PUBLIC SAFETY

The Mayor is the chief executive of the city. The people of Boston should expect the Mayor to provide adequate personnel and the necessary training to police and first responders to ensure citizens' safety and protect our city. Inadequate resources and funding under the Menino administration over the past several years has resulted in escalating violent crime and lack of justice for victims' families. Tom Menino's lack of creative ideas and vision for all of our neighborhoods has been moving us backwards to a time of out of control gang and drug violence, random shootings and unsolved crimes.

Tom Menino says that crime is down. What do you think?

The Menino Report Card:

• Number of homicides has roughly doubled since 1999.

  o Boston Globe, "Police Struggle with Shrinking Force, Resources," October 5, 2005

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  Almost half of all Boston homicides since the start of 2004 - 50 out of 106 have happened in a small area covering parts of Roxbury, Dorchester, and Mattapan. Just 22% of those murders have led to an arrest, compared with 41% in the rest of the city
  
  
• When a homicide victim is a black man aged 17 to 35 - as is the case in nearly half of all Boston homicides - the arrest rate over the past six years is just 31%.

  o The Boston Phoenix/ August 19, 2005/ News & Features, "The Worst Homicide Squad in the Country

• Last year there were five killings during the entire year at BHA developments, according to Boston police crime statistics. This year, there were five homicides in July alone.
  
  o Boston Herald, July 19, 2005 " BHA slayings prompt security questions"
  
  
• There are 239 fewer officers on the street than six years ago
  
  o Boston Globe, "Terror Plan relies on watch groups," Suzanne Smalley, May 30, 2005
  
  
• Residents of neighborhoods beset with crime are feeling endangered according to some community leaders.
  
  
• Boston police are taking longer to respond to 911 calls than they were 5 years ago, from on average 10 minutes then to 13 minutes now.
  
  
• Police detectives arrest or identify suspects in fewer than a quarter of serious crimes reported in the city.
  
  
• With police resources markedly reduced since the late 1990's , serious crimes, including homicides are going unsolved. Last year police cleared only 28% of homicides, down from 53% between 1994 and 2003.
  
  
• Due to insufficient police resources response time for police operators to dispatch officers to a crime scene has doubled since 2000.
  
  
• A centerpiece of the city's highly touted community policing model, the crime-watch program, has been cut from 6 employees in 2003 to 4.

  o The Boston Globe, Police struggle with shrinking force, resources, 10-05-05

• Drug dealers, including a crack-cocaine ring operating in Roxbury, Mattapan, the South End and Jamaica Plain, have been permitted to operate openly over the past decade.

  o The Boston - Bay State Banner Editorial, Time to Act, 8-04-05

• According to a Boston Police Department telephone survey, 66% of respondents in Roxbury and 70% in the Mattapan precinct agree that racial profiling is a problem, compared to only 41 percent of respondents in the rest of the city.
  o Boston Banner May 20, 2005