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Shootings, murders up in Boston

The latest shooting data from Boston Police show 120 shootings, with a total of 145 victims, through July 19, compared to 90 shootings and 112 victims in the same period last year.

Gunshot murders are up as well, to 26 so far this year vs. 20 in the same period last year.

In total, Boston has had 30 murders this year, compared to 23 last year, according to overall BPD statistics, which show a decrease in non-domestic aggravated assault - which includes murders and serious physical attacks, 957 this year compared to 1,039 last year, but which show an increase in domestic aggravated assaults, up to 526 from 466.

District B-3, which covers parts of Mattapan and Dorchester, has seen a murder increase from 10 to 15; murders increased from 5 to 8 in B-2, which covers Roxbury and from 2 to 6 in District C-11, which covers much of Dorchester.

Also up: Larceny from motor vehicles. Other larcenies, though, are down.

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Comments

The fact that BPD doesn't really try to do anything about non-fatal shootings. This article is from 2017 but it's a good bet little has changed since then with BPD/Boston culture.

https://www.bostonmagazine.com/news/2017/02/12/boston-shootings/

Sure, the lack of trust between the impacted communities and the police and the stop snitching culture that arises from that lack of trust doesn't help but it's hardly a world class result from the BPD.

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People shooting one another.

Sure, blame the police.

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This is not BPD's fault. COVID sure isn't helping...

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Well then that's a perfect case for defunding them, because clearly they're not doing anything worthwhile to fix the problem.

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You know what else does not help?

  • Neighboring states with lax gun laws
  • Laws that protect gun manufacturers and resellers from liability
  • Laws that prevent the government agency tasked with keeping firearms records from using computers
  • Structural inequality and generational poverty which make young people vulnerable to recruitment into criminal enterprises

The triggerman is sadly only the tip of the iceberg. But perpetuating and enabling violence seems to be profitable, so why would we put a stop to it? Blame the shooters, instead of the system that equips them and trains them.

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Blaming gun manufacturers, neighboring states, and federal laws doesn't explain why there's a shooting and murder spike this year in Boston.

What's different now is BPD has adjusted to the community demands to back off and not interfere with citizens unless there's a serious felony--practically reserving police involvement until only after the crime is committed.

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I think the BPD would beg to differ that they are backing off. The biggest difference is the lack of services. We make a big effort to get kids jobs and camps for the summer. Over the last few years grant money has supported an effort to get jobs, education and services to young adults 18-25 (Strive, Youth Build, Year UP). Covid has put this stuff mostly on hold.

The community did not ask BPD to back off. The idea is to end the military escalation on crime and provide more services to prevent crime. We spend more and more tax dollars on things that are not scientifically related to crime levels. We also need to take an objective look at overtime. It shouldn't be so baked in to regular operations.

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I think we can assume that you are not arguing in good faith, or really aren't up to adult discourse.

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People could stop shooting each other.

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Growing up, I was in many homes, with lawful ownd guns.
Guess how many times i was shot by a gun....give up , I'll tell you anyway. 0 times.
But but but guns kill people. Your wrong, bad people use a gun to shoot someone else.

Ps, these homes I visited were all occupied by poor people. Poverty causing crime is a lie.

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So what are you saying??? If poverty doesn’t cause crime??? Just say it....

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Yes, most people are shot 0 times. Our cities with the worst murder rates are like 50/100k residents. Which is a far cry from like 50k/100k residents. So it is highly, highly likely that you will be shot 0 times no matter where you live.

So what's your miniscule sample size supposed to be telling us?

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And trailer parks are not known for affluent people.

But it wasn't the rosy "when I was a kid" nonsense you are pulling here: how safe kids were heavily depended on how responsible the adults were with those guns.

I remember my mom saying that I shouldn't go into Sarah's trailer because her parents weren't careful with their guns. It wasn't more than a couple of years before one of her brothers shot a friend with one of those guns when he was showing it off. He was eight years old and shot his friend. Fortunately not fatal, but still ...

My parents had strict rules, kept guns unloaded, kept ammo separate, kept handguns locked away.

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Blame systemic racism.

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If you want to solve a problem, find the source of it.

We don't wait until people have lung cancer to try and do anything. We encourage non-smoking to decrease the likelihood of it happening in the first place.

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Can we not do statistics without standard deviations?

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Are most of these shootings gang-related, drug-related, domestic abuse-related, or something else?

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COVID has happened at the same time as a bunch of changes to our general criminal justice system norm (whether good or bad).

https://www.nydailynews.com/opinion/ny-oped-the-end-of-crime-decline-202...

In the last 28 days (through July 12), compared to last year, shootings have more than tripled (318 vs. 97). Last week was even worse. If the last 28 days become the new normal, 2021 will have more than 4,100 shootings, a level not seen in well over 20 years.

I think it is not surprising if crime is rising in the moment and I am generally wildly pro-relaxing the intensity of the criminal justice system, but this is something people should pay attention to if we hope to keep fixing things and not have regressions and lose support for reform (never mind what shouldn't need to be said -- rising crime is a huge problem)

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The record unemployment and the closing of all sorts of social activities isn't helping either. To speculate, that's far more significant than any legal changes in explaining the rapid rise of violence.

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No guns, no shootings. The real criminals are Baretta and Smith and Wesson, and their congressional puppets. Perhaps we should have tried to prevent absolutely anyone who wants from acquiring firearms before there was another pandemic. Whoops, maybe by the next time.

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B-2 is part Dorchester

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Time to bring in the Feds.

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Blame everything except the obvious, New York city also has had a unsurge in shootings and murders. I will guess every big city can say the same. I know lets blame everything on 12 years of Reagan/Bush economics, a old excuse but a good one.

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So you can masturbate to cammo?

Or for target practice?

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Doesn’t take a genius to figure out why.

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Doesn't take a genius to find out why.

Nope! It sure as hell doesn't.

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