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Two shot at Roslindale housing project
By adamg on Tue, 03/18/2008 - 4:02pm
UPDATE: The shooting turned into a standoff.
This afternoon at Washington-Beech; both victims in stable condition. Channel 4 reports one victim, a man in his 20s, was shot in the torso. The other victim, a woman about 30, was grazed by a bullet.
Roslindale's nexus of crime. Incidents since January around Washington and Beech streets; click on a balloon for more details:
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Comments
I really wish I could understand...
why people believe that shooting someone else to settle a dispute is the best way to go about it...
Why lately?
I've only been living in Roslindale for 3 1/2 years, but why has there been so much crime up in that area lately? Has something significant changed? I don't recall hearing too much about crime on that part of Washington St when we first moved here...although, granted, I hadn't found Universal Hub at that time!
Two Drivers for Crime Rates
Two of the most solid drivers of crime rate are:
the number of teens and young adults in a population
the condition of the economy
There are more young adults and teens around, thanks to higher birthrates in the 80s, than there were ten years ago. The economy is also headed south. Taken together, that means more young people with nothing better to do. Traditionally, it means crime rates going up.
On a macro level, sure, but not necessarily on a micro level
I don't think there are any more young adults/teens in that particular part of Roslindale than there were a few years ago (playing Globe reporter here, of course, I don't have any actual stats to back that up, just my near-sighted observations from driving through the area on a near daily basis).
The housing project has always seemed less safe than the surrounding area, based strictly on my obsessive reading of the police blotter in the Transcript, although not phenomenally so.
So here's hoping we're just seeing a particularly unlucky streak - partly involving people from outside the area (such as that triple shooting).
I think it is because I just moved there
Mer! I moved to Beech & Eugenia last April. All of a sudden it's ground zero.
Ugh
After school on Tuesdays, the kidlet takes dance classes in West Roxbury. As we were leaving tonight, she asked me:
Her bus goes right by there and she says she saw several ambulances, police all over, a TV truck and a helicopter.
And then she told me there were still several ambulances, police, TV crews and helicopters when my wife took her over to West Roxbury around 6, which I didn't understand until just now when I spotted the Channel 4 update about the standoff.
Remember - People kill
Remember - People kill people not guns. Also, I grew up in that area and it was a nice place to live in the 70's and 80's The neighborhood changed when new people started moving in and bringing with them all the crime.
Wobegone Woebewent
The neighborhood changed when new people started moving in and bringing with them all the crime.
Before that, we were all pure and innocent and white as the driven snow and above average and our photos were sepia toned and we didn't have any crime.
Well ...
One can debate the causes, but Roslindale DID develop a serious crime problem in the 1970s and 1980s - although I thought it was more toward Roslindale Square, which basically died after the Dedham Mall opened up. Not as well noted as the arsons of the Fenway, perhaps, but you can still find people who remember when you stayed away from the Square at night.
Well that explains it
Around 5 I pulled aside for some sort SWAT vehicle barreling through the Village. They also had a panel truck painted battleship gray with inconspicuous blue flashers. Then I noticed the helicopters making lazy loops overhead.
I've never understood housing projects, when did it seem like a good idea to build those things? I understand there will always be people who need housing assistance I just don't get the idea of concentrating them in gloomy brick clusters. Its like you're just writing off that area and the surrounding neighborhood to permanent crime and poverty.
I went to school with a guy
I went to school with a guy from that housing project in the late 1960s. No doubt there were families with issues, but there were no shootings. Some of the developments were planned has housing for WW II veterans. Those housing projects were not intended as housing of last resort for poor people. They were intended to fill in the gap for housing for working people. That's who moved into them when they were built. Later, the city, it its wisdom, decided to warehouse the poor in them. How did that work out?
Starting over with housing projects
And that's why Boston's slowly tearing down the big monolithic projects and replacing them with townhouse-type buildings. That's actually planned for Washington-Beech, although the proposal means the city will have to find other places in Roslindale for some folks because townhouses obviously can house fewer people than long apartment buildings (one place they won't be going is that townhouse complex next door, which recently went from low-income to market-rate units).
Beech Street
My grandparents lived in those projects when I was a kid. When they were originally built, they were not as ugly as they are now. They were - as someone else pointed out - not intended as a last resort. They were actually seen as a desirable housing choice by some. They were built with amenities not seen in some others, such as small green spaces with playground equipment for children.
As the years passed, and my grandfather became a widower living there alone, the people who lived there took less and less care of the place. The authorities are supposed to maintain services and such, but it's always the people who actually live in the buildings who determine the overall quality of life in them. Trash was left in hallways, the playground equipment was vandalized and torn up, graffiti covered public spaces, and all of the other attendant slum living conditions became the norm. No matter how much a place is taken care of by overseers or ownership, if the people living there don't give a damn, then it will become a shithole.
Crime has been a problem there for a while, although not the type of violent crime we're hearing about recently. My grandfather had his apartment broken into twice, once while he was in the apartment, sleeping. They climbed in through his kitchen window and took his small television set. He awoke in time to see two thugs exiting the window. It was probably a lucky thing he was asleep through most of it.
None of this will keep me from getting my pizza at The Pleasant, though :-)
Suldog
http://jimsuldog.blogspot.com
Not just a shooting, a standoff
Police were in a standoff with at least one suspect accused of shooting a man and a woman in Roslindale Tuesday afternoon.
someone I know told me that
someone I know told me that when the franklin hill projects got tore down they moved a lot of the people to the roslindale projects thats why theres so much crime lately
Was Franklin Hill a
Was Franklin Hill a particularly violent place?
I assume you mean Franklin
I assume you mean Franklin Field.
Somehow, I missed this sentence in the Transcript story
"Police attributed some of the violence to members of Dorchester gangs moving from housing projects in Dorchester to Roslindale."
Nice.
And when they tear down Beech...?
When the wrecking-ball music stops, some neighborhood gets gang-bangers.
Thank goodness for the Transcript and Channels 4 and 5
Because looking at our city's two daily-newspaper Web sites, you'd never know there was a double shooting and a standoff in Boston today.
Coverage
It's true. There were at least 2 helicopters overhead and I went inside the house to turn on the TV and find out what was going on. The Globe today had a small article at the bottom of the metro page.
My son may be going to the Bates school (on Beech St.) next year and I worry about the general safety of the area after all this activity.