As slayings mount, Hub police reaching out to the bereaved

Boston police have embarked on a strategy to improve community relations and to help fight the rising toll of homicides: paying more attention and giving more help to the families of the dead.

Within three days of a killing, the victim's family gets a package that includes a personal letter from the head of the police department's homicide unit explaining how investigations work, a poem about grief, a quote from Martin Luther King Jr. about overcoming adversity, a list of contact numbers, and a pamphlet that promises detectives will never stop trying to find the killer.

``You can expect 100 percent effort from all homicide detectives. We cannot predict or guarantee results," the pamphlet says. ``We will maintain the case until the end, there is no statute of limitations on homicide cases."

Boston is one of the few major police departments in the country with trained victim advocates in the homicide unit, department officials and outside specialists in criminal justice said yesterday. In most cities, survivors are assisted by staff from the district attorney's office, usually much later in the case.

The unusual effort is designed to immediately address the pain of grieving families, and also to improve the department's image in the city's most crime-ridden neighborhoods and get more cooperation from families to help solve cases.

In addition, the advocates aim to stem angry relatives' impulse for retaliatory violence by referring survivors to social service agencies where they can find grief counseling and by offering to listen themselves, on occasion calling families for face-to-face talks.

A second victims' advocate, a trained social worker, began work in July. The first was hired last September , and her role has grown in recent months. The program represents a marked change from past practice, when contacting families was left to often overworked homicide detectives.

The only communication from the homicide unit should not come ``in an emergency room [where] we're shoving a business card at someone," said Deputy Superintendent Daniel Coleman, chief of the unit.

Coleman said that after seven years as a homicide investigator, he knows firsthand that while detectives almost always meet family members in the first hours after a killing, they sometimes don't reach out to family members quickly enough, or may fail to return phone calls from them later. The unit has 23 detectives, who, in addition to working on new cases, are trying to solve older ones.

``I want to break down, to the extent that I can, some of that mistrust and some of that feeling that families get that `We're alone,' that `Nobody cares about us.' Well, we do care about you," Coleman said. ``If we get investigative material as a result . . . that's a bonus."

The effort is bringing more frequent and deeper contact between the victim's survivors and the homicide unit, Coleman said. He said he designed the new program with help from survivors who felt alienated by the Police Department's homicide unit of the past.

``We had families walk out of this room with tears in their eyes saying, `If someone had done this for me earlier at least I would know, at least I would understand,' " he said.

Coleman said he hopes the changes both comfort and challenge survivors of homicide victims. Many of them, he acknowledged, may be afraid to come forward with information that could be critical to a case.

Boston is on pace to hit another 10-year high in homicides, with 53 so far this year, compared with 49 at the same point last year. It is also at risk of hitting another 10-year low in solving them, with only 30 percent of this year's cases resulting in arrests or identification of suspects.

Specialists say the effort is worthwhile. The United Kingdom has long made victims' families central to investigations, but the United States is woefully behind the curve, said Eugene O'Donnell, a former New York City police officer and a professor of police studies at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York.

``There's been a long history of victims generally being ignored by the system . . ." he said. ``That's why it's so remarkable what they're doing in Boston."

O'Donnell said the program could not only help mend relations with communities where witness intimidation and distrust of the police have become entrenched, but also improve casework. ``It's actually a very solid investigative step to make sure the family is included in your decision-making, because at a minimum the family needs to come in and testify," he said.

The social worker hired this summer, Aliza Rodriguez, came to the department after 12 years working with victims, largely in domestic violence cases, for the state's welfare agency and the Essex district attorney's office.

``The families of homicide victims, their scope of fear is a lot bigger than domestic violence victims because . . . they're concerned about friends of the person that committed the crime," she said.

Rodriguez and the homicide unit's other advocate, Neva Grice , a longtime police officer with the department's gang unit, are working to design a program that responds more specifically to families of young homicide victims.

Grice said she and Rodriguez have met with many families; they have also arranged for Coleman to sit down with particularly distraught family members.

``I've had a number of different friends that were victims of crimes, and you'd never have the opportunity to sit down with the commander of a unit to discuss how you felt," she said. ``It's tremendous."

Suzanne Smalley can be reached at ssmalley@globe.com