Cambridge Police Begin Square Button Struggle

Cambridge police have begun a lowkey campaign to cut down on the sale of buttons they consider to be obscene or vulgar.

The buttons were attacked last week by City Councillor Thomas H.D. Mahoney, who said they were "blasphemous, vulgar, and, in some cases, obscene." At Mahoney's urging, the City Council passed a resolution asking the police to have merchants ban the buttons voluntarily.

According to Mahoney, the buttons -- which ranged from "Kill a Commie for Christ" to "Sterilize LBJ: No More Ugly Children" -- "have a bad effect on kids."

In the ensuing week and a half, the department's crime prevention division has contacted the only two stores in the Harvard Square area that are selling the buttons -- the Truc, located under the Brattle, and Krackerjacks, located on Mass. Ave. But the police are asking for less than the total ban that Mahoney urged.

They have inspected the buttons on display and asked that certain ones be dropped. At least one of the stores, the Truc, has decided to cooperate.

"Their demands weren't excessive," Cyrus I. Harvey, Jr., the owner of the Truc and the Brattle Theatre, said yesterday. "I didn't think it was worth fighting about."

Harvey said the store has long exercised strict self-censorship and that he was sympathetic to the intent of Mahoney's motion. Nevertheless, Harvey hasn't let police recommendations go unchallenged; some of the buttons they suggested discarding are still on display. Of 137 different buttons in the Truc's window last week, only about 10 have gone.

Stiffer Resistance

The other store is apparently putting up stiffer resistance. Donald Levy, the owner of the Krackerjacks, said yesterday he hadn't taken any buttons off the market and that he was awaiting advice from his lawyer today.

The police presented the store with a list of buttons they wanted dropped. The list included: "F*ck Censorship"; "Fornication Makes Friends"; "Contraceptives Take the Worry Out of Being Close"; "Fornicate for Freedom"; "Superpimp"; "Folk You"; and "Let Prostitutes Work."

The store's lawyer, Sidney Dockser, said yesterday that he believes the police have a shaky case for their campaign--if they have a case at all. But owner believes that the police are bringing other pressures to bear.

Since last Thursday, he said, police have visited the store four times, bringing a fire inspector with them once. The fire inspector pointed out the possibility of a number of violations, but Levy said yesterday that some of these were the landlord's responsibility, not the store's. The police, he said, also complained about the positioning of his signs. And finally yesterday, he said, they told him the store might be stopped from selling second hand surplus clothing until it gets a license.

Levy said about 30 per cent of his business involves surplus clothing. "If he tells me not to sell until I get my license -- it could be a couple of days or a week -- it could hurt me." He also said that the law was not aimed at stores like his, which deal in large lots of surplus clothing, but at stores which buy and sell second-hand clothing from individuals.