Police patrolled one of Marblehead’s shortest streets more than twice as much as any other road in town over the past four years.
Community Road, which is only a quarter mile long, is a hotspot for police patrols and property checks. An analysis of police logs by Boston University journalism students found that the road had the second highest number of entries of any Marblehead street from 2022 to 2025.
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Nearly all of the activity was property checks on a road that is home to several Jewish institutions. Most were initiated by police rather than the result of calls from citizens.
Police Chief Dennis King told the Marblehead Current that officers have been patrolling that area more often because of a national rise in antisemitism.
“We, unfortunately, like everybody else in the Commonwealth, have been victims of hateful reporting, of hoax bombs, swatting incidents, vandalism, slap tagging, and so we spend time up there on a shift to do checks, just for deterrence effect, presence and the like,” King said. “And so that is something that unfortunately has been dictated by a national and state increase in antisemitism and in hate-related activity.”
Most property checks throughout Marblehead are “self-initiated” by police as proactive measures, King said. Police either did proactive checks or responded to calls on Community Road at a 132% higher rate than the average of all other roads in Marblehead from Jan. 1, 2022 to Sept. 30, 2025, the records show.
Community Road is home to several Jewish institutions, including Temple Sinai, the private Jewish Epstein Hillel School and the Jewish Community Center of the North Shore — buildings that are typically closed at night but remain frequent stops for police patrols.
Over 91% of the police activity on Community Road was for building or property checks.
“In a nutshell, you have a Jewish school, a temple and a Jewish community center that have some incidents in and around hate crime, and the overall picture of the rise of antisemitism has gone there,” King said. “Most notably, the attention that we have done as a response is usually because of hate crimes or hateful stuff that’s happening throughout our country.”
Atlantic Avenue, a 2.1-mile long road that runs near Marblehead’s shoreline, had the most log entries with over 5,400.
The examination of more than 40,800 records represents the first detailed analysis of Marblehead Police Department logs, revealing where officers are most frequently dispatched and the resources devoted to repeated calls for help — including numerous false alarms, building checks and motor vehicle stops.
The logs also include 911 calls and checks on homes, businesses and organizations that the police conduct routinely.
Property and building checks accounted for the majority of police activity, with nearly 12,400 entries logged during the almost-four-year period, followed by motor vehicles stops and over 2,700 citizen complaints.
The same log entries that track overnight patrols are also littered with mundane complaints about town life: missing phones and backpacks, fellow citizens giving others the finger, accidental 911 dials from Apple Watches, and noisy leafblowers.
The entries also reveal requests to rescue a cherry picker, a “seventh grader defying traffic” and an earthquake.
The entries show that Marblehead Police have responded to scores of more serious complaints and 911 calls, including 14 for opioid overdoses, hundreds of complaints about fraud, nearly 1,000 motor vehicle crashes, a dozen about individuals suspected of being drunk, and 45 reports of missing individuals, including children, road rage and harassment.
Out of over 40,800 log entries, 81 resulted in arrests for alleged crimes including drunk driving, bar fights, harassment, shoplifting, trespassing and vandalism.
While there were no arrests on Community Road in that four-year period, the frequent police activity there occurred at all hours of the day and night.
The logs show that police activity on Community Road peaks at the early and late hours of the night.
From 6 p.m. to midnight, police logged 1,130 visits to Community Road. Another 955 checks occurred between midnight and 6 a.m.
“In the cover of darkness, like in an overnight, a lot of times that’s an opportunity for people if they want to vandalize or do something,” King said. “We’re doing those checks just to coincide with both the inactivity, which means everything is closed, the darkness, the overnight, the little bit of cover for people if they do want to vandalize or do some bad stuff.”
Temple Sinai Rabbi Michael Schwartz said in an interview with the Current he has seen police officers’ presence on Community Road as they patrol. He noted there is a correlation with a rise of antisemitism globally in the past two years.
An official with Epstein Hillel School said he appreciates the patrols.
“Because all these organizations are Jewish, even though Marblehead is a very, very safe community, the police try extra hard to make sure that we don’t have any kinds of challenges or difficulties,” said Michael Slater, the school’s director of finances and operations. “When things like that do happen, the police take it super seriously, and they come up here and patrol on a regular basis, not because it’s a response to a crime, but just because they want to keep track of how things are going to make sure that we’re safe and not needing any kind of help.”
Police have investigated several alleged antisemitic incidents in Marblehead in the past decade. In 2016, the message “Jews did 9/11” was etched onto Marblehead High School’s softball field. In 2019, Holocaust denier flyers were posted outside Temple Emanu-El. And in October 2025, a 15-year-old student was charged after antisemitic symbols and hateful graffiti were found on Marblehead High School property. The student was arraigned in Lynn Juvenile Court on counts of vandalism, tagging property, and a civil rights violation, The Boston Globe reported.
While the most current U.S. Census data does not indicate the number of Jewish residents among the 20,296 individuals living in Marblehead, a 2023 Brandeis University report estimated roughly 6% are Jewish.
“If there is an event that is affecting Jewish communal spaces that may be in another state, or even in the Commonwealth, I may, before we even get the request, have already asked for some [police] presence up there and some checks as a kind of proactive way,” King said.
“Synagogues around the country have all had to beef up security to ensure safety,” Schwartz said. “That’s reality.”
In 2023, the state awarded the department nearly $50,000 as a part of the Edward J. Byrne Memorial Justice Assistance Grant, which aims to support communities in combating crime based on specific needs, according to the Office of Grants and Research.
The grant allows police to identify hateful acts, including “including graffiti on Jewish communal spaces and public property” in Marblehead and surrounding areas, according to King. He added that the department purchased a mobile surveillance camera system.
“This is used to monitor specific locations where activity has or may occur, as well as providing live feeds during larger community events like parades,” King said.
An official with the Jewish Community Center declined to speak with the Current.
Susan Weiner, executive director of Temple Sinai, said the synagogue’s experiences with the Marblehead Police have been “exceptional.”
“When we’ve needed them, they’ve been there,” she said.
This story was produced in Boston University Professor Maggie Mulvihill’s Data Journalism class as part of an ongoing collaboration with the Marblehead Current.
