The problem neighbor - Boston Globe

Every town seems to have a fellow like him: someone who makes people want to cross the street when they see him coming, the man store owners have forbidden to enter. Such troubled citizens pose a special dilemma for their families as well as for town officials, who often have no idea how to deal with them.

By Milton J. Valencia, Globe Staff

Locals have long favored the Minot neighborhood of Scituate, where beachfront homes have names like Sea Spray and Bar Rock, and neighbors enjoy barbecues and bonfires against a panoramic ocean backdrop. Until Frank Loring comes along.

Loring lives in the neighborhood, but is not always welcome in it. He is the man, residents say, who crashes parties, floods septic systems with hoses, harasses children at the ice cream truck, and threatens to kill those who question him.

Many in Scituate feel sympathy for Loring, who, a family member said, suffers from bipolar disorder. They say he would hurt himself before he followed through on threats to hurt others. Few want to see him in jail.

But something must be done, they say, about the 62-year-old man who has fallen into a crack between the mental health and criminal justice systems.

"This neighborhood has been his hostage for years," said Michael J. Clifford, who lives across the road from Loring and who has become a target of his harassment.

Every town seems to have someone like Frank Loring - the guy who makes people want to cross the street when they see him coming, the man whom storeowners have forbidden to enter. The presence of such troubled citizens can shade the quality of life in a neighborhood in the same way as, say, potholes or schools or taxes. These people also pose a special dilemma for town officials, who often have no idea how to deal with them, and no laws at their disposal to do so.

"The Commonwealth as a whole needs to realize there's a larger mental health issue here," said police Lieutenant John Rooney. "It's all over - it's not just Scituate."

Says Loring's brother Michael, an established lawyer in town who tries to help his troubled sibling: "It's the system. Is it the court, the mental health system? Is it the Legislature? It falls into that vast nothingness."

A downward spiral

Loring, with a slim build, is 5 feet 10 when he stands up straight, but most of the time neighbors see him hunched over with his hand out, asking for money or a cigarette. Or, he's asleep on a lawn chair outside the home on Glades Road that he and his brothers inherited when his mother died six years ago.

Known around town as just Frank, Loring is no stranger to the courts. He's been arrested multiple times on nuisance-related charges, and has at least three open court cases. He's been in jail since Sept. 10, unable to post the $1,000 bail set on the third criminal charge he's faced this summer: intimidating his neighbor.

Probation officials are now seeking to keep him jailed for violating terms of plea agreements he made in Quincy District Court in 2006. In one of those cases, he pleaded guilty to slapping a teenager at Shaw's Supermarket in Cohasset for refusing to cash his check. In another, he was charged with threatening to kill his neighbor Clifford and Clifford's 13-year-old son.

It hasn't always been like this. There was a time when Loring was friendly with Clifford, a time when he spent his days caring for his mother, Gertrude Loring, until she died in 2001. She was lovely, neighbors said, and seemed to keep her son Frank in order. They lived together in the cottage at 79 Glades Road for more than two decades, after selling the home the Loring family owned on Gannett Road.

Loring has a drinking problem and was diagnosed with bipolar disorder long before his mother died, his brother said, but in earlier years he tended to seek treatment. Family members would take him in for evaluations, and he didn't drink as much as he does now.

But things have grown worse since his mother died. And for the past several years, he has come to be seen by many on the beach as a nuisance, or worse.

Police have responded to calls about Loring in recent months, neighbors said, but in most cases he is taken into custody for his own protection, only to be released a day later. As part of his probation terms, he is supposed to stay away from alcohol and submit to random testing, but he has done neither, according to court records.

Loring likes to, as neighbors put it, get in their face. Sometimes he asks them for money, or offers beachgoers a chance to rent his lawn chairs for $1 an hour.

The rest of the time, neighbors say, he prowls the neighborhood, throwing sand through windows or interrupting bonfires and dinners on porches. Typically, he wears jogging pants with three shirts, or a suit. Sometimes he carries a knife.

"I can't imagine living near him," said Dan Weiner, of The Weinery wine shop on Gannett Road, in the North Scituate plaza. Loring has come in before, trying to pass bad checks for wine, says Weiner. Or he stands outside and stares in through the window. Weiner tries not to acknowledge him.

For others, it's more difficult. Amanda Prouty, of the Wilbur's North ice cream shop, said Loring is banned from the store, to keep him from bothering the children who come in during the day and the teenage girls who work at night.

"It's just a comfort thing, a nuisance thing," she said. During the winter, he sometimes shovels the sidewalk and then asks for money. In the summer, he'll try selling flowers.

"He's just a danger to himself," Prouty said. "I don't think he was a bad guy his whole life."

Attempts to talk to Frank Loring, who is being held in the Plymouth County Jail, were not successful.

Michael Loring is well aware of his older brother's problems, but said that they've lost their connection, and that Frank won't speak to him.

In a way, Michael Loring said, he feels a sense of indebtedness toward his brother for caring for their mother. When Frank is in jail, Michael will send crews to the house to clean up the trash that's been thrown about. He has also fixed windows at the home, which was left in a trust that allows all four of the brothers to live there.

Another brother, Robert, is also a well-known lawyer in town. The oldest brother is Kevin, also known as "Kicka," who has his own criminal record. He once made the news when he was found naked in a Boston church that had been vandalized.

But Frank is the Loring who poses the biggest difficulty in town.

"He has destroyed my summer the last two years and he knows it," Clifford said.

"Everything he does is planned."

Frustration all around

Michael Loring can predict his brother's moods like a textbook: how he's angry in the morning and lashes out at neighbors, and how in the afternoon he's more confused, almost schizophrenic.

He says he feels a responsibility toward his brother - Cohasset police asked him in 2006 to have his brother committed for alcohol treatment - but he also says civil rights are at issue. He has seen his brother taken to mental health hospitals, only to sign himself out. And, as a lawyer, he knows the courts are overwhelmed. Christian Putnam, 43, moved to Minot's beach last year. He never expected he'd join a neighborhood struggling to cope with mental illness. That was the kind of issue he had expected in New York, but not here.

But soon after moving, he became one of Loring's targets, he says.

Loring would flood his septic system with the hose, or throw trash in his yard, he said. Loring has also posted pornographic material on his home, in plain view of children who walk to the beach, according to Putnam. Other times, he'd keep him up all night, shoveling sand on the street.

"You want to have your windows open, and be outside, but then you've got to wonder if he's around the corner," Putnam said. "He's everywhere."

"People fall through the cracks," Putnam said, "and this is a guy who has fallen through the cracks, but everyone just throws up their hands and says, 'What can you do?' "