Progress Declared

Mayor Toni Harp pointed to two visual pieces of evidence Tuesday to declare that the city has made strides in its campaign to curb the violence claiming young people’s lives:

This chart, showing that the number of homicides, non-fatal shootings, and shots fired have all steadily decreased since the peak year of 2011 …

… and this picture, of people from different parts of government working together to reach young people at risk of shooting someone or getting shot.

Those officials — schools Superintendent Garth Harries, Board of Ed Executive Manager of Strategy Gemma Joseph Lumpkin, city youth chief Jason Bartlett, Fire Chief Allyn Wright — joined Harp, Police Chief Dean Esserman (pictured at the top of the story with Harp), and parks chief Rebecca Bombero at a 1 Union Ave. press conference Tuesday afternoon. Their message: Intensive efforts to work across city departments for the first time, as part of a broader rebirth of community policing, help explain the drop in reported crime.

“I’m grateful we had a relatively peaceful summer,” Harp said. ​“Together we’re making our city safer.”

In the wake of murders of young men in town earlier this year, the Harp administration dispatched teachers, firefighters, cops, and other adults to knock on doors of families across town to make contact with kids in trouble. It linked young people with those adults as mentors. It got extra money from the business community to pay for endangered summer youth jobs and hold special events throughout July and August like the ​“Hoop it-Up” grassroots basketball tournament (pictured). It started a first-ever regular ​“YouthStat” meeting at which state social workers, school officials, probation officers, and cops share info about young people in trouble to come up with solutions; the group is ​“actively following” 200 out of 333 at-risk 14 to 19-year-old students, gaining their family’s permission to share private information.

Harp identified those activities as part of community policing — which also of course includes traditional law-enforcement efforts like the summer’s overtime-boosting ​“SAVI” patrols.

Lots of factors explain a rise or drop in crime, include factors outside government’s control. The speakers at Tuesday’s press conference expressed confidence that these combined efforts have contributed to the statistical drop.

“Which is not to say any one of us will take a victory lap,” Harp said. She said city youth anti-violence efforts will continue. City parks chief Rebecca Bombero, for instance, announced that the ​“open schools” program will expand from 11 to 15 buildings as of Nov. 10. (Schools keep the gym open into the evening so neighborhood kids have a safe place to play.)

“I have never seen the city busier and safer in years,” Chief Esserman said.

“These statistics,” Harries said, ​“reflect the beginnings of progress the we all will work on.”