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Mayor Wu announces Boston summer safety strategy in wake of recent gun violence
Officials addressed concerns of gun violence and a host of other issues related to community safety this summer.
Boston Mayor Michelle Wu, Police Commissioner Michael Cox, and other officials announced a summer safety strategy Thursday and detailed some of the efforts they are taking to reduce crime in the city.
The announcement comes in the wake of multiple instances of gun violence, including a man shot and killed near a middle school in Dorchester Monday, a gunman firing shots in the middle of a busy intersection Tuesday, and a barrage of gunfire near a Roxbury baseball field Wednesday.
The number of overall shooting victims this year is three less than it was at this time last year, Cox said. However, the city has experienced more homicides so far this year than in 2022.
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“If you look at the numbers, especially compared to national trends, Boston is one of the safest cities in the county. But that is not the lens through which we look at this issue. Even one single instance of gun violence has impacts that are long-lasting and generational,” Wu said.
Last month, more than 20 city and community leaders got together for a week-long intensive workshop aimed at understanding which gun violence prevention strategies from around the country can be implemented in Boston. Wu’s administration is currently taking lessons from that program and using them to build a “comprehensive gun violence strategy,” she said.
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More broadly, the city’s summer safety strategy has five main goals:
- Scaling up community and youth activities and employment opportunities for those living in places historically impacted by gun violence. The summer creates more of a need for these things, as young people are not in school.
- Ensuring residents are connected to the resources they need to recover from instances of community violence.
- Connected young people who are either engaged in or impacted by community violence with intervention and recovery programs.
- Bringing people from certain “hotspot locations” together for positive events.
- Finalizing the aforementioned gun violence strategy.
The gun violence strategy is expected to include weekly incident reviews among top officials to ensure city-wide responses, meetings in “hotspot” communities with the goal of “increasing law enforcement visibility without aggressive enforcement,” and establishing a committee to “tackle macro-level policy changes that need to take place,” Senior Advisor for Community Safety Isaac Yablo said.
Yablo spoke about the value of connecting with everyday residents to learn about their experiences with violence.
“We have access to amazing data as a city, but the data that is equally important to us are the lived experiences and the community experiences of people within the city,” he said.
Officials also addressed ongoing issues related to groups of people taking over city streets with vehicles like ATVs and dirt bikes. An elderly man was beaten by such a group last November, and in February BPD officers cracked down on an illegal drag racing operation. Police seized multiple guns, fentanyl, and a variety of vehicles.
Calls related to these types of activities really picked up during the start of the pandemic in 2020, and tend to increase during the summer months, Deputy Superintendent Pam Harris said.
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“A lot of them are not doing it safely, they’re operating in a reckless manner, wreaking havoc in our communities and sometimes attempting to take over the streets, which we cannot allow,” she said.
Many of the people involved in these groups are not from Boston, Harris said. The BPD Auto Theft Task Force actively monitors such groups. The vast majority of these vehicles are not registered and potentially stolen, she said.
So far, BPD has seized 92 off-highway vehicles in 2023. Last year, the department issued about 1200 citations and seized 133 vehicles, Harris said.
Enforcement can be tricky, and officers are instructed not to pursue these groups as they are moving. Pursuits lead to increased speeds and thus an increased public safety threat, she said. Instead, police monitor the groups and try to engage with them when they stop and get off their vehicles.
Throughout the entire press conference Thursday, Cox and others reiterated the importance of the public’s help and trust.
“If you have a public that doesn’t trust the police department, you’ll have a public that won’t call 911, they won’t tell us what happens after the fact, they won’t report things… it’s very hard to solve crimes without the public’s help,” Cox said.
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