It couldn't have been more timely and relevant.
And WHERE do YOU THINK all the $ went, readers?
"The shift was in many ways forced upon them... by the decline in federal funding that helped pay for the jobs and the programs that ministers offered gang members."
Somewhere far away with sand?
"Report describes missteps on gangs; Police, ministers missed signs of brewing violence" by Maria Cramer, Globe Staff | June 30, 2008
Boston police largely missed brewing gang conflicts and paid scant attention to the steady increase in gang killings between 2000 and 2006, failures that damaged law enforcement's ability to deal with the violence that erupted earlier this decade and contributed to the crumbling of the so-called Boston Miracle, according to a recent study by researchers at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government.
Infighting in the department, police cuts, and fallout from scandals - such as the accidental killing by police of college student Victoria Snelgrove in 2004 - also hampered the ability of police officials to respond to the rising gang violence, says the 24-page report, which was finished last month and is expected to be published in the Ohio State Journal of Criminal Law.
The Police Department was not the only institution that missed the signs of rising violence. The report describes missteps and shifting priorities by the Boston TenPoint Coalition, a group of ministers whose cooperation with law enforcement in the mid-1990s was crucial to a dramatic reduction in homicides later that decade.
The study delves into the causes behind the stunning disintegration of an urban success story that was known across the country as the Boston Miracle.
In the late 1980s and early 1990s, Boston suffered huge spikes in the number of homicides, especially among people 24 years and younger. In 1990, 73 people in that age group were slain in the city, according to the study.
In 1996, police started Operation Ceasefire, which focused on identifying members of gangs, offering them ways out, and threatening them with federal sentences in prisons far away from their families if they continued to be violent.
BILL CLINTON'S POLICE STATE!!!!
So how come our "law enforcement" authorities not offer the same threat to BUSH, huh?
Clergy from the Boston TenPoint Coalition helped by offering services to gang members, such as job and education opportunities, to steer them from trouble.
By 1999, the number of homicides had plummeted to 31 - from a record of 152 in 1990 - and the city received national praise for the decrease. By 2000, Operation Ceasefire had begun to fade away as key police officials were transferred to other units and as the department began to focus on other problems, such as the large number of ex-convicts returning to the city, according to the report.
The Rev. Ray Hammond, cofounder of the TenPoint Coalition, said that he agrees with much of the study, but rejected the notion that his organization and the department changed their priorities because they believed the problem was solved. The shift was in many ways forced upon them, he said, by the decline in federal funding that helped pay for the jobs and the programs that ministers offered gang members. Law enforcement, meanwhile, was under pressure to dedicate more resources to homeland security, he said.
"What I don't think any of us thought a lot about was, how do we make this continue if the economy trends down?" Hammond said. "That's not something any of us really planned for or planned on."
The study praises recent changes by both organizations. It notes that the department began implementing Operation Ceasefire again in the spring of 2006 in a small number of neighborhoods and TenPoint clergy members began helping police negotiate truces between gangs.
Under Commissioner Edward F. Davis, who was sworn in during December 2006, Ceasefire has expanded citywide and once again become a crucial strategy for breaking up gangs, according to the study.
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