Hub seeks federal help for gang cases
Sees threat of long sentences as a deterrent
Boston Police Commissioner Edward F. Davis said yesterday that his department will send more gang and gun cases to federal authorities in hope that the threat of longer prison sentences will help quell the recent increase in gun violence.
Davis made the announcement following a weekend of gunfire that killed two men in Dorchester and injured another trying to shield his son from an armed robber near Franklin Park. An 18-year-old man was shot in the head Friday while riding an MBTA bus, and hours later a man in his 20s was slain on McLellan Street.
"They will not get away with this," Davis said of their killers. "They will go to jail."
Davis said he will put more officers in neighborhoods that have been rocked by the shootings and become havens for gangs. The areas include the Grove Hall area of Roxbury, Egleston Square on the Jamaica Plain-Roxbury line, the Franklin Field neighborhood, and Bowdoin Street and Geneva Avenue in Dorchester.
The department's gang, drug, and bicycle units will patrol these neighborhoods almost exclusively, and officers on desk duty will be reassigned to street duty one day each week. Davis said he has also instructed detectives to tail suspected gang members on a daily basis.
City and federal authorities will work together to investigate and ideally charge the "guys who are responsible for the drugs, guns, gangs, and violence," said Elaine Driscoll, a spokeswoman for Davis.
When a person is convicted of federal charges, that usually means longer sentences in an out-of-state prison, far away from family. Authorities used a similar strategy to control gang-related violence in Boston in the mid-1990s.
"Wherever we can leverage a federal case, we're going to make that happen," Driscoll said.
US Attorney Michael J. Sullivan said his office would provide whatever resources the city needed. "We're absolutely committed in terms of the partnership," he said in an interview. "We remain optimistic that through this partnership, we're going to see a reduction in violent crime and a reduction in homicides."
Davis announced the initiative following a City Hall meeting with Mayor Thomas M. Menino and several clergy members from the affected neighborhoods, including the Rev. Jeffrey Brown, who organized the meeting and is one of the founders of the Ten Point Coalition, a community group that is credited with helping halt the similar 1990s crime surge.
Absent from the meeting was Rev. Bruce Wall of Global Ministries Christian Church in Dorchester who has drawn Menino's ire with his insistence that the mayor declare a state of emergency in his neighborhood. Representatives of the Guardian Angels, a citizen patrol force that arrived last week to help quell the violence but has been kept at arm's length by city officials, also were not present.
Asked about the absences, Menino would say only that the meeting was organized by Brown and was about "enforcement, responsibility, and unity in our city."
The meeting was held as Melvin Robert, 50, one of the latest shooting victims in the city, recovered from two gunshot wounds to his shoulder. Robert and his son, Melvin Rayshon, 24, were walking home Sunday at about 7:30 p.m., toting pizza slices they had bought at a nearby restaurant.
They were about 20 feet from Robert's house on Angell Street in Dorchester, when a tall man in a dark hooded shirt approached them and tried to rob Rayshon, police and relatives said yesterday. The two men struggled, and Robert came between them to help his son when shots rang out. Robert is expected to recover from his injuries, his family said.
"Just terrible," said Robert's sister, Elaine Cannady, 52. "You can't even go out anymore."
Maria Cramer can be reached at mcramer@globe.com. 