Boston, USA - Determined to avoid a repeat of last year's bloody summer, clergy are taking the lead in targeting 14 crime hot spots across Boston with nighttime walks, community meetings, and prayer vigils, ministers said yesterday.
Twice the number of houses of worship will be involved this summer than last, providing volunteers to monitor twice the number of hot spots, in an effort closely coordinated with City Hall.
''More people are recognizing the need to collaborate and come forth to help curtail the violence on our streets today," said the Rev. William E. Dickerson II, pastor at Dorchester's Greater Love Tabernacle and one of the initiative's leaders.
Ministers also plan an antiviolence youth parade and prayer vigil on June 25 that will start at Twelfth Baptist Church in Roxbury, wind through Dorchester, and end at Jubilee Christian Church in Mattapan, organizers said. Eleven churches and four youth groups have signed up to sing and pray along the 4-mile route. City officials said about 1,000 people are expected to march.
High-level city officials have been regularly meeting with clergy about the summer strategy since the winter and have another meeting scheduled for June 29, religious and city leaders said.
Members of the clergy said the efforts show a more engaged City Hall as the summer approaches, building on lessons learned during the violent 1990s when the partnership of city, clergy, and community groups often called the Boston miracle was credited with cutting the number of homicides to 31 in 1999.
Last summer, city officials seemed unprepared to deal with a sudden outbreak of violence that began as school ended. Twenty homicides occurred during summer vacation, six of them involving teenage victims. For all last year, Boston recorded 64 homicides, the most in all but one year since 1995. Eighteen of the homicide victims were teenagers, and six were under 16.
There have been 24 homicides so far this year.
Larry Mayes, the city's chief of human services, said city officials have been working more with the clergy this year than in the months preceding last summer. In April, after a rash of homicides, Mayor Thomas M. Menino and local religious leaders launched a partnership to try to stem youth violence.
''The planning started when the snow was on the ground," Mayes said. ''When there are incidents of violence that occur, of course we're going to reach out to our partners who have been with us since the beginning."
Religious leaders say they have noticed the extra effort.
''With the upsurge of violence, people have wanted to get more involved," Dickerson said. ''There were smaller meetings in pockets last summer. In terms of this whole citywide effort, they're stepping it up."
The Rev. Ray Hammond, who cofounded the Ten Point Coalition that helped put together the city's nationally recognized community policing model, said the number of hot spots that clergy will target has increased from six last summer to 14 this summer. He said the increase is possible because the number of churches involved has more than doubled, from about 20 last year to at least 40.
''We have more hot spots, so it's going to take more churches and volunteers," said Chris Sumner, executive director of the Ten Point Coalition.
Harold Sparrow, the executive director of the Black Ministerial Alliance of Greater Boston in Roxbury, said it is the first time his group has been involved in an effort of this size since he began leading the alliance three years ago.
Hammond said Operation Hot Spot will focus on areas that include Warren Gardens, Orchard Park, Geneva Avenue, Fields Corner, Four Corners, Morton and Talbot, Codman Square, Grove Hall, Franklin Hill, and Franklin Field.
The coalition will train religious leaders, lay people, and community organizers to approach youths on the street and to design church programming that will appeal to teenagers.
Churches that have done the work in the past will be assigned partners and will mentor leaders at the new churches as they join the effort, Sumner said. Leaders at agencies such as the state Department of Youth Services will offer training in how to handle post-traumatic stress among teens who have experienced or witnessed violence.
There are also plans for a crisis response team so that police can call clergy into certain areas in the aftermath of shootings to try to restore peace.
''We're . . . building on the efforts of last year, which we felt were very successful, but which everyone felt needed to be expanded this summer," Hammond said in an interview yesterday.
Hammond said Menino has been particularly valuable as a liaison with the Catholic Archdiocese of Boston, which will join other religious groups in inner-city street outreach.
Archbishop Sean P. O'Malley was among religious leaders who attended the April meeting with Menino, and since then several parish priests in the city have committed to the project.
Last summer, Dickerson, Hammond and Minister Don Muhammad, who leads the Nation of Islam mosque in Grove Hall, were among a handful of ministers to do street outreach. Dickerson said the larger effort reminds him of the work done more than a decade ago, when clergy joined with police after 152 homicides were tallied in Boston in 1990.