Menino boosts patrols after girl shot in park

Mayor Thomas M. Menino ordered stepped-up patrols of city parks and playgrounds yesterday, hours after a 15-year-old girl was shot while waiting for a pizza in a Dorchester park, the latest shooting in a four-day wave of gun violence that has sparked widespread fear in Boston's neighborhoods.

Coming just hours after Menino sought to calm residents by visiting several parks on Tuesday, the latest shooting, shortly after midnight yesterday, triggered a new outcry, and officials rushed to implement crackdowns.

Menino ordered parks that normally close at 11:30 p.m. to close a half-hour earlier and said three additional officers will join the six deployed on most nights to patrol the city's municipal buildings and 206 parks between 4 p.m. and 11:45 p.m.

Boston police said they may move high-powered surveillance cameras used for security during the Democratic National Convention to parks considered hot spots for crime.

City Council President Michael Flaherty proposed banning adults from playgrounds unless they are accompanying children.

''It's frustrating because these playgrounds should be safe havens," Menino told reporters after a ribbon-cutting at newly renovated Crawford Playground in Roxbury yesterday. ''They should be a place where kids can enjoy themselves, and to have people recklessly, randomly shooting, it doesn't make any sense to me."

Menino said he and other mayors need help from other levels of government in preventing gun violence. He deplored ''the availability of guns we have in our community today" and said, ''We need to remove the guns from the streets. . . . We need stronger laws, we really do."

''Cities can't do it alone," Menino said. ''The gun legislation on assault weapons is ready to expire in Washington, but no one is dealing with that issue. Why?"

On Sunday, a stray bullet hit 11-year-old Jenry Gonzalez in the chest during football practice at a Roxbury playground, critically injuring him. Early Monday morning, one man was shot and another stabbed on Boston Common. On July 25, a 23-year-old basketball coach, William E.T. ''Biggie" Gaines, was slain in front of his team of 11- to 15-year-olds in another Roxbury park. Gonzalez was listed in critical condition Tuesday at Boston Medical Center.

In the latest incident, Jaime Owens, a student at Charlestown High School, was sitting on a park bench near the corner of Erie and Ellington streets in Dorchester between midnight and 12:30 a.m. when a man jumped out of a slow-moving minivan and began spraying bullets, according to three friends who were with her.

Owens, who lives on Olney Street in Dorchester, was hit in the hand and neck, according to her mother and the friends, who spoke on the condition their names not be used.

''She kept screaming: 'I'm too young to die! I don't want to die,' " one of the friends said.

Owens underwent surgery and was in stable condition at Boston Medical Center yesterday, her mother said. Owens called her friends and told them she was all right, the friends said, but could not stop crying on the phone.

''Nobody feels safe anymore," said one of the friends, who lives near the scene of the shooting. ''They don't care who they shoot, babies, girls, boys. We can't even sit on our own stoop anymore."

Owens's mother, Rhonda, had allowed her daughter to attend a church-sponsored basketball game Tuesday night as part of the neighborhood's National Night Out festivities, celebrating crime-fighting in the community. ''Stop the violence" was scrawled in colored chalk on the street between the city-owned basketball court and the park where Owens was shot. The park is part of a city-subsidized housing development, Erie-Ellington Homes, but is not a city-owned park and is not patrolled by city police.

Jaime Owens is the youngest of eight children. Now her mother plans to send her to live with relatives in the suburbs to escape the violence, which Rhonda Owens said she thought was related to gang activity in the area. ''It just makes me very, very upset," Rhonda Owens said yesterday. ''I've heard about people getting shot, and I always say, 'Oh, the poor mother.' And then it hits home."

In increasing the number of officers assigned to parks, city officials said, one Municipal Police officer will be stationed at Sergeant William E. Carter Playground in Roxbury, where Gonzalez was shot. One will be dedicated to Ramsay Park, where Gaines was gunned down. Another will focus on Franklin Field in Dorchester. The other officers will continue to have responsibilities for monitoring the remaining 203 parks and hundreds of municipal buildings.

Boston police spokeswoman Beverly Ford said that before the department decides whether to install surveillance cameras at parks, it will work with communities to address privacy concerns.

Councilor Michael Flaherty is proposing that the city ban adults who are not accompanied by children under the age of 12 from the 164 children's play lots, the areas in parks meant for young children, such as those with swings and slides.

''The anxiety level of parents is off the charts," Flaherty said. ''How do you take your children to a playground when you think they might get shot or stabbed? Violence shatters the peace in our neighborhoods and it's getting worse every day. It appears no corner of the city is safe."

Anand Vaishnav of the Globe staff and correspondent Heather Allen contributed to this report. Donovan Slack can be reached at dslack@globe.com.