Police target Cape Verdean youth violence

Boston police have tied at least 11 episodes since late June, including a slaying and four other shootings of young men, to a feud between two rival groups of Cape Verdeans in Dorchester and Roxbury, a police official with direct knowledge of the investigations said.

The shootings have set off concerns that attacks between the two groups are spreading beyond the Boston neighborhoods into areas south of the city.

Police are sending dozens of additional officers to patrol Roxbury's Dudley Street and Dorchester's Uphams Corner and the Bowdoin-Geneva areas, where the young men live and gather. The department is worried about retaliatory violence between the groups spreading to Randolph, Fall River, Brockton, and Providence.

''There is definitely conflict among some of the Cape Verdean youth," Police Superintendent Paul Joyce said in an interview yesterday. ''It's an increase that we're concerned with."

Boston Police recently met with top Cape Verde government officials to formalize relations and get help in tracking down those who become involved in violence here, then flee back to Cape Verde. Joyce said that this fall Boston officers will be sent to Cape Verde and Cape Verde officers will come to Boston to learn each other's investigative methods.

Mayor Thomas M. Menino plans to meet with Cape Verdean parents at St. Patrick Church in Roxbury today to ask for their help in coming up with new approaches to solving the community's violence problem. In an interview last night, Police Commissioner Kathleen M. O'Toole said, ''There are longstanding rivalries that have led to some of the violence. These are issues that the police cannot resolve on their own."

Cape Verdean Prime Minister Jose Maria Neves is visiting Boston this week and Menino also hopes to meet with him to discuss public safety concerns, city officials said. City human services chief Larry Mayes said that the mayor is ''very concerned," especially about the regional aspects of the problem.

The two rival groups are clustered less than a mile apart, one around Wendover Street, near Uphams Corner, and the other around Hamilton Street, farther south in Dorchester.

Police are focusing on a violent outbreak that began on Thursday, June 23, when more than a dozen shots were fired near the intersection of Hancock and High Street, a police official with direct knowledge of the department's investigation said. Then, the following Saturday and Monday, shots were fired at the Hamilton Street group, but nobody was hit.

Things escalated Tuesday, June 28. Police say the Hamilton Street group retaliated, shooting a 21-year-old man on Wendover Street. He survived. That same evening, three more shootings occurred as the two groups traded gunfire, police say. One of them was fatal: Nineteen-year-old Ismael Canuto was gunned down as he sat on his grandmother's porch with friends on Clifton Street, near Massachusetts Avenue. After being shot, relatives said, he ran into his grandmother's house to ask for a glass of water, then collapsed.

Police suspect the Hamilton Street group killed Canuto in retaliation for the previous week's barrage of gunfire on and near Hamilton Street.

The Cape Verdean community in Dorchester and Roxbury has long struggled with violence, but the recent killings reflect more brazen and relentless activity, the police official said. Many of the shootings have occurred during the daylight hours, the official said, with numerous innocent bystanders nearby.

Jose Baptista, Canuto's uncle, said yesterday that the neighborhood turf wars and the shootings have him worried about the safety of his two children.

''Why doesn't anyone stop them?" Baptista said. ''It's the same men shooting everyone. . . . I don't know if it will ever stop."

Alfredo Dosouto, who is Cape Verdean, said his sons are being targeted, and his house on Hamilton Street has been shot at three times by men driving by in cars. He said one of his son's cars was shot at so many times a black tarp was put over it to keep rain from pouring in through all the bullet holes and ruining the interior.

''They come by, and they start shooting at night, day, they shoot. I don't know why," he said.

Despite the frustrations felt by residents and police over the seemingly non-stop shootings, police appear more confident that they are gaining understanding into what's driving the violence, and who is causing it.

''You're going to see a lot more presence of both uniforms as well as plainclothes," Joyce said. ''There will be a focus on locations and individuals involved in this violence."

Some Cape Verdean leaders said the violence is spiraling out of control because there are not enough police on the street.

Bishop Filipe Teixeira, a Cape Verdean priest who runs a youth program out of churches in Brockton and Boston, said that because so few of those who have committed the crimes have been arrested, the rival groups are taking things into their own hands. ''People were killed before and nobody was brought to justice," Teixeira said. ''So what they do is bring the justice in their own hands."

Teixeira said he believes the death of 23-year-old Joseph Lopes earlier this year triggered some of the recent violence because, he said, Lopes was connected to the Hamilton Street group. Lopes was gunned down outside of a Randolph nightclub on Cape Verdean night in January. Three people, including a Boston police officer, were indicted yesterday in connection with the shooting.

Teixeira said he believes police did not adequately prepare for this new spate of shootings.

''I'm disappointed because I met with the Police Department and the commissioner back in March," Teixeira said. ''They say, 'We're going to do something, we're going to work together,' but then they don't deliver."

Joyce said police are working hard to address the problem and touted the new information-sharing and exchange program with Cape Verdean officials as a way of better attacking the problem in Massachusetts.

Randolph Police Chief Paul Porter said that in recent months information-sharing meetings between Boston, Randolph, Fall River, and other police departments have become more formalized.

''The violence is more severe," Porter said of Randolph's Cape Verdean population.

Isaura Mendes, who has lost a son and two nephews to the violence, will lead a peace march tomorrow that will cross through many of the violence-plagued streets.

On a memorial set up for Ismael Canuto in front of his grandmother's house, friends and family set up pictures of him and left notes that read, ''We miss you."

Globe correspondents Luis Henao, April Simpson, and Heather Allen contributed to this report.