The Boston Globe, July 2024
On a warm night recently, Boston Police Commissioner Michael Cox stood on the outskirts of Dorchester’s Harambee Park, gazing across the street at Franklin Field, a public housing complex where two children and three adults were shot last September. This year, there have been no shootings at Franklin Field, according to Boston police data — and historically few in the city as a whole, despite recent spasms of violence in Dorchester, Mattapan, and Roxbury. It is a sharp decline that has made Boston, already one of the country’s safest large cities, a national outlier.
Last week, during a peace walk with 30 church leaders, police officers, and Dorchester residents, Cox knocked on wood as he spoke to those gathered around him. “The fact is that we’re in a good space and we want to keep it going,” he said. Within days, that tenuous peace would be tested, after two people were killed on July 5. Another suffered serious injuries in a shooting Tuesday, and on Wednesday, five people, including an 11-year-old, were shot in Dorchester.
