The Community Safety Forum Series

The Boston Foundation, The Gardiner Howland Shaw Foundation and coordinating partners MassINC and The Crime and Justice Institute are hosting a 5-part Community Safety Forum Series over the course of one year to explore in depth a range of public safety issues, their impact on the community, public policy, and the potential for system change.  The Forum Series will engage the community, law enforcement, public agencies, and others in informed dialogue about a range of community safety issues and will provide an opportunity to develop new learning, spark public debate, and influence current public safety practices and public policy.

Quality of Life in Our Neighborhoods:
Successes and Challenges in Addressing Crime

The evening opened with a performance by Boston Pilot Middle School students.  Visit the photo gallery and listen to their performance.

On the evening of January 29th, 2004 scores of residents from the Grove Hall neighborhood of Dorchester were drawn to another Understanding Boston forum at the new Boston Middle School in Dorchester to discuss quality of life and safety issues.  It was the fifth in a series of Community Safety forums held by the Boston Foundation in conjunction with the Crime and Justice Institute, the Gardner Howland Shaw Foundation, and MassINC. 

TBF President Paul Grogan.

“We are the envy of the country with our successes and partnerships promoting community safety,” said TBF President Paul Grogan, welcoming those gathered, and inviting State Representative Marie St. Fleur to say a few words. “It is so appropriate that we come to this new school to discuss the quality of life in our community,” she said, “because this environment is all about hope and opportunity.  And hope and opportunity are the true fighters of crime.”

Keynote speaker Anthony Braga.

Keynote speaker Anthony Braga, Ph.D., from Harvard’s JFK School of Government, credited what he called “the long-term prevention orientation” of Boston’s anti-crime efforts. “In the past, there was an ‘incident-based’ response to crime, but it simply didn’t work,” he said. “The main purpose of long-term prevention is to reduce the paralysis of fear that can overtake communities when they are dealing with the indignities that disorder and trauma cause residents.”

TBF Board Chairman Rev. Ray Hammond.

Examples of prevention efforts he cited were the Boston Police Department’s Community Policing program, the Suffolk County District Attorney’s Office’s Safe Neighborhoods Initiative, and the remarkable spirit of partnership with neighborhood residents. Representatives of all of these partnerships were on the panel moderated by Rev. Ray Hammond, a founder of the Ten Point Coalition and Chair of the Boston Foundation’s board.

Panelists, from left: Daniel F. Conley, Lilla Frederick, Paul Joyce and Warren Williams.

During his comments, Boston Police Superintendent Paul Joyce, revealed that, with a grant from the Boston Foundation, police analyzed data on nearly every arrest or field interrogation over a three-year period ending in September 2003. During that time, they arrested or interrogated 457 individuals. As a group, those same suspects had been responsible for a shocking 12,000 lifetime arraignments. “In reality, this means that slightly more than two percent of the neighborhood’s 19,000 residents caused the lion’s share of the instability,” he explained. He went on to estimate that 80 percent of suspects would be better served by social service intervention than law enforcement. 

Lilla Frederick, Chair of Grove Hall’s Project RIGHT, and Warren Williams, a Community Outreach worker, agreed with the emphasis on prevention and intervention, which has created a sea change in the neighborhood in recent years. “Our seniors can come out and sit on their porches, and work in their gardens,” said Ms. Frederick. “We have block parties with young people and families—everyone comes.”

Mr. Williams added that more youth are working with local agencies and stores now, because there’s increased trust on both sides, noting that he had gone door-to-door one hot summer asking youth what they needed, and found that there were existing programs that would meet many of their needs.  Both he and Supt. Joyce warned, however, that a generational cycle which is putting people who have been incarcerated back on the streets is coming at a time of budget tightening for programs that might help them integrate back into the community.

Audience members question panelists on a variety of the issues impacting their neighborhood.

Rev. Hammond quickly opened the discussion to the diverse audience. During an emotional moment, one mother of seven children thanked everyone on the panel for making Grove Hall safer.  A teenager rose to say that adults need to ask teens what they’re thinking.  “Some kids are hurt in their heart, you know? And we don’t trust cops.  So if you want to know what we’re thinking, just ask us!” 

Although churches have been at the center of many community safety efforts, one church representative suggested that churches could do even more. His words were appropriately moving for the end of an emotion-filled evening. “I hear people talking about small miracles tonight. If we saw the real power of our churches and our mosques,” he said, “we could move ourselves from small miracles to redemption.”