Mayor calls in aides to plan crime response

Mayor Thomas M. Menino said yesterday that he plans to launch a reevaluation today of Boston's approach to fighting crime, reviewing every municipal program including youth outreach and drug policing.

Menino said he has summoned Police Commissioner Kathleen M. O'Toole and the city's human services chief, Larry Mayes, among other administration officials, to a meeting today where he expects answers on how to stop the surge of violence that has pushed the city's homicide count to 66 by last night, equaling a 10-year high. Menino said everyone's effort will be scrutinized and overhauled if necessary, but he did not say whether he is prepared to spend more money.

''We're looking at all our programs to see what maximum benefit we can get out of them," the mayor said in an interview. ''I can't have another incident like we had at the [John] Winthrop School this week."

Gunfire rang out near the Dorchester school's playground Monday afternoon as more than a dozen fifth-grade students were going outside for recess. Menino visited the school Tuesday and ordered plainclothes police officers posted outside.

O'Toole has been on vacation all week and was expected to return home last night. Police Department officials declined repeated requests for interviews yesterday, instead issuing a statement in response to questions from the Globe.

''The Boston Police Department will continue to deploy department resources in those neighborhoods of the city that are affected by violent crime," said the statement, issued by a spokesman, Sergeant Thomas Sexton.

With the deaths of two shooting victims Tuesday, the number of homicides in Boston this year climbed to 66, tying the total in 2001 for the highest number since 1995, when there were 96. Police have identified suspects in 20 of this year's homicides, the lowest clearance rate in at least a decade.

The number of shootings through Nov. 16 were up 31 percent over the same period last year.

As the number of shootings has surged, Boston police have instituted one specialized program after another, but violent crime continues to rise.

In summer 2004, there was Neighborhood Shield, in which the department flooded high-crime neighborhoods with hundreds of officers. The city initiated B-SMART earlier this year, which focused on quality-of-life issues in those neighborhoods, and this summer police started Rolling Thunder, in which bands of officers on foot, horseback, and bicycles patrolled high-crime areas. Both programs are still underway.

Now the mayor is banking on a new operation called Home Safe, in which a group of officers spend three to four days in a crime hot spot before moving on. The group netted 43 arrests in the Grove Hall section of Roxbury last weekend for outstanding warrants, drug offenses, and other charges.

''This is a concentrated effort," Menino said.

The mayor also said he plans to seek assistance from several federal agencies, including the FBI; the Drug Enforcement Administration; the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives; and the Department of Justice.

US Attorney Michael J. Sullivan said yesterday that his office has been meeting with city officials. ''We've been looking at it in terms of how we can bring some federal resources to Boston," Sullivan said.

Separately from Menino's meeting, Sullivan's office is hosting a conference in Boston today on fighting gang violence. The police commissioner is expected to attend, along with other invited local, state, and federal law enforcement officials. Former Boston police commissioner William J. Bratton is the keynote speaker.

Some community leaders say that much of the surge in Boston's violence appears to be gang-related. Christopher Sumner, executive director of the Ten Point Coalition, which helped the city cut crime in the 1990s, said gang violence presents city officials with a challenge.

''You never find out until there's a dead body that someone had a problem with this guy at a club or even at school that spills into this deadly game of who gets the last lick," Sumner said.

Other community leaders applauded the mayor's decision yesterday to reevaluate the city's approach to crime. They said some city programs are in dire need of revision. The Rev. Eugene Rivers, a cofounder of the Ten Point Coalition, said city youth programs and youth violence policing are not managed effectively and need more community involvement.

''The level of collaboration must involve more than prayer meetings staged at churches," he said. ''It has to be consistent on the ground."

The mayor has summoned to today's meeting everyone in his administration who deals with youth.

Thirty-five of this year's homicide victims were 25 or younger.

In the most recent fatal shooting, Carl Searcy, 17, was gunned down Monday night at the corner of George and Langdon streets in Roxbury. By the time his mother saw him, his bloodied body lay on a stretcher in the back of an ambulance. A distraught Schenel Searcy said yesterday that police detectives have been visiting her regularly at her Mattapan home updating her on their investigation.

She described her son, a junior at Boston English High School, as a soft-spoken boy who lived to play basketball. He had returned to Boston last year after spending 2 1/2 years living with his father in North Carolina. He has since been arrested a few times for trespassing at the Bromley-Heath housing development, but generally, his relatives said, he was a good boy who had volunteered at a North Carolina church.

''He wasn't a fighter or someone who would go looking for trouble," his father, Roger Royster Sr., 34, of Raleigh, N.C., said yesterday. ''I think Carl got caught up with the wrong group of people."

As his mother mourned his death with other relatives in her living room yesterday afternoon, she decried city budget cuts in recent years that may have affected officials' ability to prevent her son's death. Searcy said it's time for officials to take notice of the human cost of the cuts.

''I'm not upset with police," Searcy said. ''I want them to get who killed my son."

Russell Nichols and Charles Radin of the Globe staff contributed to this report. Donovan Slack can be reached at dslack@globe.com. Suzanne Smalley can be reached at ssmalley@globe.com.