Last week I met a woman who told me that crime in Roxbury is down 22%. She said it was an aggregate of all crimes and that a community police officer originally reported the news to her. Since it was the first time we had met, I had no reason to believe she was purposely lying to me. I also took the anecdotal evidence into account: there have been very few Roxbury crime stories in the media since the New Year and almost no conversations with neighbors about crime. The only exception was the GPS theft ring at the end of February, but that took place across the entire metro area and was squashed pretty quickly in my part of Roxbury. One of my neighbors proudly claimed to have chased down some of the punks who were breaking into cars on our block. He didn't catch the kids, but he alerted as many neighbors as he could and gave the license plate number of the getaway car to the cops. In fact, the community police officer who told my acquaintance that crime was down attributed the decrease to more people in the neighborhood reporting crime more often, including smaller misdemeanors.
With that in mind, I was surprised to read today that the Boston Police want to push forward with a program that would allow officers to search for weapons in private residences without a warrant. The idea was floated a while ago, but seemed to fade away quietly as time went on. I couldn't think of anyone who would allow the cops to search for weapons in their homes without a warrant; and to no surprise there aren't many people who would. Besides the idea that volunteering for a warrant-less search of one's own home means choosing to give up basic rights, the whole premise goes against the fact that crime in Roxbury is down. It's not down in a he-said-she-said kind of way, it's actually down according to the police department's own numbers! A look at the official numbers released by the cops comparing the period from January 1 to March 9 in 2007 and 2008 shows that the number of crimes committed in Area B (which is Roxbury), declined from 1147 last year to 978 this year. That's short of the 22% that the community police officer reported, but it's still a double digit percentage decline.
So what's really going on? For years the media has reported that crime rates in Boston have been decreasing. Residents are also feeling less fearful and - if my neighbor is any indication - more empowered. The official numbers also show that crime has decreased. It's not enough for the police to say that a warrant-less search will be kept "confidential under most circumstances" or that people in low income housing who might face eviction for having a weapon in their home would receive police support if the housing authority wanted them out. The program doesn't take into account the range of situations people might face after the search is done and the cops have gone home. Residents have a right to be concerned and to demand more information. At the very least, have the police explain their motives vis-a-vis their official numbers...and let's get the Globe to start doing more in-depth investigations and analysis, too.
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