City violence is back on the front burner

Rev. Bruce Wall has stirred the pot.

Not that long ago, Wall was alone, a squeaky voice screaming about the growing murder rate in Boston and calling it a “state of emergency.”

He is not alone anymore.

“I cannot keep up with the requests from the media outlets who want to speak to me,” Wall said in one of his recent mass e-mailings. “I do not know why my words are resonating with so many people.”

The reasons are pretty clear.

Last week, Curtis Sliwa of the famed Guardian Angels came to Boston at Wall’s invitation, and while the shootings and murders have not stopped, the visibility of the inner-city crime problem is now on the front burner.

More attention means more police, more community involvement and more resources.

And more politics.

In another e-mailing, Wall described Mayor Thomas M. Menino as trying to isolate him from other clergy and city officials. Despite repeated invitations, neither Menino nor Boston Police Commissioner Edward Davis have met with Wall.

“No matter what the city officials say about me,” Wall said in an e-mail, “I will keep the door open and continue to hope that the Mayor of Boston and the Police Commissioner will soften their tone, stop asking local pastors to withdraw from me, and choose to work with me, and all of the pastors, activists and residents in the City of Boston.”

So far, unity remains an elusive goal.

On Tuesday, the Black Ministerial Alliance (BMA) met with the Boston TenPoint Coalition and Davis and later announced that about 50 members of the BMA would participate in several efforts in Boston’s worst neighborhoods. Notably absent was Wall.

Starting on April 14, the BMA said, Boston police officers and members of clergy are scheduled to walk through crime-ridden neighborhoods. Trainings for these walks are scheduled on April 12, from 8 a.m. to 10 a.m. at the Charles Street AME Church in Roxbury.

The BMA has also pledged to work with Rev. Jeffrey Brown of Boston’s TenPoint Coalition to intervene in beefs between rival gangs. On top of that, Tuesday’s meeting also produced what is being called “Operation Home Front,” a program that involves working with Boston public schools, MBTA police and BMA clergy to visit the homes of youths considered to be at-risk.

Late Tuesday evening, yet another meeting occurred between Menino and Gov. Deval Patrick. Though the meeting was private, reports indicate that the topic of the meeting was the recent spate in violence and, more importantly, how the state and city can work more effectively to solve the problem.

As it is now, state police are already patrolling streets in Roxbury and Dorchester. And while some crime prevention programs have been eliminated from Patrick’s proposed budget in order to cut an estimated $1.3 billion deficit, a Patrick spokesman said the governor is dead-set on adding $30 million to hire more police officers and bolster community policing efforts.

“The language in the budget is intentionally broad in order to allow local communities and public safety officials to have more discretion in distributing dollars to areas where they are most needed,” explained a spokesman for the governor’s office.

One such program now on the budget-cutting floor is the Shannon Community Safety Initiative, which provided the city of Boston with $3 million to fund prison re-entry programs and law enforcement strategies on gang violence.

At a recent State House rally calling for the reinstatement of the Shannon grant program, Diluvina Vazquez Allard of the Safe Cities/Safe Communities Coalition saw the grant as part of the solution to stopping violence in the Commonwealth.

“I’m mad about living in a community where I feel a fear of violence,” Vazquez said. “I’m very sad about all these young people at risk and how this impacts their families.”

Last year, Brocton programs received about $600,000 in Shannon grant funds.

“Governor Patrick absolutely loved the Shannon grant program,” a Patrick spokesman said. “But this represents some of the hard choices facing the state.”

As far as Wall is concerned, every effort is important.

“We do not have time, or the right, to act in a way that does not set a moral tone for those who are waiting to hear there is help on the way,” Wall said. “We need to be in the street, working together, calling for peace.”