Events Timeline 1989 - 1996

• Crack-cocaine hits Boston streets; homicide rate begins to rise
  
  
• A young girl, Tiffany Moore is killed in the cross-fire of a drive-by shooting; after this, the Boston Police Department (BPD) publicly acknowledges for the first time that Boston has a gang problem

• The BPD reassigns its City-wide Anti-crime Unit to neighborhoods of highest gang activity
  
  
• A Superior Court Judge throws out a gun charge against a gang member, citing violation of his 4^th amendment rights
  
  
• The Carol Stuart murder heightens tensions between police and the African-American community, following it the BPD implements a search-on-sight policy for all young black men

• Peak year for violence in Boston: 152 homicides, including 62 youth homicides, aged 24 and under
  
  
• The BPD disbands the City-wide Anti-crime Unit amid furor over search-on-sight policy and creates the Anti-Gang Violence Unit (the gang unit) to focus on intervention, deterrence, and prevention, drawing on community policing approaches
  
  
• Mayor Ray Flynn charters the Boston Community Centers Streetworker Program, to provide outreach directly to gang-involved youth
  
  
• The Halloween gang rape and murder of Kimberly Ray Harbour
  
  
• The probation department of Dorchester District Court creates the Youthful Offender (YO) Unit to collect information about gang activity and more rigorously enforce terms of probation of gang-involved youth

• Mayor Flynn appoints an eight-member panel headed by James D. St. Clair to undertake a comprehensive management audit of the BPD, in the wake of widespread claims of police brutality and mismanagement
  
  
• The Take Back the Street Crusade: a week-long initiative by African-American clergy to reclaim a vacant lot taken over by gangs for drug dealing

• The St. Clair Commission Report severely criticizes the BPD for poor administration and a failure to institute community policing
  
  
• The BPD begins a process of organizational change focused on implementing community policing
  
  
• Gang violence erupts at a funeral at Morningstar Baptist Church; this incident awakens Boston’s religious community to the severity of the problem and galvanizes African-American clergy into a more activist street ministry
  
  
• The Boston TenPoint Coalition forms around a plan of action to reach out to youth at risk for drugs and gang violence, launches the Friday night street ministry
  
  
• The BPD, in partnership with the Boston Management Consortium, launches an in-service training program for all personnel; this week-long, off-site program on neighborhood policing principles, including a working session with Streetworkers on gang issues
  
  
• The BPD’s gang unit organizes bi-weekly gang meetings to share information across police areas, invites probation officers to attend
  
  
• Operation Night Light begins with two gang-unit officers and two probation officers from the Dorchester YO group riding together at night to enforce probation terms
  
  
• The TenPoint Coalition organizes a neighborhood "police tribunal" to air charges of police misconduct

• Boston Police Commissioner Bratton creates a sub-unit of the Anti-gang Violence Unit, the Youth Violence Strike Force (YVSF): a multi-agency unit to focus specifically on the problem of youth homicides
  
  
• The TenPoint Coalition awards its first annual Police and Youth Leadership Awards, a first public show of support for police working against gang violence
  
  
• Streetworkers and gang members organize the Peace League: a summer program bringing rival gangs together for competitive basketball under three inviolable rules–no weapons, no spectators, no disrespect
  
  
• Citizens for Safety, the BPD, the Suffolk County District Attorney, and the City of Boston initiate the Gun BuyBack/Amnesty Program, purchasing some 1,300 guns, mostly revolvers and semi-automatic pistols
  
  
• Acting mayor Thomas M. Menino is elected to a full term, comes into office as a strong supporter of community policing and committed to providing resources to the Streetworkers and other anti-gang violence initiatives
  
  
• Don Stern becomes U.S. Attorney for Massachusetts, begins talking to the BPD and others about how federal prosecutors can contribute to the work on the problem of gang violence
  
  
• Louis D. Brown, a 15-year-old honor student is shot while on his way to an anti-gang violence Christmas party

• Freedom Summer: a collaboration among the TenPoint Coalition, the Jewish Community Relations Council, and the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Boston to bring voluneers of all ages into the two most violent Boston precincts to work on programs for math and science literacy, court advocacy and alternative sentencing, street ministry, voter education and registration, health and healing, and project documentation and evaluation
  
  
• The first Summer of Opportunity, sponsored by John Hancock Mutual Life Insurance Company and Northeastern University: a program to give at-risk kids job internships and life skills training in the summer, then follow them into the start of the school year, or help with college and job training
  
  
• The Street Smarts Initiative, coordinated by the Boston Management Consortium, combines a variety of programs into one "holistic approach to violence prevention"–the Peace League, the Gun BuyBack/Amnesty Program, and a multi-arts school contest on the theme "We Can Stop the Violence"
  
  
• A warrant sweep in Mission Hill housing project, with combined forces of 12 agencies, arrest of 135 chronic offenders, with no citizen protest; it becomes the model for 6 more sweeps in projects over the next year–Operation Clean Sweep
  
  
• Operation Scrap Iron: a YVSF crackdown on gun violence in the Uphams Corner neighborhood of Dorchester, combined with a collaborative effort with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms to get guns out of circulation, break up a gun supply connection

• Boston Gun Project Working Group convened: regular group meetings at YVSF offices in an inter-agency problem-solving process to develop an improved approach to deterrence of gang violence; the outcome is Operation Cease Fire
  
  
• The gang unit merges into YVSF, making it a 50-person, night-and-day operation
  
  
• The Peace League, now 19 teams from across Boston, expands to include a career development component, providing skills training and counseling
  
  
• The Street Smarts Initiative expands, with programs to provide career counseling and training to Peace League participants and to train Streetworkers and police officers in conflict resolution and mediation

• Operation Cease Fire begins with the first gang-specific crackdown, on Dorchester’s Vamp Hill Kings, and beginning of meetings with gangs; formal announcement of the policy
  
  
• A coalition of agencies creates the Youth Service Providers Network to support police efforts against gang violence, begins placing full-time social workers in police precinct houses, to connect kids in trouble and their families to available social services
  
  
• In a joint action, the BPD and DEA arrest Intervale Posse members on the first day of school