Busing Sparks New Protests

Columbia Point residents have once again turned their interest to the school situation in South Boston as police resumed normal patrols on Wednesday.

Residents held a three-hour meeting last night to discuss protection of children bused to South Boston. The meeting was held in the People's Center, which police occupied for a week ending Wednesday.

"It was a joyous scene last night because we had our community meeting place back and we weren't living under the gun any more," Sylvia Govan, spokesman for the Columbia Point People's Center, said yesterday.

Captain Daniel McDonald, commander of the 11th Police District Headquarters, warned that the sharpshooters who occupied the roofs of the tallest buildings in the area would be reintroduced if necessary.

"We know de Mau Mau terrorist group is still in the area," he said yesterday," and if we detect them carrying any firearms into any buildings, our men will be right back on those roofs."

One of the Columbia Point residents at last night's meeting asked. "Just who are these de Mau Maus who the cops are looking for?"

McDonald said blacks set up a short-lived roadblock on Mount Vernon Street yesterday to bar white entrance to the project but a small detachment of policemen cleared the area.

Govan denied that any roadblocks were ever set up to keep whites out of the area. "Whites have come to work here at the People's Center, as the BHA [Boston Housing Authority] Office and at the Uniform Factory down the street [Mt. Vernon] the whole time, even when the cops said they were kept out of the area," she said.

She also dismissed as a rumor the police report stating that three white janitors, employed by the BHA at Columbia Point, were shot at as they left work two weeks ago.

Many residents at last night's meeting said they feared that the police incursion into Columbia Point may have reversed the progress that the community has made in reducing the previously high crime rate. "Ever since the cops came in, vandalism has returned and there is lots of internal fighting," Govan said.

Residents criticized the nature of the police intervention, Govan said, and they used words like "provocative" and "Gestapo" to describe the action.

The blacks' anger has now been directed not only at the police--the traditional target--but at whites in general. Govan said Columbia Point residents feel "overwhelmed." Whites may call the black reaction "irrational" but the only whites who are ever seen or discussed are the police or the students and protestors i