Weather helps put a damper on shootings

There was one shooting homicide last month, compared with three last June, six in June 2007, and seven in June 2006, according to city records. As important, the overall number of shootings fell by more than 60 percent from June 2008 to June 2009, with just 15 last month.

If the drop in shootings is not exactly scientific proof that weather dictates street violence, it certainly provides strong grounds for debate. The drop in violent crimes comes in a month in which shootings and murders tend to spike, part of what police officials typically describe as the “long hot summer.’’

“We’ll take it every time,’’ Police Commissioner Edward F. Davis said yesterday. “When the weather turns bad, and people are inside, there’s less violence.’’

It should be noted that city leaders have embarked on new crime fighting strategies that also played a role in quelling violence. At the beginning of June, law enforcement officials and ministers met with some of the city’s gang leaders in a tactical move to prevent bloodshed this summer.

But just as much as violence tends to increase in the hot summer months, it seems to decrease on the drowsiest of days, officials said.

“I think the weather has tampered activities throughout neighborhoods that have historically been dangerous,’’ said Kevin Peterson, who runs the Ella J. Baker House in Dorchester and meets weekly with area police about crime trends. He has seen teens flock to the neighborhood center on Washington Street.

“Young people involved in criminal activity have elected to not be on the streets because of the weather, so I think in terms of the shootings being down in high crime neighborhoods, the weather has had a dampening effect.’’

This year had started with more bloodshed than previous years, a statistic that was noted by community and city leaders when they marched through Dudley Square on June 1 asking for a stop to the violence. By May 31, the city had seen 110 shootings compared with 80 in the same time frame last year.

From April 6 to May 3, the city had 27 shootings, and 22 more occurred from May 4 to May 31, according to police figures.

But in the month of June, there were 15 shootings - and only one of them was fatal.

Examining those figures against weather reports, rain has fallen in tandem with the decrease in shootings. The city saw rain on 22 days in the month, when the 15 shootings occurred. Last year, it rained only eight days and the city saw 38 shootings in June.

In 2007, there were 29 overall shootings and 10 days of rain; and 46 shootings and 15 days of rain in 2006.

Going back to 2005, when it rained seven days and the city saw 31 shootings, the correlation remains the same.

Criminologists and police analysts have long studied the weather’s effects on crime, and have always hinted that the crime rate spikes in the hot summer months. A number of factors could be at play: people tend to be agitated from the warm temperatures and more likely to act erratically; they are outside more often and have a greater chance to run into rivals, they said.

“When the weather’s hot, and people are outside, and more likely to bounce into somebody - literally - the chance of violence increases,’’ Davis said.

At the same time, the dreary days of winter blizzards, northeasters, and, in this case, June rains, could have the opposite effect in keeping people calm and most importantly, indoors.

“Indeed, if the weather’s bad, people tend to stay indoors - both potential perpetrators and potential victims,’’ said James Alan Fox, a criminologist at Northeastern University. He said weather plays only a minor role in overall crime rates, but, “It’s in hot weather that people are interacting with others, and that can give a rise to conflict and therefore crime.’’

Mary Vriniotis, a research specialist at the Harvard Youth Violence Prevention Center, said many factors could be at play. A drop in one crime could translate into a spike in another, such as robberies, she said. Crime also happens in cycles, she said, and the plunge in shootings could be the work of community groups. But what is clear is that people go outside in the summer, and they stay indoors when it is dreary.

“It is interesting to see the relationship that may exist between weather and crime,’’ she said. “I’d love for there to be a way to have the sun and safe streets at the same time.’’

Even with the rain, the city saw a violent first half of 2009. Through June 28, the city saw 122 shootings compared with 113 during the same period last year. But with the drop in shootings last month, the rate significantly slowed, in what many attributed to an overall cease-fire agreement among gangs involved in the violence.

“I really believe that the youth themselves took it upon themselves to not raise up the guns and shoot each other,’’ said the Rev. Jeffrey Brown, executive director of the Boston TenPoint Coalition, who joined in the cease-fire meeting with gang leaders and law enforcement. “I do think that the cease-fire [meetings] had a piece in it, but it means nothing . . . if they don’t make their own decision about it and say, ‘They’re right, maybe we should just chill.’ ’’

Davis said that the city will work to implement new strategies to keep the peace this summer. Besides the meeting with gang leaders, officers have targeted some of the city’s most notorious violent players in Franklin Field and Orchard Park. The city is also attempting to find jobs for its teenagers, and Brown said he plans to announce today a new peace initiative.

“We would do well to be prepared for those days when the sun is shining and it’s warm and tempers are flaring,’’ said Peterson, of the Baker House. “I would advise that we don’t take this weather for granted.’’