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Community leaders demand plan from city, police after stretch of violence
Community members and activists gathered at Franklin Park a day after 91-year-old Jean McGuire was stabbed in the park while walking her dog.
Community activists are calling on Boston officials to issue a safety plan after a stretch of violence in the city that has seen, in just two days, a 14-year-old shot and killed in Roxbury and a 91-year-old woman stabbed while walking her dog in Franklin Park.
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Jean McGuire, the longtime leader of Boston’s Metco program and the first woman of color to be elected to the Boston School Committee, was stabbed multiple times Tuesday evening while walking her dog in the park. Police are searching for the suspect, who she fought off, and she is recovering from her injuries at a local hospital.
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A day earlier, 14-year-old Rasante Osorio of Dorchester, a Boston Public Schools student, died after being shot multiple times in a Roxbury shooting that also left another juvenile injured. No arrests have been made. The 14-year-old’s death follows less than a week after another teenage boy was shot and injured outside the Jeremiah E. Burke High School in Dorchester.
Speaking at a community vigil just outside Franklin Park on Wednesday evening, Rev. Kevin Peterson, founder of the New Democracy Coalition, told reporters that the community is “under siege and is in peril,” the Boston Globe reports.
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“The violence in the city of Boston, particularly within Roxbury, Dorchester, and Mattapan, is unprecedented and disproportionate,” Peterson said. “And where there is a disproportionate amount of violence and crime, there should be a disproportionate amount of resources funneled into the community.”
The speakers at the vigil allied to ask Mayor Michelle Wu to appoint a special superintendent of police who could be tasked with coordinating with the community in areas where violence is happening the most, WHDH reports.
Peterson reportedly called on Boston Police Commissioner Michael Cox, who took over department leadership in August, to step up.
“In some sense, we’ve given him a honeymoon in his months and his weeks in office,” Peterson said, according to the Globe. “We ask him to come off the honeymoon and present a plan for the community where there is real community policing, where there is real collaboration with leaders in the city of Boston with our ministers, with our young people, with our faith-based community. We need a plan, commissioner, and we need a plan now.”
Suffolk County District Attorney Kevin Hayden said during the press conference at the vigil that he will work with police and Wu’s office to develop a plan to ensure Franklin Park and the rest of the neighborhood is safe, according to the Globe. But he also called on residents to stand together and watch out for one another, saying a “valid response must include community engagement and accountability.”
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“We will need community accountability to really move forward into an era of peace and prosperity here in Boston,” Hayden said. “This sporadic violence and these outbursts must not continue, and we must stand together, arm and arm, with the belt of truth wrapped around us.”
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