Violence working after hours

SOME CITY officials are acknowledging, albeit quietly, that they have lost the battle for the streets in parts of Dorchester, Roxbury, and Mattapan. And it's true, especially in the spasmodically violent section of Dorchester known as Bowdoin-Geneva, where Chiara Levin, a 22-year-old visitor in town for a family celebration, was shot and killed early Saturday.

It's odd for visitors like Levin, who apparently stumbled into the wrong after-hours party after a night in a downtown bar, to even visit this section of Dorchester, never mind be shot there. But it can be a minefield for local residents like Quinntessa Blackwell, an 18-year-old Roxbury Community College student who was felled earlier this month in the middle of the afternoon. Police believe that both women may have been killed by shooters who missed their intended targets.

The rules of engagement are constantly changing in the criminal underworld, and rarely for the better. Law enforcement, along with the rest of the city, was shaken deeply in 1995 when a career criminal ambushed and assassinated assistant attorney general Paul R. McLaughlin. In 1999, shoppers at the high-end Copley Place mall were stunned when youths from the city's most violent neighborhoods took their feud into a neutral area and shot a 15-year-old boy. Now comes another nadir, according to experienced youth workers: Anyone in the vicinity of an intended target -- friend, relative, or recent acquaintance -- becomes a target, too.

Despite some recent innovations by police Commissioner Ed Davis, Boston continues to suffer from a jarring increase in crime, including a 23 percent jump in homicides and a 32 percent increase in aggravated assaults with firearms since 2004. Flooding problem areas with officers and equipment seems to help for a while. But the level of intelligence gathering that arms police with lifesaving information about feuds, drug deals gone bad, and after-hour parties where combatants are likely to confront one another, is missing from the arsenal. Without such intelligence, all the police can do is react -- or ponder why roughly two out of three homicides in the city go unsolved.

The shootings are shameful. The one development that could mitigate the pain and disgrace would be for every available witness in the Levin, Blackwell, and other unsolved homicides to step forward and cooperate fully with police. Massachusetts has stringent gun laws. A special gun court is in session in Suffolk County to deal with gun-related crimes. And when that's not enough, enhanced penalties are possible by bringing federal charges. Absent cooperative witnesses and swift arrests, however, the carnage only continues.