Patrick Vows To Fight Crime

BOSTON—In a meeting with Harvard students pushing for more state spending on violence prevention, Governor Deval L. Patrick ’78 promised on Friday to up funding for three anti-crime initiatives, but declined to name specific dollar amounts.

After facing criticism from students saying he has done too little to counter black-on-black crime, Patrick invited seven Harvard undergrads and more than 20 other students and community leaders from the Boston area to the state house.

According to students and a University of Massachusetts professor who attended the meeting, the governor pledged to develop a comprehensive strategy to fight crime and to commit resources to after-school jobs for teenagers, staffing for community centers, and job-training for young adults.

But Patrick emphasized that he could not promise any precise amount, and that his principal role should be that of a coordinator of local, state, and community initiatives.

“I don’t have a checkbook,” he said in an interview with The Crimson after the meeting. “I have a legislature.”

Stressing his role as a facilitator, Patrick spoke of the need to make connections with residents who have a stake in ending the violence.

“We need to build bridges with youth workers and, frankly, with gang members,” he said.

Friday’s meeting, which was closed to the press, came after recent violence in Boston led high school students, community groups, and the Harvard Black Students Association (BSA) to call for a change in policy from Patrick.

At the meeting, the BSA partnered with the Harvard Black Men’s Forum and Operation Greensboro, a high school anti-violence group, to demand that Patrick commit $50 million to crime prevention in the six most violent Massachusetts cities.

BSA Political Action Chair Malcolm R. Rivers ’09 said Patrick questioned the origins of that estimate and refused to say that he would press the legislature for that amount.

Nonetheless, Rivers said he was pleased with Friday’s meeting, and described Patrick’s promises as a good first step toward a better policy for fighting violent crime.

“Eventually we got down to brass tacks,” Rivers said. “I was actually surprised that we got him to commit to anything in that form.”

He added, however, that he hoped to see more specifics soon.

“We’re going to stay on top of it,” he said. “We just have to remind the governor every once in a while. I think he will come through for us.”

BSA President Sarah Lockridge-Steckel ’09, echoing Rivers, said the BSA hopes to keep attention focused on the violence prevention throughout the next few months.

She said the governor has informally agreed to speak at Harvard in December to outline his strategy for fighting crime. She added that the BSA also plans to conduct a February poll of high-school students to collect their views of black-on-black violence and to present a report in April evaluating Patrick’s progress on crime prevention.

“I hope that his response is timely,” she said. “We really need something to be developed in the near future.”

Patrick’s plans for fighting crime came under scrutiny in October after many in the black community demanded that he devote more attention to urban violence.

On Oct. 17, the BSA held a press conference and vigil at the scene of a Roxbury shooting and demanded that Patrick craft a strategy for fighting crime and provide more funding for anti-crime programs. The students noted that Patrick had proposed $1 billion in new funding for biotechnology initiatives last May, and only $15 million for preventing crime.

During the two weeks before the vigil, a 13-year-old was shot and killed outside his home in Dorchester and a Pop Warner football coach was shot in the leg on the basketball court that the BSA chose as the scene for its press conference.

—Staff writer David K. Hausman can be reached at dhausman@fas.harvard.edu.