In Boston, as in other cities, violent crime tends to increase in the summer — and a spate of recent incidents suggests the latest spike might already be underway.
As they try to keep the peace, Mayor Marty Walsh and the Boston Police Department will draw on ties they’ve built with residents in the city’s higher-crime areas. Those relationships are a point of great pride for the BPD: as Evans once said, “I don’t think anyone does a better job working with the community.”
But that raises a question: does the community feel the same way?
Last Friday, after an impromptu meeting with community leaders, Walsh, Evans and other representatives from the BPD joined a “peace walk” that started at Twelfth Baptist Church in Roxbury. It’s a weekly ritual they’ve participated in throughout Walsh’s tenure as mayor, and from the city's point of view, the rationale is straightforward: Walk the streets as neighbors, rather than authority figures, and you create a shared sense of values and purpose.
“We’re coming to them on the street, at their homes, in their yards, in the parks,” said William Gross, the BPD’s Superintendent in Chief.
“It really resonates whether you’re sincere or not, and it really resonates that things are really bothering people, certain issues. And then we learn to work together," he added.
While that sense of camaraderie may be reassuring to residents, Evans said it also helps police do their jobs more effectively.
“The stabbing yesterday of the 18-year-old, a lot of community members came forward and we solved that right away,” Evans said. “There was a lot of witnesses who gave us plates — that’s the stuff we need. I know it’s tough, because people have to live in the neighborhood, but we’re all in this together.”
As the walk progressed, you got a palpable sense that the city’s outreach is paying off. Walsh and Evans received a broadly positive response from the residents they encountered, and some reactions were downright effusive.
But there were also signs that, whatever’s been accomplished so far, much more work still needs to be done.
At one point, the walk passed Martin Willis, who grew up in Boston and was visiting his mother in Roxbury. Afterward, he said the memory of an encounter he had with Boston police nearly three decades ago is still painfully fresh.
“When I was 18-years-old, growing up, brand-new car, leaving out the house at four in the morning to go do a paper route, I got three white cops [who] got me across the hood of my car in my yard,” Willis recalled. “My mother comes outside — ‘Why you got my son on the hood of his car?’ Not everyone’s a drug dealer."
Later, after the walk passed through the Warren Gardens co-op, I asked Lisa Hutton, who lives in Mattapan and was visiting her mother-in-law, how police-community relations under Walsh compare to his predecessor, Tom Menino.
“They haven’t gotten worse, they’re about the same, but they’re getting better,” she replied. “In due time. Menino had years. Years upon years, and it just didn’t happen overnight.”
The toughest assessment came from walker Joao DePina, who’s a candidate for the Boston City Council. While he gave Walsh and Evans credit for community outreach, DePina also said that in his neighborhood, more residents would be willing to share information if more officers actually lived there.
“Deep in some of these people’s hearts, they want to tell what’s going on,” DePina said. “But there’s fear in their hearts. There’s fear for their family.”
Walsh’s hope is that overtures like this — repeated week in, week out, in good times as well as bad — will help take the edge off that apprehension.
“I think it helps the community understand that people care about the community,” Walsh said. “We’re out walking other neighborhoods as well, and they’re not as familiar seeing people out there. And I think that’s important for us to do."
