Mayor Thomas Menino introduced the second phase in the city’s plan to fight crime yesterday at Boston Police Headquarters.
“I understand people’s concerns about safety; my administration understands people’s concerns about safety,” Menino said. “Safety is our number one priority.”
Menino’s plan had four basic initiatives: the unsolved shooting project, the impact players program, the district-based crime reduction strategy and law enforcement.
Menino said each of these four strategies was based on his three theories of crime prevention: enforcement, intervention and prevention.
“We have a great foundation that we started eight years ago,” Menino said.
Both Menino and Police Commissioner Paul Evans stressed the importance of focusing on the individuals who bring crime to the neighborhoods, rather accusing all the people in a neighborhood of a crime.
Former New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani recently criticized Menino for his soft policy on criminals.
“We believe what we do in this city works,” Evans said. “What works in New York works in New York. We do what works in Boston. Rather than stereotype and blanket a community, we want to focus on individuals.”
Evans said the recent reduction of crime in Boston demonstrates Boston’s policy of focusing on individual criminals is working.
“There is crime reduction in this city not because there are more arrests, but because they’re the right arrests,” Evans said.
Evans said a key part of the plan is keeping retaliation crimes from occurring.
“Today’s victim is tomorrow’s perpetrator, and that’s what we’re trying to stop,” Evans said.
Evans also stressed the importance of reporting crime in certain communities, saying the crime rate would keep reducing if the people would keep reporting crimes.
“It’s up to the community to tell us, ‘Here they are,'” Evans said.
Keeping the community involved is essential to the fourth initiative of the plan, which includes monthly meetings between police officials and community leaders to discuss trends in crimes in the community.
Collaboration between the district police office and the community is essential in all parts of the plan.
“Fighting crime has to be flexible,” Evans said. “We have the same initiatives as before, but more challenges now.”
Evans said he does not feel more funding is necessary for fighting crime, merely finding the right criminals.
“I don’t see more funding as absolutely essential,” he said.
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