Mayor Michelle Wu and a coalition of other officials and civic leaders said Tuesday that they are prepared to keep neighborhoods safe this summer, as the city braces for a spike in violence that often accompanies rising temperatures each year.
Wu described crime reduction as one element of a multi-pronged approach to protecting the public.
”We know that safety is just as much about the proactive presence of community and resources, stability, and opportunity,“ Wu said during a press conference at Mother’s Rest Park in Dorchester, flanked by officials including Police Commissioner Michael Cox.
Wu said the city holds holds weekly meetings to coordinate its anti-violence strategy between city departments, community organizations and social service agencies, both during the summer and quieter months year-round.
The summer safety plan has been developed over the past four months in consultation with community leaders and through neighborhood meetings with residents, said Isaac Yablo, Wu’s senior advisor for community safety and the newly appointed director of the Boston Public Health Commission’s Office of Violence Prevention.
“We do an excellent job of responding to violence when it occurs and helping others recover from violence,” Yablo said. “But it’s not enough to only do that, we have to have a long term plan.”
Cox said spikes in violence often occur during summer time, as rival groups use the additional time spent outside during long days and warm nights to reignite conflicts that may have cooled over the winter.
“Sometimes these interactions lead to skirmishes and things of that nature,” Cox said.
Points of emphasis for the city and community officials include street safety and effective community policing, as well as funding community events and safe spaces for young people, Yablo said. The city this summer is expanding its “Boston After Dark” program, which holds free events for teens on Friday nights.
Wu has repeatedly described Boston as the safest major city in the U.S. Last year, Boston saw its lowest number of homicides in 67 years — an achievement city officials described as validation of years of work to improve policing, social services, and violence intervention outreach.
So far this year, gun violence numbers are on pace to rebound, though they still remain near historic lows. This year, 43 people have been shot in the city, including a man experiencing a mental health crisis who allegedly took an officer’s gun and shot himself in the foot near Mass General Hospital Tuesday morning. Eight of those shooting victims have died. At this point in 2024, 29 people had been shot, including four who died.
Cox said he could not comment on a pair of Memorial Day stabbings in Allston and Downtown Crossing, describing them as active investigations.
Yablo said the city’s gun violence prevention strategy is centered on “100% engagement with individuals that are most likely to shoot or be shot.” A large part of that work is proactive, through building relationships with at-risk people before a violent incident. And after a shooting, the city uses those relationships to immediately contact victims, connect them with social services and interrupt cycles of retaliation, Yablo said.
Cox and Yablo both said the city is also focused on responding to quality of life concerns from residents, including fireworks, loud parties, and ATVs speeding down residential streets.
Cox said the police department is also focused on building rapport with residents, to help prevent incidents and ensure that witnesses come forward when violence does break out. In November, the department launched “Community Interaction Teams,” deploying officers to walk beats and increase communication with residents, Cox said. Those teams were initially placed based on crime data, but future deployments will take into account community feedback, Cox said.
“We can’t provide public safety without the trust of our communities,” Cox said.
As Cox spoke, 54-year-old Dorchester resident Paulo De Barros stood listening on the steps overlooking the amphitheater at Mother’s Rest. De Barros, the head of the Cape Verdean Association of Boston, said he has noticed real change in his native Bowdoin-Geneva neighborhood, long a hotspot for poverty and gun violence.
When he was younger, the Cape Verdean community had a tense relationship with the Boston Police Department, De Barros said. Now, he said, there is greater trust due to the department’s outreach and diversity efforts.
“You actually see a lot of community policing, a lot of relationships being built,” De Barros said. “And I think it has to do with a lot of Cape Verdeans being in the force and kids seeing police as a normal person, an individual, a resident, a family member.”
But the city could still do more, according to De Barros. There is still not enough culturally competent mental health services for survivors of violence, he said.
“Trauma is a major thing in the community,” De Barros said. “There’s a lot of loss, a lot of violence.”
Bisola Ojikutu, the city’s Commissioner of Public Health, said she considers violence and the legacies of trauma it leaves behind to be a public health priority.
“We still have violent events. We still have this sense of instability sometimes within our neighborhoods,” Ojikutu said. “We want to get to the roots of that. We want to actually fix this problem.”