Youth violence is sharply on rise

The number of young murder victims in Boston has nearly doubled since last year, according to statistics police released yesterday, while at the same time, arrests by the city's Youth Violence Strike Force have dropped.

Twenty-two people under the age of 24 had been murdered as of Monday, police said, compared with 13 by that date last year.

Meanwhile, the number of people the strike force arrested on charges involving violent crimes and property crimes dropped by 14 percent -- from 314 to 271 -- as of Sunday for both years.

Meeting at Boston police headquarters yesterday afternoon, police officials and community leaders attributed the sharp rise in young murder victims in part to the growth in the city's juvenile population.

They also cited the frustrations faced by convicted felons who are released from prison and go back to neighborhoods such as Dorchester, Mattapan, and Roxbury, only to find few job opportunities.

Police officials said they have a number of plans to address the increased violence, including working specifically with felons who go back into the communities, offering job support and counseling to avoid returning to their past violent habits.

Superintendent Paul Joyce, who runs the department's Investigative Services division, said the department also plans to launch an unsolved shootings project to get witnesses to come forward. In many cases, he said, crimes could be solved with witnesses, who often don't cooperate out of fear.

In the meeting with 24 community leaders, police officials said they were concerned about the steep increase in youth violence. They also expressed frustration at the number of guns on the street and at the difficulty of solving murder cases involving young people.

"The thing that disturbs me is a lot of kids are thinking the way they did in the early '90s," Superintendent James Claiborne said, referring to a period of significant gang violence in Boston. " 'You have to have a gun,' 'The only way to solve a problem is to shoot somebody' . . . That frightens me."

The police sit-down with community leaders came after meetings between Mayor Thomas M. Menino and Boston Police Commissioner Kathleen M. O'Toole.

In the past couple of days, the two have met repeatedly to discuss ways of limiting the number of guns on the street, O'Toole said, adding that officials are also considering ways to tighten gun laws in Massachusetts, specifically concerning where guns may be carried -- such as parks. Officials are also looking at how they might stem the tide of guns coming in from out of state.

Menino said he is also developing a business tax credit program for firms that hire felons as a way to help former convicts reenter society and stay away from gangs and other criminal activities.

"People coming out of incarceration have difficulty finding a job," Menino said. "A lot of these men and women made one mistake and they shouldn't be penalized for the rest of their lives. . . . We all know if you don't have work it's easy to get frustrated with the system."

The recent spate of violence involving Boston youth may lead state law enforcement to renew a partnership with city police to work on the issue, state Public Safety Secretary Edward Flynn said in a phone interview after the meeting.

"The turf-based street gang phenomenon, the crew phenomenon that Boston confronted a decade ago, appears to be reemerging," Flynn said. Boston police and community activists "spent years building relationships that worked well [during the violence of the 1990s], but as the urgency faded, so did the relationships.. . . People need to have realistic expectations about how long this is going to take to turn around."

The State Police Gang Unit worked closely with Boston's Youth Violence Strike Force as recently as last year, said Flynn, who added that he hopes future collaboration is possible.

While Boston police officials pointed out that this year's youth violence is not approaching the proportions seen in the early 1990s, they also say there is no denying that gang violence is on the upswing and that something needs to be done -- quickly.

"We have to bring these kids in so they're not feeling the gang member is their family," Claiborne said.

Yesterday's meeting was meant to celebrate the community policing partnerships already in existence even as new ways of invigorating those partnerships were sought.

Earlier this week, for example, O'Toole expressed concerns about "some rival turf issues in the South End and Lenox Street area," and said she believes the biggest advantage police now have is that they're not "starting from scratch," given the work in the 1990s.

Joyce said in an interview after yesterday's meeting that some recent shootings are gang-related, but added that "they're not random . . . most of these cases that involve individuals in the gangs and drug trade, they know each other."

"We're being challenged, but I have no doubt that we can control it," he said.

Suzanne Smalley can be reached at ssmalley@globe.com.