How Neighborhood Policing is Making History in Boston

Keep the Peace:

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the
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How Neighborhood Policing is Making History in Boston

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by Shana Burg

In the winter of 1997, President Clinton announced his juvenile crime prevention bill from Boston, Massachusetts, a city that is once again making history.

That year Boston achieved its lowest homicide rate in three decades. Since July, 1995, only one juvenile under age 17 has been killed with a firearm . Although that is one far too many, more youth have been shot dead in other major cities.

President Clinton credits Boston's increasing safety to a violence reduction strategy called neighborhood policing. Neighborhood policing is about citizens who call officers by their first names, rather than looking at police badges and recalling a history of brutality. It's about officers who ask youth, clergy, and business leaders to lend a hand before problems escalate and people die.

While cities nationwide practice some form of neighborhood policing, Bostonians do it with trademark flair. Here, where people take their history seriously, citizens and police are learning to search their personal pasts and the chronicles of their communities for clues about how to cut crime. (See "Boston's Strategy for Neighborhood Policing" for more information.)

Today Will Morales and Boston Police Officer Danny Ramirez are ardent advocates of neighborhood policing, which is a more compassionate model for keeping the peace than the one they both knew 20 years ago. Today Morales and Ramirez are also best friends, which is extraordinary if you know anything about their history.

Morales was a seven-year-old living in Boston, when Officer Ramirez kicked in the door to his apartment. The raid was to arrest Morales' father, a heroin addict. Morales recalls, "All these officers came in and ransacked the apartment and put the biggest fright you could ever put into a young person's life."

To Ramirez, though, the raid was just another day at the office. He can't even remember the incident that Morales will never forget. "I wish I could remember every person I arrest," he says, "but I average 250 a year."




Keep the Peace:
		Learn the Past How Neighborhood Policing is Making History in Boston
Full Text Version (good for printing entire article)	by Shana Burg In the winter of 1997, President Clinton announced his juvenile crime prevention bill from Boston, Massachusetts, a city that is once again making history. That year Boston achieved its lowest homicide rate in three decades. Since July, 1995, only one juvenile under age 17 has been killed with a firearm . Although that is one far too many, more youth have been shot dead in other major cities. President Clinton credits Boston's increasing safety to a violence reduction strategy called neighborhood policing. Neighborhood policing is about citizens who call officers by their first names, rather than looking at police badges and recalling a history of brutality. It's about officers who ask youth, clergy, and business leaders to lend a hand before problems escalate and people die. While cities nationwide practice some form of neighborhood policing, Bostonians do it with trademark flair. Here, where people take their history seriously, citizens and police are learning to search their personal pasts and the chronicles of their communities for clues about how to cut crime. (See "Boston's Strategy for Neighborhood Policing" for more information.) Today Will Morales and Boston Police Officer Danny Ramirez are ardent advocates of neighborhood policing, which is a more compassionate model for keeping the peace than the one they both knew 20 years ago. Today Morales and Ramirez are also best friends, which is extraordinary if you know anything about their history. Morales was a seven-year-old living in Boston, when Officer Ramirez kicked in the door to his apartment. The raid was to arrest Morales' father, a heroin addict. Morales recalls, "All these officers came in and ransacked the apartment and put the biggest fright you could ever put into a young person's life." To Ramirez, though, the raid was just another day at the office. He can't even remember the incident that Morales will never forget. "I wish I could remember every person I arrest," he says, "but I average 250 a year."