A window on crime
Globe Columnist, Sunday, September 2, 2007
By Adrian Walker
SOMETHING terrible happened to a window in the Massachusetts State House. It was pierced by a bullet.
Two teenagers and the pane of glass were shot during an argument that turned violent on Boston Common around 10 p.m. last Sunday. The wounded window attracted the most attention, making the front page of both daily newspapers.
In the weekly Phoenix, David S. Bernstein was the first to note what happened "when the gunman turned the weapon on a window of Room 280. . ."
"Outrage swiftly followed," he wrote.
Over that sweltering weekend, the Boston Police Department blog reported seven other nonfatal shootings and 13 nonfatal stabbings. But it was the shattered glass that stirred the vacationing Governor Deval Patrick to anger.
"The governor is deeply disturbed by any acts of violence that occur in the Commonwealth," said spokeswoman Cyndi Roy. "And he's particularly upset about the shooting that resulted in a stray bullet breaking a window in one of the State House offices. We are thankful that no one was in the office at the time of the shooting."
City officials were upset as well. Boston police began enforcing a nighttime curfew on the Common, to drive out drug dealers and round up the homeless who spend the night on its benches and grassy grounds.
Bullets fly regularly in Boston, usually on the streets of Dorchester, Roxbury, or Mattapan. According to the BPD blog, there were six homicides during the month of August, 44 nonfatal shootings and 52 nonfatal stabbings.
But bullets don't threaten Beacon Hill windows every day. When they do, it's news.
From Dorchester, the Rev. Bruce Wall, a longtime crusader against street violence, said, "People have normalized this happening in this neighborhood. . . If it happens on Boston Common, the state is alarmed, the city is alarmed."
Downtown, he said, is "the sacred cow. . . We can't have bullets flying into the State House. My God, what's going to happen to the tourists?"
Wall might also wonder, what's going to happen to all the power-brokers who sashay merrily through the Common on the way to the Four Seasons? Will the police helicopter that hovered over Franklin Park during the recent Caribbean Festival now be dispatched to the Frog Pond?
Crime often has to hit home before the comfortable classes understand its grim inevitability in other people's lives.
Two years ago, a bullet shattered the window of a car driven by Boston City Councilor Michael F. Flaherty. It happened on Dorchester Avenue, while Flaherty was en route to a political event. When he returned to the neighborhood the next day, local merchants were quick to tell him the sound of gunfire was a regular part of their lives. It reminded him that "it should not take a random bullet to generate a response to the violence that is terrorizing our streets."
"Once again, we're seeing two Bostons," he said, "When a shot is fired on Beacon Hill, there is massive triage. I'm not sure we're doing the same thing in other neighborhoods. . . . One pop on Beacon Hill and they come out of the woodwork to send a message and crack down."
The city still scraps for money and resources from the state. Patrick promised 1,000 new police officers. The state legislature passed a budget that funds 50. Meanwhile, the new administration unveiled a $1 billion biotechnology investment plan.
City officials recently announced a drop in crime, which Police Commissioner Edward F. Davis attributed to increased police presence, targeted investigations and stepped-up arrests. But young men and women - particularly young black men and women - are still being gunned down on Boston streets. And some activists remain critical of the city's response. "I don't really think the city has a comprehensive plan," said Wall. ". . . The massive show of force is not really solving the problem . . . You are basically saying, 'we do not know what to do.' "
There is a painful message in that broken pane of State House glass. No one can guarantee where the next bullets will fly.
"The present anarchy on the streets of Roxbury, Dorchester, and Mattapan will not be geographically contained forever, unless there is effective intervention," the Rev. Eugene R. Rivers wrote in an opinion piece published on this page last year.
Lo and behold, the anarchists know their way to Boston Common. Now, they really have our attention. After all, they shot a window.