With increased violence, antigang funding gets a push

Amid a rash of recent violence, dozens of district attorneys, police chiefs, city officials, and community workers from urban areas around the state gathered at the State House yesterday to press lawmakers to continue funding antigang efforts.

Last year, as Boston and other cities in Massachusetts struggled with increased gun and gang violence, the state launched an $11 million program that provided grants to police departments and nonprofit organizations for antigang law enforcement, intervention, and prevention.

But Governor Deval Patrick did not include money in his proposed budget for the Shannon Community Safety Initiatives. Instead, he budgeted extra money to put more police officers on the streets, as he had promised to do in his campaign.

Urban public safety officials and youth workers consider the antigang effort a priority because it encourages law enforcement personnel to collaborate with public health and social service workers.

"We have a culture of guns, and we have a mentality around respect that can only be answered by violent activity," said Police Commissioner Ed Davis.

Refunding of this grant is extremely important to the level of violence and the level of gang activity that occurs in our community," he said .

In his campaign, Patrick pledged to add 1,000 new police officers to the streets. But with the state facing a budget gap of more than $1 billion, he settled for adding 250 new officers in his first budget proposal, paid for in part by eliminating legislative earmarks, money set aside by lawmakers for specific purposes, for public safety programs across the state.

Kevin M. Burke, secretary of public safety, said the governor's plan would help stem gang violence, too.

"When the money is put where it's needed, it will be put in places where it can affect gang violence and gun-related violence, so it's not contrary to anything under the Shannon grants," he said.

But lawmakers have expressed strong opposition to Patrick's elimination of the earmarks.

And yesterday, advocates of the Shannon grant program said solving the gang problem could not be done with police alone.

"It is a blended approach, an approach that combines prevention with smart enforcement, taking those individuals off the street who are most likely to commit crime," Davis said.

In the last year, Boston received $3 million in Shannon grants; the money was spent in a variety of ways.

One program helps adult offenders settle back into the community after leaving prison; another places social workers in district police stations to work with youths who are arrested by the police.

Trauma training in neighborhoods with high violence rates and technology for police intelligence gathering were also funded .

At yesterday's press conference, Hasaan Seales, 18, of Roxbury, said that the Youth Opportunity Boston program helped him turn away from street life. He is now working, helping on a botany project at Franklin Park, and is about to start studying for his GED.

"These people here, they saved my life," he said.

The Shannon grants also pay researchers to study the effectiveness of the grants.

Burke said that the governor's approach might indirectly help communities pay for nonlaw enforcement antigang efforts by allowing them to redirect money they would have otherwise spent on an officer's salary.

Advocates of the Shannon Grant program said they are optimistic that the House and Senate would restore or perhaps even increase funding for Shannon grants in their budget proposals.

"I believe that at a time when crime, in particular youth crime, is spiking and we are looking for ways to reduce violence in urban neighborhoods, that we have in front of us the answer in a program that has proven itself," said state Senator Jarrett T. Barrios, cochairman of the Legislature's Public Safety and Homeland Security Committee and a sponsor of the antigang initiative.

The program is named after the late Senator Charles E. Shannon Jr., a Winchester Democrat who was a police officer in Lexington for 20 years before becoming a state legislator. He died in April 2005.