Drug-Related Violence Prompts City Action

An unusual slew of drug-related violence in Cambridge during the last two months has prompted city leaders to expand the local police presence and increase public outreach in an effort to quell residents’ unease.

Most city officials said that although the warmer months usually bring a higher rate of crime and violence, this year’s sudden uptick in shootings and stabbings has been uncommon.

“I think it is fair to say this is more than your typical summer emergence of greater incidence of crime and potentially violence,” City Councillor Sam Seidel said. “There seems to be something happening that requires real attention.”

According to Cambridge Police Commissioner Robert C. Haas, there are approximately eight to ten shooting incidents in the City annually. But this year, as of last month, there have already been at least eight—seven of which occurred during the months of May and June.

Haas said that most of the violence is drug-related, but both he and Mayor E. Denise Simmons said that rumors of an escalating drug war are not currently substantiated.

“I would not call it a drug war,” Simmons said. “It has not been defined to me by the police as a drug war.”

So far, the violence—which has included at least three stabbing incidents—has resulted in the deaths of two men: Justin Cosby, who was shot in Kirkland House at Harvard on May 18, and Jason Ellcock, whose body was found on Rindge Ave. on June 16.

The latest incident took place on June 21, when a 22-year-old man was shot in the leg while getting out of his car in the same North Cambridge neighborhood where Ellcock was shot. While no suspects have yet been apprehended in the case, the victim was arrested for illegally possessing his own gun, said Cambridge Police Spokesman Frank T. Pasquarello.

Haas said the recent spate of shootings has been notable because many of them occurred in the same geographical area—in most cases, in North Cambridge—at around the same time.

He said that “the dynamics of the shootings” this year have also been different. Usually, and as was the case last summer, the city encounters a series of related “retaliatory” shootings in which perpetrators attack each other, Haas said.

But this year, he said, the incidents may stem from two or three separate conflicts, although he added that it was too early to state which events might be related since investigations are still active.

Pasquarello did confirm that there is no evidence of a connection between the recent North Cambridge incidents and the Harvard shooting.

Despite reassurances from police, City Councillor Craig A. Kelley said some residents are worried.

“Residents have e-mailed me, they’ve stalked me on the street, they’ve called me,” he said. “People are concerned that what started out as a shooting here and a shooting there and a shooting some place else is spreading into something bigger, wider, more serious, with more potential fallout.”

Kelley said that even though the shootings have not involved random victims, the violence is nevertheless unsettling.

“Bullets don’t really care who they’re targeted for,” he said. “People shouldn’t be targeted in the first place. The fact that someone was a drug dealer and got killed doesn’t mean they are a pariah [who doesn’t] mean something to someone.”

Haas said the police department has taken measures to ensure residents’ safety, including bolstering regular walking patrols and deploying supplemental bike patrols.

He also noted that Cambridge, unlike many other cities, uses a strategic deployment system that is based on accumulated crime and violence statistics. Areas with high levels of suspicious activity are sent more police personnel, and he encouraged residents to report incidents and to check the daily police crime log posted online.

“There’s the notion that the police can do it all, but that’s erroneous. Without the partnership of the community, it makes it very difficult to prevent or stop crime from happening,” Haas said.

Simmons, who issued a statement last week pledging to address residents’ concerns about safety, said she and the City Council would be working closely with the police department, as well as representatives from the Cambridge Housing Authority and private real estate management companies, to formulate proposals for curbing crime and violence.

No official plans have been announced so far, but Simmons emphasized that the City’s safety has always been a priority and said that conversations about crime and violence prevention have been ongoing.

“It looks like we’re responding but what we’re implementing now are things we’ve thought about prior to these events,” Simmons said.

But Kelley said he believes that resolving the issue of drug-related violence will require looking beyond immediate solutions such as increasing police patrols and establishing social programs.

“At the end of the day, what we really need to do is reevaluate our war on drugs,” he said. “A lot of it has to do with the abysmal way we’ve been addressing our drug issues. It’s not really a surprise that we have systemic violence developing from that.”

Pasquarello, the police spokesman, said he suspects this kind of violence would decrease if convicted perpetrators could be retained in jail indefinitely, rather than be released to become repeat offenders. He said that the people involved in the recent incidents were “not strangers” to the police department, and Haas said that a number of the individuals were in fact released from prison around the same time as each other.

But Haas added that he is not sure if this was a major factor in this year’s flare-up of violence, and also pointed out that maintaining enough prisons, which are often already overcrowded, can be expensive and impractical.

“We know that there’s a certain portion of the population that gets released that will become reengaged in the activities for which they are arrested,” he said. “Having said that, you can’t just lock up people for the rest of their lives based on what you may think they might do.”

—Staff writer Michelle L. Quach can be reached at mquach@fas.harvard.edu.