After Lull, Boston Sees Rise in Homicides

When homicide rates soared in the early 1990s, this city crafted a “miracle” strategy that used intervention by law enforcement, faith-based groups and community organizations, all but eliminating killings committed by juveniles, and drastically lowering the overall rate.

The aggressive assault on street violence won national envy and emulation. Experts credit its success to hard work and highly focused determination, not divine intervention, but the method nonetheless became known across the country as the “Boston Miracle.”

After a high of 150 killings in 1990, Boston recorded 31 homicides in 1999, when the joint approach was in full force. This year that figure has more than doubled, capped by five killings in less than a week and the discovery of a body stuffed in a chimney.

The 73 slayings so far this year have left many to wonder: What happened to the Boston Miracle? “It is getting to be more dangerous all the time. It is awful,” said Peter Pater, 31, a recent holdup victim. “I don’t know what is going on with all this killing. It’s like nobody controls it.”

In November, Pater said, four men stuck a gun in his face as he left work at a convenience store in Dorchester, one of the city’s worst-affected neighborhoods. “They took my money and my keys,” he said. “At least they didn’t take my life.”

Only a few blocks away, four members of a band called Graveside were killed in the city’s first quadruple homicide in 10 years. The mid-December shootings took place near the home of the Rev. Eugene Rivers III, a minister who has played a key role in the city’s anti-violence program. His daughter was doing schoolwork when the gunfire erupted.

That episode was followed by a fatal stabbing, also in Dorchester. Boston Police Department spokesman Sgt. Thomas Sexton said about 40% of the city’s violence occurs in one-half of one square mile in the area straddling Dorchester and Roxbury.

The FBI’s Uniform Crime Report released earlier this week shows that in the first six months of 2005, Boston had 29 homicides. In the same period, Baltimore recorded 137 killings; Cleveland had 55; Kansas City, Mo., had 56 and Phoenix had 106.

Compared with other cities its size, Boston (population 589,000) remains a relatively safe city, Sexton said. “But the community, the police and the public in general is outraged when we have one homicide,” he said. “They should be. One is too many.”

But residents are worried not only about homicides, but about an increase in nonfatal shootings. Earlier this month, a student at a charter high school shot a classmate on campus. The City Council president’s car window was shattered by a bullet. Elementary school students had to scatter when the drivers of two cars had a gunfight outside their playground.

Sexton said violent crime had risen in Boston because of changing demographics. The city has seen a growth in the teenage population -- youths who came of age with little fear of the consequences of street crimes. As many as one-third of the residents in the city’s most perilous neighborhoods are 5 to 17 years old.

Police have seized a record number of guns from Boston teenagers in recent months, Sexton said. He said the offenders draw encouragement from a large number of former inmates who are returning to the streets. Many are gang members who revert to their old habits when they are released, Sexton said.

On top of that, state and federal crime-fighting funds have dried up, he said. Boston’s innovative attempt to curtail urban violence has received no money from Washington since 1997. State funding also has decreased substantially, he said. The Police Department feels the squeeze, Sexton said: In five years, the number of officers has dropped from 2,200 to 2,000.

Still, Sexton said, “If anything, the partnerships are stronger now as we move forward....I don’t think our miracle has been abandoned. If anything, it has been strengthened.”

Sexton noted that a recent dragnet ordered by Police Commissioner Kathleen O’Toole led to 31 arrests in one night.

But Larry Mayes, a top aide to Mayor Thomas M. Menino, said the miracle strategy needed a makeover. Young people on the streets of Boston think differently from the authorities who devised the anti-violence partnership, he said: “The kids are digital and the adults are in analog. We’ve got to go digital. We’ve got to change the rules.”

This month, Menino took a step in that direction by cracking down on the sale of T-shirts that read “Stop Snitching.” The shirts were sold in downtown boutiques as well as stores in Dorchester and Roxbury.

The mayor and police officials said the popular shirts sent a message that discourages cooperation with law enforcement. Menino said the shirts were inappropriate at a time when the city’s homicide rate was rising.

David Kennedy, one of the original architects of the anti-violence effort, said homicide had crept up in Boston because the program was not well enforced. While other cities were adapting the model, Boston failed to follow through with the “simple and effective” approach of working directly with violent groups, he said.

“This is the tragedy,” said Kennedy, a former Harvard professor who is now on the faculty of the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York City. “Boston showed everybody else how to do this, and has now stopped doing it for itself.”

At Fields Corner, in the center of Dorchester, Jimmy Young said that judgment was too harsh. Young, 37, manages a small restaurant where police often call in orders from their patrol cars.

“It’s not that bad right now -- nothing like it was in the early ‘90s,” he said. “Crime comes in cycles -- and the cycle we’re in right now is too many gang members out on the streets.”