Opinion: Shocking Violent Crime Raises Tough Questions

Six weeks ago, I  a Patch column about Boston crime, taking comfort in the fact that the annual number of homicides in the city had decreased by almost 50 percent during the past 20 years.

Suddenly, I’m not feeling so smug.

Two weeks ago, a four-year old boy was shot while playing in a crowded Dorchester park. Then, last weekend, during the Independence Day holiday, , four of whom lost their lives.

These acts of violence disturbed me. Shocked me. 

Following the shooting of the boy, Boston Mayor Thomas M. Menino issued a press release expressing his “sadness and anger” but then left town for previously-scheduled trips to Washington, D.C. andChicago.

His role was assumed by Boston Police Commissioner Edward F. Davis, who appeared on TV expressing his deep disappointment, anger, and even despair. (Read Commissioner Davis’s letter to the community.)

And, then? Well, as happens any time there’s an incidence of violent crime in Boston, there was an initial outcry, a couple of newspaper articles, then general ambivalence. No more TV coverage, nothing written in the press. (Boston.com is so obsessed with another topic that it should change its name to Bulger.com.) 

Broken Windows

Nineteen years have passed since the “Broken Windows” crime-fighting theory was first proposed, the idea that if you take care of the little things, you can stop big things from happening. Sometimes known as “community policing” (originally, “neighborhood policing” here in Boston), the plan is to get police officers out of their cruisers and into the neighborhoods in which they work. They keep an eye on trouble-makers in the community and build relationships with parents and members of the clergy.

Broken Windows worked for many years, locally and across the country. We called it the “Boston Miracle”. Then everyone got tired. Or, if you will, complacent. (The Harvard Department of Sociology has covered this extensively.) Major crime continued to go down, but the decreases were smaller, incremental. I don’t mean to suggest that people stopped working hard on the problem, just that less emphasis was placed on these successful crime-fighting programs. With the great economy of the 2000’s, it seemed we had found solutions to our problem.

Back in the car

I thought about the current situation yesterday while passing through Copley Square. Hundreds of residents, office workers, and tourists were walking the hot and steamy streets, at times being aurally assaulted by canvassers, beggars, and a kid playing drums on buckets.  An MBTA police officer had parked his cruiser (illegally) in front of the Boston Public Library, but I have to say, I didn’t feel any safer.

Actually, it kind of pissed me off. That guy wasn’t going to have any effect on crime in the neighborhood. He could have reacted quickly following a crime, but he wasn’t deterring anyone from doing anything. Now, if he got out of his car and actually walked back and forth along the block, that would go a long way to making an impact.

Having him and his partners on the streets would reduce crime, but the true value would be in making people feel safer. The perception of random crime is the real problem for many people who live here in Boston because, regardless of the fear of being attacked, hundreds of thousands of us will never actually be a victim. The problem is, we all feel afraid we might be. Putting cops on the street would be helpful. (How about some of the new recruits?)

There’s a rising fear of crime even though levels are down in almost every neighborhood of the city, according to the Boston Police Department. Compared to this time in 2010, incidences of major crime are lower in all police department districts, in all categories, except four: Homicides went from zero to one in A-1 and A-7; rapes and attempted rapes jumped by 50 percent in B-3; and burglaries and attempted burglaries increased by more than 25 percent in D-4 (which includes where I live, in the South End). Every other neighborhood has had fewer incidences of major crime, this year.

The disconnect between perception and reality has never been more pronounced. So, I have some questions for you.

Do you feel safe?

• Regardless of the statistics, do you feel safe?
• Are you afraid to live in your own neighborhood?
• Do you feel more or less safe than a year ago; five years ago; a decade ago?
• Why is crime a persistent problem in certain Boston neighborhoods? 

What should be done to reduce crime?

• Increase the number of Boston police officers on the force
• Put more police officers on the beat, in the neighborhoods
• Fully fund youth jobs’ programs paid for by the city and/or private industry
• Come up with additional, innovative crime-fighting programs
• Arrest more people
• Enact tougher gun laws
• Create more faith and community-based programs
• Pass laws requiring harsher sentences for major crimes

What are the major causes of crime?

• Breakdown of the nuclear / “traditional” family
• Housing projects - breeding grounds for crime
• Illegal drug trade
• Guns on the streets
• Bad economy

What seems clear is that the “costs” of committing violent crimes are not sufficient to keep someone from doing so. I’m no expert, but perhaps looking at this could help us envision one or more potential solutions. We have to make crime not pay.

Apparently, those who injure, kill, rob, or rape have no fear of the consequences.  The risk of losing one’s own life or losing one’s freedom is not enough of a deterrent.

So what, then?