A few miles from FleetCenter, the threat is real

As is local custom now, there is a makeshift shrine to 23-year-old William "Biggie" Gaines in Ramsay Park, a tree festooned with teddy bears, withered flowers, and a T-shirt with the words, "BIG R.I.P. WE LOVE YOU," scrawled across the front in black Magic Marker.

On Wednesday afternoon, almost exactly 72 hours after an assassin on a bicycle wheeled up to Gaines and shot him as he coached a group of young basketball players, Nikki Smith bent over and used a cigarette lighter to relight candles at the foot of the tree that had been extinguished by a summer rain.

"I see on the TV they got all those cops up at the FleetCenter, saying they're guarding against terrorism," said Smith, 24, touching a photo of the man she grew up with. "What happened to Biggie was terrorism. What happened to those little kids, who saw that boy shoot Biggie, who watched Biggie die on the pavement there, that was terrorism. If they can spend all that money on those people up at the Democratic convention, how come they can't protect us?"

As the biggest, most expensive security operation ever mounted in the city comes to a conclusion, it is a question that more and more people who live near Ramsay Park are asking.

To the mostly poor, mostly black people who live around the park in Lower Roxbury, the idea that $50 million has been spent guarding against a perceived threat at the Democratic National Convention is ludicrous, almost obscene, given the real threat of violence they face every day.

"You see the police around once in a while, but they're never here when something happens," said Sharon Mack, who lives in Mission Hill but visits friends in the Ramsay Park area regularly. "I just don't understand how you can put all them police up there when we need them down here."

When they rolled out their massive security plan to keep the convention safe from terrorists, Boston police officials said resources would not be pulled from neighborhoods, because officers would be required to work 12-hour shifts through the week. Superintendent Robert P. Dunford, who drew up the department's plan, is a lifelong resident of Dorchester and prides himself on protecting inner-city neighborhoods.

Deborah J. Ansourlian, executive director of the Hattie B. Cooper Community Center next to Ramsay Park, has nothing but praise for area police and their commander, Captain Robert M. Flaherty. "But they have limited resources," she said.

At about 3 each afternoon for the last few days, Ansourlian has stood outside the center's front door, watching busloads of police officers drive past, on their way to the FleetCenter from a nearby staging area. "It makes you wonder," she said.

Ansourlian said that Sunday's killing got some attention, but that the almost daily shootings and stabbings in the area do not. On Monday, she bit her lower lip when a 4-year-old girl poked her head into her office and said, "I heard some shooting."

"People around here are afraid, and people around here deserve more than they're getting," Ansourlian said, as some of the 125 children served each day by the center frolicked in a fenced-off playground, just a few yards from where Gaines was shot dead.

Police Commissioner Kathleen M. O'Toole was at a reception for members of the New York delegation in South Boston when she learned of Gaines's shooting and raced to the scene. She said that even before the shooting, increased patrols had been assigned to the area, a so-called "hot spot." Afterward, even more police were brought in, including some who previously had been deployed to the convention area, said Beverly Ford, a police spokeswoman.

But privately, officers who work in the area wonder whether anyone cold-blooded enough to shoot someone in front of children, in the middle of the afternoon, is especially deterred by extra police patrols.

Police engage in a game of cat and mouse with the undesirables who loiter in the park, some of them drunk, others looking for trouble. On Wednesday, minutes after police moved some intoxicated people from a park bench, a new group took their place.

"It's not as simple as putting a police cruiser at Ramsay Park," Ansourlian was saying. "We have to get to these kids before they start shooting each other. This is about education. It's about building self-esteem, creating a sense that people are worth it."

All that costs money.

"They came up with the money for the convention," she said. "Imagine what we could do by investing $50 million in this community."

As police kept an eye on potential troublemakers near the FleetCenter, a steady stream of people came to look at the shrine to Gaines. Some shook their heads. Others crossed themselves. Nearly all of them remarked on what they see as the injustice of millions being spent to protect people they think don't need protection nearly as much as they do.

Among those at the shrine was Caroline Shepard, who said she knows what the Gaines family is going through. In 1993, her 9-year-old autistic son, Eric, was killed when he picked up a gun that authorities believe a drug dealer had stashed near their Dorchester home. She is, like many in the city who have lost loved ones to violence, among the walking wounded.

"There's an emptiness that never goes away," she said, staring at the flickering candles.

She visits the Ramsay Park area regularly because she has relatives nearby and jumps whenever she hears loud noises. She used to enjoy fireworks. Now they remind her too much of gunshots.

"I'm the same way," said Nikki Smith, Gaines's childhood friend. "I used to love the Fourth of July when I was a kid. But I grew up around here, and I've been hearing gunshots my whole life. And once I was old enough to realize that all these boys were getting shot, I couldn't watch the fireworks anymore."

Around 4 p.m., a State Police helicopter hovered above the park, and people wondered whether it was a signal that some Democratic VIP might appear. Actually, it was part of the convention's security operation, which saw buses full of police drive by one of the most dangerous sections of the city on the way to one of the safest.

A group of women gathered and talked about the little boys who saw their coach gunned down. They worried especially about Gaines's 11-year-old nephew, who was close to his uncle and shaken by what he saw.

"His name is Eric," Smith said.

"Just like my baby," Shepard said, almost in a whisper.

Looking at the shrine reminded Shepard that she had to call City Hall so workers would cut back the brush that threatens to obscure a memorial to her son.

"His birthday is Aug. 10," she said. "He would have been 20."

Shepard then sighed and excused herself, saying she had to catch a bus.

"Hopefully," she said, looking skyward, "I'll make it home safe."

Kevin Cullen can be reached at cullen@globe.com.