The Phoenix Network:
 
 
About  |  Advertise
Adult  |  Moonsigns  |  Band Guide  |  Blogs  |  In Pictures
 
News Features  |  Talking Politics  |  This Just In

O’Toole Go Bragh

What part of “worst homicide squad in America” don’t they understand?
By DAVID S. BERNSTEIN  |  May 10, 2006

The carnage of the past week and a half has made a gruesome mockery of the Boston Police Department. The BPD wrapped up its latest “Operation Home Safe” deployment on Sunday, April 30. During the next nine days, at least 20 people were shot in Boston, four fatally; another was fatally stabbed; another was apparently beaten to death; and one was strangled, dumped in a park, and set on fire. One of the murders, of Alex Mendes, happened right in the Uphams Corner neighborhood that just the previous weekend the BPD and other city agencies had blanketed for 48 hours.

Since the start of the year, 137 people have been shot in Boston, both fatally and not. This surpasses the tally for all of 1997 and is not far from the 177 shot in all of 2003.

That was the year before Kathleen O’Toole took over. In her brief 27 months as commissioner, 149 people have been murdered in Boston in 26 months. Arrests have been made in 44 of those cases, for a 30 percent arrest rate.

Now it seems Boston’s bloody roads are rising to meet her.

O’Toole is on her way to Ireland, where she will take over the 12,000-strong Garda Síochána, four times the size of her current force. The Garda investigated just 37 murders in 2004, the most recent data available. That’s a rate of roughly 1 per 100,000 residents. Boston’s rate last year was around 14 per 100,000.

The person most likely to take over for O’Toole, at least for the short term, is Robert Dunford, currently superintendent in charge of field services. At the start of April, Dunford told the Boston Herald that gun violence is “on the decline.” In the seven weeks since then, the city has tallied 12 murders and more than 40 non-fatal shooting victims.

If O’Toole does flee across the Atlantic, that would be two in a row: O’Toole’s predecessor, Paul Evans, took a job in Scotland Yard two and a half years ago. Evans slipped back into town two weeks ago, to testify in former captain William Broderick’s lawsuit against Evans and the department. Evans — who calls his job in England “splendid” — says he was not invited to meet with any city officials while in town.

He did offer the Phoenix his two cents’ worth on the rise in gun violence, although he resisted gloating over Boston’s descent into criminal madness since his departure. “I applaud that they are taking a lot of the guns off the street,” Evans said, adding, “A lot of people have put too much emphasis on one program. The idea that there is one panacea is wishful thinking.”

Related: The overtime game, No end in sight, Worst homicide squad in America, More more >
  Topics: This Just In , Crime, Murder and Homicide, Police,  More more >
| More
Add Comment
HTML Prohibited

 Friends' Activity   Popular   Most Viewed 
[ 05/22 ]   Boston Ballet  @ Opera House
[ 05/22 ]   Complexions Contemporary Ballet  @ Cutler Majestic Theatre
[ 05/22 ]   The Hoot  @ Oberon
ARTICLES BY DAVID S. BERNSTEIN
Share this entry with Delicious
  •   GOD HATES FAQS  |  May 19, 2011
    Editors' note: We selected David S. Bernstein to serve as our resident Rapture expert, on account of his having seen all three Kirk Cameron Left Behind series film adaptations.
  •   BLISS OF RAPTURE  |  May 19, 2011
    Okay, I'm not happy , exactly, that, as a Jew, I am excluded from Saturday's date with Heaven's eternal rewards, and will instead be left to suffer through great tribulations before perishing, with the rest of the Army of the Antichrist, as a dismembered corpse beneath a waste-deep river of blood.
  •   NO MORE MR. NICE COUNCIL  |  May 11, 2011
    By announcing his campaign for city council, Michael Flaherty immediately unleashed the bitter side of Boston politics.
  •   OBAMA'S REBIRTH  |  May 05, 2011
    It was a good weekend for the president.
  •   TOM MENINO'S FINAL TERM AS MAYOR? DON'T BET ON IT.  |  April 27, 2011
    Mark this down: Tom Menino, already the longest-serving mayor in Boston history, will run for re-election in 2013.  

 See all articles by: DAVID S. BERNSTEIN

MOST POPULAR
RSS Feed of for the most popular articles
 Most Viewed   Most Emailed 



  |  Sign In  |  Register
 
thePhoenix.com:
Phoenix Media/Communications Group:
TODAY'S FEATURED ADVERTISERS
Copyright © 2011 The Phoenix Media/Communications Group