionary measures and temporarily adjust hours to ensure a safe environment for everyone,” the spokesperson added. “The focus remains on creating positive solutions and interventions.”
As Somerville balks at providing more details about the events that drove the closures, members of the public are taking to social media to offer their own explanations.
In a Reddit thread on the topic, one user claimed that, over the past year, a group of 30 to 50 teens routinely disrupted the library after Somerville High School let out for the day.
“They threw things at librarians and other people, got into fights at the entrance, [were] menacing to people walking in,” the user wrote. At one point, the user added, a group of 15 teens “beat up a random guy so bad that he had to be taken to the hospital and they had to close the library to clean up his blood.”
Asked if that user’s description was accurate, the Somerville city spokesperson said they are “unable to confirm the accuracy of comments or information shared on Reddit, or any other unofficial platform.”
According to the Somerville Police Department, officers responded to a reported assault at the Somerville Library on July 19, involving a man who had sustained minor injuries and said he had been attacked by a group of juveniles outside the building.
Records of meetings of the library’s board of trustees show the library grappling with teen behavior issues over the course of the year. At a meeting in February, trustees were told that Mayor Katjana Ballantyne’s chief of staff had met with representatives from the library, high school and police department to discuss “behavior concerns in and around the library,” and that police had responded to some incidents.
In May, trustees were told that staff had received de-escalation training and that “[t]een behavior incidents have continued.”
Ward 3 City Councilor Ben Ewen-Campen said in a post on the social media app Threads that the closures were “driven by an ongoing pattern of serious, disruptive, and sometimes dangerous occurrences during midday hours,” and that while such issues have occurred in the past, this year has been especially challenging.
“What was different about this year, as I understand it, is that it just kind of continued to escalate, week after week,” Ewen-Campen told GBH News. “I’m not in a position to talk for the library leadership and staff, but my basic understanding is they felt like, with the current resources that they had, they were not able to control this behavior. They were not able to de-escalate it and guarantee the safety of staff and members of the public. We’re talking about occasional fights and kind of disruptive behavior that spiraled out of control.
“We’re not the only city dealing with these kind of issues,” Ewen-Campen added. “There are solutions at hand. … I really am frustrated that it got to a point where the city felt like it was the only option to have a closure. My hope is this really lights a fire under the administration to figure out exactly what needs to happen.”
The Somerville Municipal Employee Association, which represents library workers, said in a statement to GBH News that it has been pushing the city to address staffers’ safety concerns for approximately two years without success.
The statement also said library staff “have experienced multiple incidents a week, many of them putting the public at risk,” and that workers “have received threats about the start of the school year.” With no solutions available, the statement said, library administration chose to close the library during the hours in which most of the previous incidents occurred.
The library director, Cathy Piantigini, did not respond to a request for comment.
