By Adrian Walker
The Boston Globe
As dusk fell on Bowdoin Street in Dorchester Friday night, the street was filling with pedestrians and traffic, even as many businesses began lowering their iron grates.
In the middle of the action, greeting passersby, stood Officer Rupert Leonard, who has walked a beat on Bowdoin for 26 years.
“This is home for me,” Leonard said. “I’ve watched a lot of people grow up. And, unfortunately, I’ve watched a lot of people die.”
Leonard is a throwback, the rare cop who has never wanted to do anything but walk a beat. “Some people want to do the gang unit or drugs. I like to walk and talk.”
That’s the unusual attitude that Police Commissioner Edward F. Davis hopes to revive in the department. No one ever called a press conference to announce the demise of community policing, but the truth is that Davis took over a department that had mostly given up on the idea. He said last week that he wants to get police officers out of their cruisers and back on the streets.
“The philosophy behind community policing is that by building ties with the community, you can deal with things before they lead to crime,” Davis said. “I firmly believe that if you take care of the small things, the big things will take care of themselves.”
Units are now walking beats in three areas: Bowdoin-Geneva, Grove Hall, and downtown. I spent time Friday with all three, accompanied by Deputy Superintendent Daniel Linskey.
Besides significant crime problems, Bowdoin-Geneva and Grove Hall are linked by something else: Both are neighborhoods where relations between residents and police are strained. So one of the goals is for the public to encounter police in less confrontational situations than usual, to see them as problem-solvers rather than enforcers.
While some shop owners seemed happy to see the beefed-up police presence, that reaction wasn’t unanimous. “I don’t feel a bit safer with you here,” one youth snapped at a group of officers on the corner of Bowdoin and Olney streets. Others openly wondered how long the police planned to be around.
The skepticism was understandable. Two weeks ago, Quintessa Blackwell, 18, was shot to death on Olney. Just a few hours after we walked around, Chiara Levin would lose her life in a shooting at a late-night house party on Geneva Avenue. Bowdoin-Geneva’s faith in law enforcement is shaky.
Earlier in the evening, the problems were less dramatic. Three teenagers were loitering in the door of a convenience store, and the owner thought they were discouraging customers from coming in.
Linskey struck up a conversation with them, and eventually told them he would help them find summer jobs. He had an officer take their names and numbers while two others urged the store’s owner to post a “No Trespassing” sign, so police would know to keep an eye on the store.
Developing relationships with merchants is the starting point for all units. Sergeant Nora Baston said in Grove Hall, “I hope in three months I get to know the residents as well as the store owners.”
She said her unit, in its first two weeks, had already discovered problems in Grove Hall that they hadn’t expected. “They tell you things they wouldn’t call 911 for,” she said.
As residents seemed aware, this kind of initiative can be short-lived, which Linskey readily admitted. “The biggest challenge will be not pulling out the resources,” he said. “There will be a crisis someplace and someone will say, `There hasn’t been a shooting on Bowdoin in four months, we’ve had three in the past week. Why don’t we move the resources over here?’ But the mayor is committed to this, and so is the commissioner.”
As Saturday’s homicide underscored, no one will be declaring victory in Bowdoin-Geneva any time soon. In the meantime, cops on the street will be testing the theory that fixing small things can reduce major crime. Experts on crime say it will, but the streets themselves will finally tell the story.
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