Violence prevention must be year-round goal, says peace advocate, not just during summer

Boston usually sees an increase in violent crimes as the weather heats up each summer. To combat this, Mayor Wu announced a prevention program aimed at expanding summer youth programs and connecting communities to trauma resources.

Chaplain Clementina Chéry, who founded the Louis D. Brown Peace Institute after her son, Louis, was killed by a stray bullet in 1993, told Greater Boston that the programs rolled out each summer are not sustainable.

“It's really triggering and it's retraumatizing because we tend to wait until the summer to talk about shootings,” said Chéry. “The fact that we only wait for the summer to talk about the violence is minimizing and devaluing all those families who lost their loved ones before the summer and after the summer.”

The majority of violent crimes in Boston occur in just four neighborhoods: Dorchester, Mattapan, Roxbury and Jamaica Plain. Chéry said instead of the police being held accountable for solving a crime, they will often offer justification for why the victim was murdered.

“When Louis was killed, I first heard that it was a drug deal gone bad," said Chéry. “Then there was this justification as to why he was killed, that he was in the wrong place at the wrong time. But we don't raise our children to kill, and we don't raise them to be killed."

To end that cycle of violence, Chéry said we need to shift the narrative and transform the way society responds to homicide and families of homicide victims by teaching the value of peace.

“When we talk about numbers, it's one victim. We want to focus on the families that are left behind,” said Chéry. “We are working within the schools to equip the teachers to teach the value of peace and also working with our city leaders.”

Mayor Wu's summer safety strategy includes mentoring programs, work programs and violence intervention strategies.

“I have to be hopeful because this is my city. This is my community,” said Chéry. “And I am raising young Black grandchildren, boys, and I don't want to wait for them to get in trouble to talk about providing support to them.”

WATCH: Violence often spikes in the summer. But prevention needs to happen all year, advocate says