Top cop: It’s not kids
Gross blames adults for recent spate of violence
Teens may get the blame, but city authorities are focusing anti-violence efforts on adults just a bit older in the current effort to respond to a series of shootings in the city.
“We do need to concentrate to that age range of 2535,” police Commissioner William Gross said Sunday, two days after what he described as a yet-unidentified “coward suspect” shot and wounded six people at a party during the holiday weekend.
“The stats are the stats,” Gross added, taking a few minutes at a community anti-violence basketball tournament in Roxbury to tell people to lay off the teens. “Everyone’s been stereotyping that all the shootings are about the youth in the community, and it hasn’t been.”
Mayor Martin Walsh, standing next to his top cop at the 10th annual Save R’ Streets Summer Classic tournament outside the James P. Timilty Middle School near Dudley Square, said his administration is trying to figure out where the next summer violence hot spots will be before the gunshots ring out.
“The communities will tell you if there’s something going on,” Walsh said, adding that community policing is critical.
Walsh said his administration views job training programs targeted at areas with violence — or where violence might be about to start — as one good way of fighting crime.
“What we have to do about it is we have to work through all society to give people more opportunities,” Walsh said. “That’s the answer — that’s the bottom line.”
The officials spoke on the second day of the decadeold basketball tournament while residents from the area hung out, munching on hot dogs, watching the games and chatting.
“These are the kinds of positive things we need to do,” said Roxbury resident Kyra Hunter. “We need to outweigh the bad with the good.”
The tournament paused for a few minutes for a moment of silence in honor of people lost to violence. Several dozen people gathered around half court, many holding purple and white balloons, which were released into the warm evening.
Rufus Faulk, director of the Mayor’s Office for Public Safety, said the city is trying to help positive events like this tournament keep running strong — with the hope that they aren’t just viewed as responses to the type of violence that has plagued the city over the past month.
“We want to get to the point where we don’t just rally around trauma — we want to be able to have a fun summer night like this just to have a fun night,” Faulk told the Herald.
Joseph Coat, who lives nearby, said people from the area need to make sure they’re involved in the community — and in their own houses, teaching kids not to pick up guns.
“It literally all starts at home,” he said. “People need to be more active within their own homes.”