Slayings raise fears that more will follow

The brazen killings of two Boston teenagers in crowded public settings over the last three days have ignited concerns about a return to the street violence that plagued the city a decade ago.

Nine homicides have occurred in Boston in the first six weeks of the year, a rate that far exceeds last year, when three people were killed by mid-February. Boston did not see its ninth homicide last year until mid-April.

Shawn Adams, 15, was fatally stabbed Saturday night at a Dudley Station bus platform, in a well-lighted public area as at least a dozen other youths stood nearby. On Friday, 18-year-old Lance Brown died after being shot repeatedly outside a busy Mattapan Square grocery store at 3:15 in the afternoon. The shooting, the second in Boston that day, was witnessed by several people.

Mayor Thomas M. Menino said he spoke with the incoming police commissioner, Kathleen O'Toole, about the killings yesterday. He said he was particularly concerned about the young age of those involved, and he wondered whether more guns on the streets and the release of gang leaders imprisoned during the 1980s and 1990s have contributed to the spate of violence.

"I'm very concerned about the situation," said Menino. "We're concerned even if there's one loss of life to violence. . . . Don't they have any respect for civility and for life?"

Before Brown was killed on Friday, Betsy Tripp, 50, was fatally stabbed at her Dorchester condominium. Her boyfriend, who was shot in the face, told police that an acquaintance attacked his girlfriend and shot him before speeding off in a car.

Yesterday, police reported a fourth attack since Thursday. Lucas Canuto, 22, was shot in the chest in Dorchester's Fields Corner neighborhood at about 2:30 a.m., police said. He was listed in critical condition at Boston Medical Center. Police were investigating both cases but as of late yesterday had made no arrests. Officials have said they do not believe the attacks are related.

The violence is a major test for O'Toole, who was appointed police commissioner last Sunday, and financial constraints may make her response more difficult. Menino said yesterday that the city had lost "a couple hundred" police officer positions in recent years because of a worsening economy.

Yesterday, Adams's family and friends visited the corner of Zeigler Street and Degauter Way , where the teenager collapsed from his stab wounds. They left stuffed animals, Valentine's Day balloons, candles, and a basketball in memory of the youth, a freshman at East Boston High School who was described as a jokester and a dominant small forward on the local basketball courts, who also dreamed of playing in the NBA.

Ted Williams, a city maintenance worker from Roxbury, came to the site to pay his respects even though he didn't know Adams. He wondered what would happen on city streets with the arrival of warmer temperatures, when violence typically increases.

"Can you imagine what the summer's going to be like?" said Williams, 51.

Specialists said that violent crime across the country has remained flat in recent years, with a notable exception: Gang-related violence is on the rise.

James Alan Fox, a criminal justice professor at Northeastern University, said gang-related violence had increased in particular in Chicago and Los Angeles, where gang activity grew in the late 1980s and early 1990s before spreading to other cities.

Many gang leaders in Boston and other cities were imprisoned on federal charges in the late 1980s and early 1990s but have now been released, Fox said.

"They're coming back to their old neighborhoods, and their old pals, and their old ways," said Fox. "There's reason for concern that gang killings could be on the rise."

Gangs fueled the violence that pushed Boston to a record-high 152 murders in 1990. The violence that year continued into the next year, and by Feb. 15, 1991, the city reported 18 homicides.

In the early 1990s, the city's public safety officials fought back with a variety of efforts and homicides fell sharply throughout the decade.

Some attributed the drop to law enforcement programs such as the police department's community policing approach and the "antigang violence unit," which confiscated guns and sent hundreds of violent young people to prison. Others credited the delivery of more social services and the expansion of programs such as the Safe Neighborhoods Plan, which encouraged people to serve as role models in their neighborhoods.

By 2001 the city's homicide rate had fallen to 66. It fell to 60 in 2002 and 41 last year.

Philip J. Carver, president of the Pope's Hill Neighborhood Association in Dorchester, said the "Boston miracle" that saw violent crime plummet in the second half of the 1990s was due to effective cooperation among various law enforcement agencies, from police to parole officers to the Suffolk District Attorney's Office.

But a few years ago, Carver said, the money that had gone to some neighborhood anticrime efforts dried up and children began filling the vacuum in gang leadership created when the older generation went to prison.

"I'm not saying we got lazy, but we lost focus," said Carver. "Once we took the higher echelon of gang leaders out, we became lax."

Jack Levin, director of the Brudnick Center on Violence and Conflict at Northeastern University, warned of placing too much emphasis on a small sample of violence -- in this case, the first six weeks of 2004. Boston has traditionally had one of the lowest homicide rates among major cities in the United States, Levin said.

"When your rate is low, there's more room for growth," he said.

Globe Correspondent Jack Hagel contributed to this report.