Our good friend City Councillor Craig A. Kelley, who for 10 years was the president of the North Cambridge Stabilization Committee, send us a follow-up on the response from the Cambridge Police Department to the Clifton Street shooting:
Folks:
I’ve attached a .pdf [Download Police Department Clifton St comm] from CPD describing their respsonse to the Clifton Street shooting last month, as well as pasting an email from CPD inviting people to another meeting on Tuesday, 8 March (Shrove Tuesday- I will miss this meeting as we have an event that evening at Church). Also- please pass this email on to anyone you think may wish to attend the CPD meeting.
The CPD’s response is interesting, but not entirely accurate when it describes how the Alert system is used. I’ve gotten alerts from CPD for one-off events and CPD is interested in how to better use the system to meet the community’s needs.
More importantly, the report notes that their have been 6 shootings in the immediate area in the past 18 months. I’m not sure how many stabbins there have been- pehaps none, but there have been some over the years.
City Councillor Craig A. Kelley
My point is, if every 8 block area in Cambridge had the same level of violence as this stretch of Clifton/Jackson/Jefferson Park/Rindge Towers, it’d be a stupendous number.
That the violence is especially concentrated here reflects something unique about this area and we need to address that issue to tamp down the violence.
This report discusses that issue somewhat but does not talk about using cameras in this particular area, both to grab license plates and to provide photo evidence of pedestrian issues in specific places (such as the Dudley Street crosswalk), to make it less attractive to criminals. Plus, CPD has known about some of these problems for 2.5 years in great detail and yet at our last neighborhood meeting staff expressed the need for more community information.
To those of us who have been pushing this issue for a while, that expressed need for still more information was really, really frustrating. For those people who live closer to the problem than I do, it is also really, really frightening.
My hope is that we’ll start to see a better and more responsive partnership between CPD and the local community as this issue moves forward- a partnership that we can use as a working Cambridge-specific model in the future (as opposed to more generic, generally overly broad and unsuccessful ‘crime watch’ attempts).
Feel free to come Monday to talk about this issue and express what you’d like to see.
And, if you don’t have a Shrove Tuesday conflict, I hope you can make the CPD meeting on Tuesday, 8 March. Since I can’t make that meeting, I’d be happy to talk with people before or afterwards if there is a desire and as schedules allow.
Thanks a lot.
Craig
Letter from the city police to the North Cambridge neighborhood:
Dear North Cambridge Community, On behalf of the Cambridge Police Department I would like to thank all of the North Cambridge residents who attended the community meeting which was held on Tuesday, February 7, 2011 at Cornerstone Village Cohousing. We look forward to strengthening our partnership with the community by continuing to work together. The Cambridge Police Department has formulated both short and long term strategies to address the concerns in your neighborhood, specifically: Uniformed police patrols have been increased in the area of Clifton Street and Dudley Street and will continue for the foreseeable future. Covert & overt surveillance is ongoing. Walking officers have been instructed to maintain a visible presence when not responding to calls for service. A long-term plan has been identified that includes increasing communication between residents and police and working with other city agencies to address recurring problems in the area. The Department of Public Works has also been notified about the road conditions on Jackson Street and will be addressing that issue in a timely manner. The Cambridge Police Department would like to thank Cornerstone Village Cohousing for allowing us to utilize their community room for our meetings and look forward to your participation in the upcoming meeting. This meeting has been scheduled for Tuesday, March 8, 2011 and will take place at the same location, Cornerstone Housing, 175 Harvey Street at 7:00pm. We invite you to visit Please also remember to contact your Neighborhood Sergeants via e-mail at northcambridge@cambridgepolice.org or by calling 617-349-9339 with any questions or concerns you may have. Sincerely, Christopher J. Burke Superintendent of Police Support Services Division
Cambridge Police Department
617-349-3370
cburke@cambridgepolice.org
Comments