E-Mail This Article to a Friend Stop bitchin’ Murder is the problem

Murder is at a 10-year high, and arrests and convictions for killing are at a dismal low. That’s the problem facing Boston. The T-shirt issue is a sideshow. "Stop snitchin’" tees are a symptom, not a cause. They are a disturbing manifestation of an embittered street culture that is fueled by hopelessness, a defiant fashion that mocks the pain of the neighborhood dead. But a well-respected police force with a well-trained homicide squad should be more than a match for a few flimsy ounces of fabric. The problem is that Boston has neither. And efforts to correct those facts won’t reverse this year’s carnage.

At the moment, the questions are certainly rhetorical, but they need to be asked: Why weren’t the steps that are now being taken — a more aggressive deployment of police and the roundup of violent criminals with outstanding warrants — taken earlier? Was the political community too focused on this fall’s municipal elections? Were City Council candidates too cowed by Mayor Thomas Menino’s popularity or the imagined clout of the police union to candidly address the death toll that was mounting in open view? We cannot imagine a satisfactory answer to any of those questions. Our view is that there was a tragic failure of political will.

The situation is not an easy one to address. As a result of cuts in aid from the state and federal governments, the BPD is understaffed. Anti-crime legislation proposed by State Senator (and candidate for Middlesex County district attorney) Jarrett Barrios, which would provide funds for witness protection and add teeth to current measures that prohibit witness intimidation, is stalled in the House of Representatives. There also has been a significant increase in the number of juveniles living in the city — particularly in neighborhoods where working families can afford to live, such as Dorchester, Roxbury, and Mattapan, the locus of so much of the gunplay and killing.

City officials can’t be held responsible for failures on Beacon Hill and in Washington. But the demographic trends that are partly responsible for the increase in street violence were predicted. Experts have long since established a link between those trends and an increase in crime. So, on this account, there is no excuse for the city being unprepared.

Just over four months ago, the Phoenix detailed how, for a city of its size, Boston has the worst homicide squad in the nation (see "The Worst Homicide Squad in the Country," News and Features, August 19). That’s a situation that didn’t spring up overnight and it’s not one that lends itself to a quick fix. When Kathleen O’Toole was named police commissioner last year, she inherited a deeply dysfunctional department. O’Toole has all but scrapped the specialized units, such as ballistics and fingerprints, which support the homicide squad. And she is in the process of rebuilding the squad itself. But in light of the low number of murders that are actually solved, successfully prosecuted, and not overturned on appeal, it is prudent to ask the following questions: How good are the new people being put in place? Are there enough of them? What training have they received? How many have been certified at professional levels acceptable to other top urban police forces?

Satisfactory answers to these common-sense questions have not been forthcoming. One of the beauties of Boston’s strong-mayor form of government is that when things go wrong, the public knows where to look for answers. And by any measure, things have now gone wrong. Mayor Menino owes it to the people who just re-elected him to tell them the truth about the state of the police department. If he or O’Toole won’t provide the answers, then the city council should exercise its right to hold hearings to get to the bottom of what is really going on with reforming the police.

According to a recent report in the Boston Globe, internal discipline in the department remains pitifully weak. It’s well known but rarely mentioned that efforts to get a civilian review board off the ground are faltering. And perhaps most disturbing of all, given the current state of affairs, is the news uncovered by Phoenix reporter David Bernstein that the Boston police are scrapping the biannual survey that tells them what city residents think of the job they are doing. The last survey, conducted in late 2003, showed a significant decline in attitudes and confidence. Commissioner O’Toole told Bernstein that community feedback is "incredibly important." She’s just not convinced that the biannual survey is the best way to obtain it. She’s currently consulting experts at Northeastern University to determine the best way to proceed.

Commissioner O’Toole must settle on a course of action soon. A respected and trusted police force is just as important as a well-trained and certified one. The shame of Boston is that its current police force lacks all of these important qualities. And the pathetically sad fact of the matter is that it has the murder rate to prove it.