Book 'em

Gang turf is a strange place to find a Harvard academic. But David M. Kennedy is a foot soldier in Boston's war on youth violence.

by Jason Gay

In May of 1996, in response to a outbreak of bloody gun violence in Dorchester's Bowdoin Street neighborhood, a phalanx of law-enforcement and social-service officials assembled a meeting at the city's red-brick district courthouse. The guests of honor were members of the Vamp Hill Kings, a fearsome young Bowdoin Street gang held largely responsible for the recent rounds of highly publicized gunfire -- shots that resulted in several deaths and frustrated community leaders who had fought to keep area streets safe.

The Kings swaggered into the courthouse not knowing what to expect. Some suspected a police set-up. But they quickly learned that this Dorchester meeting wasn't a sting; it was a stark warning. Fed up with the gunplay, every arm of Boston's law-enforcement network -- an unprecedented team of local, state, and federal agents -- drew a line in the sand. Sick of the bullets and body bags, city police, probation officers, federal prosecutors, and Boston Community Centers streetworkers issued the gang members the same blunt message: we're no longer going to tolerate any violence. Period. If you commit violent acts, the Kings were told, you will be dealt with swiftly, in the harshest way, by every possible extension of the law -- no mercy, no slack. The body count was over. Enough was enough.

In the courthouse audience was David M. Kennedy, a senior researcher in the Criminal Justice Policy and Management program at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government. A meeting on gang violence might be a strange place to find an academic, especially one from Harvard, but Dorchester was familiar turf for the 39-year-old Kennedy. For several years, the suburban-Detroit native had been working with police, probation officers, and prosecutors, studying Boston's youth-violence epidemic. He had personally interviewed dozens of gang members and befriended streetworkers who counsel at-risk kids. And with the help of Harvard colleagues Anthony A. Braga and Anne M. Piehl, he has assembled his observations over the past three years in a series of scholarly articles describing Boston's pioneering efforts to combat youth violence.

Today, Kennedy's work embodies a unique, dynamic bond between Boston's academic and law-enforcement communities, two groups that haven't always found it easy to work together. More important, it's helped promote the city's successful anti-violence program as an innovative model for other communities to follow.

"David's been able to make his research practical," says Boston police commissioner Paul Evans. "He's been able to capture what the average street cop already knew."

Kennedy, who has shoulder-length brown hair and a soft-spoken demeanor, tries to minimize his contribution to Boston's war on youth violence, saying that it pales in comparison to the day-to-day efforts of police, probation officers, and streetworkers. Everything he has accomplished, Kennedy says, owes a large debt the "remarkable" cooperation among the city's numerous law-enforcement and violence-prevention agencies. They were the ones who brought Kennedy into their world -- including that May meeting in Dorchester.

More than a year later, Kennedy still calls the meeting with the Vamp Hill Kings -- known as a "Ceasefire intervention" -- one of the most dramatic events he has ever witnessed. Watching the "zero tolerance" ultimatum register upon the Kings that night, Kennedy hoped they got the message. They did. Other gangs apparently got it, too. Today, there is a cautious optimism in Boston neighborhoods that the youth-violence crisis of the late 1980s and early '90s is a thing of the past.

Kennedy says the rest of the nation is watching: "There was this slight feeling of apocalypse in the late '80s and early '90s. People felt this was an inexorable slide -- that things were more dangerous than ever, and would be more dangerous in the future. [But] I think that feeling is changing, and what Boston has done has fueled that to a certain extent."

Part 2

Jason Gay can be reached at jgay@phx.com.