Saving the Boston Youth from escalating violence

For almost the past decade, Boston has been riddled with an epidemic of youth gun violence that more often than not ends in the untimely death of Boston’s youth.  Many in Boston still remember the horrific November murders of Eyanna Flonory as she lay in the streets holding her slain baby boy Amani Smith, along with the three other victims Simba Martin, Levaughn Washum-Garrison and Marcus Hurd in the Blue Hill Avenue neighborhood of Boston as reported in the Boston Globe.  Through the years, Boston has experienced young men being shot in broad daylight while waiting at MBTA stops, teenagers getting stabbed and murdered on packed public transportation buses, and even the murder of a 15- year old young man preparing to take the bus at Dudley station to school.  According to city-data.com, for a small metropolis that has strict gun laws that come with mandatory gun sentencing, Boston’s murder rate clocked in at high 9.0 per 100K persons in 2012.  These daunting numbers has sparked the city of Boston to try to come up with ways to curb the violence and murders amongst its youth population.  The three main proposals bought by city officials and the mayor have been enforcing a  curfew, starting a gun buy-back program,  and adding more funds to train and hire more Boston Police.  Solutions like the three listed above don’t and will not work because they do not attack the main issues behind the youth gun violence epidemic.  In order to solve Boston’s youth gun violence outbreak, the city must find ways to address the culture disconnect of Boston’s youth, particularly the minority youth, more community involvement, and ways to make the guns being sold in the black market ineffective by capitalizing on the already shortage of ammunition all over the country.

Most recently, Bpdnews.com reported on Boston’s roll out of the new Boston Gun Buy-Back Program.  The buy- back program is an effort to allow individuals, especially the youth, to turn in unregistered guns without the fear of repercussions of being sentenced by Boston’s mandatory unlicensed/unregistered gun laws.  According to bpdnews.com, individuals will be able to drop off the guns at drop-off sites throughout Boston and surrounding metro areas and receive amnesty, as long as the gun was not used in a crime with no questions asked; and they will receive a $200 gift card in return; rifles and shotguns will be accepted but gift cards will not be given out for such firearms.  The Boston Police commissioner’s hope is that they will reduce guns on the street that can be used for future violent crimes.  Unfortunately, the police department failed to keep in mind three very important factors.  Firstly, Boston youth, especially ones from urban areas, are not going to turn guns in for gift cards.  These guns are bought and sold with cash for the reason of it being harder to track cash transactions, and urban youth are going to be mistrustful of any item given to them by a police agency that can be tracked.  Secondly, most urban youth committing these crimes and buying these firearms are doing so for protection or gang related issues, and a gift card is not incentive enough for them to give up a firearm that could very well save their lives.  Lastly, urban youth do not trust the police, and most guns circulating in the black market are stolen or have been used in a crime, so an individual will not risk turning in a gun that they bought underground not knowing what other crimes it has been used for risking being arrested for a crime that they did not commit.  A gun buy- back program would work more for residents in suburban areas who have acquired guns for protection or hobby reasons, not for urban youth who distrust the police and use such firearms for protection or have used these guns for previous crimes which they will not receive amnesty for.                                                      

A second proposal has been a city wide curfew for youth, which would require certain age groups to be in by 9PM on weekdays and midnight on weekends.  At first glance, this sounds like a great solution to youth violence and even cities like Oakland, Philadelphia, and Detroit at one time or another adopted such curfews.  Unfortunately, the numbers are showing consistently that when it comes to curbing juvenile violence, curfews do not work.  Michael Males, a social columnist, cited in News Works that in the city of Monrovia, California during the 90s, “juvenile arrests for non-curfew crimes increased 53 percent during the school months when the town's curfew was enforced. In July and August, when the curfew was not enforced, non-curfew youth crime went down 12 percent.” Lastly, it is important to remember that as quoted in News Work, “Nationwide, more than 80 percent of juvenile offenses take place between 9 a.m. and 10 p.m. - outside most curfews."  Enacting a curfew in Boston is just going to see an increase in youth violence occurrence outside of curfew times as national statistics have shown from cities across America, along with the fact that a lot of Boston’s recent youth murders have happened in broad daylight.                  

The last proposal is Governor Deval Patrick’s proposal to provide $11 million dollars to train and hire more police as reported by The Boston Globe.  Why won’t this work?  The urban youth already do not trust the police, and police presence in the city is not even coming close to solving the murders already happening in the city, especially with the unspoken urban rule of “no snitching; “ cops can’t even solve the murders on their current case load.  Police presence didn’t stop 15-year-old Soheil Turner from being gunned down in broad daylight in a busy Dudley station, and that crime still has not been solved.  Even Dorchester residents mentioned to Boston Globe journalists how rarely police are seen in their neighborhood. The fear amongst urban communities is that, as proven in the past, the increased police presence will only occur in the more affluent communities, not in the urban neighborhoods that seem to be forgotten when it comes to crime prevention.                                                     

So what’s the solution?  There needs to be a combined effort amongst community leaders, especially in providing after school outreach programs for at risk youth, and instead of trying to control a firearm black market, that has ballooned so far out of control that the government has neither the money or manpower to stop it, there needs to be a program limiting ammunition.  Community leaders need to address the fact that as stated in the Tampa Bay Times “8000 to 9000 African Americans are killed each year and 93 percent of them by [other] African Americans.” Outreach programs need to be created in Boston targeting urban youth to get involved with one another in projects such as after school programs, volunteering for organizations that will prompt them to work with and interact with one another reducing the risk of fighting against each other in gang violence.  The last great solution involves ammunition.  Ammunition is at a low in America causing individuals to stockpile them.  Boston should be making it law that only certain retailers can sell ammunition and track the bullets from manufacturers, to retailers, to buyers.  The legislation should also include that the gun owners are limited yearly to a set amount of bullets that they are allowed to buy and they can only buy ammunition for the guns they have legally registered in an electronic tracking system.  Guns can’t work without ammunition, and it is easier to track the already limited ammunition supply in America versus the estimated 310 million firearms circulating in the black market.  It is time that Boston got creative and bring into account more than statistics when coming up with solution to Boston youth violence.  City officials need to get out into the communities and learn and understand the culture and economic dynamics that are plying into the youth violence of Boston along with the lack of outreach programs offered to our youth versus coming up with bureaucratic programs that do not and will not work.