By Gal Tziperman Lotan
On an unusually warm morning last Monday in Dorchester’s Codman Square, a 19-year-old man stood in front of the post office at 554 Washington St. Then, according to police reports, a 20-year-old male and 16-year-old female, both of Dorchester, allegedly walked up to the man with a gun.
“They shot him in the head, shot him in the body and left,” said the Reverend Bruce Wall of Codman Square’s Global Ministries in an interview with The News.
“Head shots are intentional, and head shots are planned,” he said, raising his voice.
As of Monday night’s police report, the victim was in critical condition. He is now one of Boston’s victims of violence, many of whom are seeking retaliation, Wall said.
The number of programs treating victims and their families for free is set to shrink by over $1 million in fiscal year 2010 because of federal budget cuts to the Victim of Crime Act, which funds some victim treatment programs in the state, said Janet Fine, executive director of the Massachusetts Office for Victim Assistance (MOVA).
MOVA, which receives the federal money and administers it to programs throughout the state, will not be affected in a major way, Fine said, though a fee the agency receives for administering the funds will be scaled back.
Fine declined to comment on the amount in MOVA’s total budget, which is state-funded.
Programs MOVA funds include counseling services, legal assistance, housing advocacy, domestic violence programs and crisis intervention referrals. Services will remain free, but there will be fewer available, she said.
“More victims of violence will go without services,” Fine said.
MOVA will likely end up funding fewer programs, and giving less resources to programs it continues to fund, Fine said.
Wall stressed the importance of such programs.
“We have more victims of violence than we do homicide victims,” Wall said.
As of Nov. 30, there have been 57 homicides, 256 non-fatal shootings where the victim was struck by gunfire and 3,665 aggravated assaults in 2008, according to Boston Police Department (BPD) statistics from the BPD news site.
This marks an 8.5 percent decrease in all categories from the same period of time in 2007, when there were 64 homicides, 262 non-fatal shootings and 4,015 aggravated assaults.
Bernadette Louis, administrative coordinator for the Victims of Violence Program at Cambridge Health Alliance in Central Square, said she has noticed less people coming into the private center for paid counseling recently.
“In tough times, like we have right now, in times of hardship, people tend not to come and seek services because they’re probably short on money and short on funding,” she said.
The center offers psychological outpatient therapy to between 300 and 500 victims of violence and their loved ones, ages 18 and up a year, she said. Louis said she did not have exact numbers for attendance in recent months.
The center also offers three free services: a community response service, which sends staff members to violence-plagued communities to help deal with the aftermath of a violent act; a legal advocacy service, which offers support in court during criminal cases; and a Center for Homicide Bereavement, where family members and friends of people killed in homicides or accidents can seek individual or group therapy, Louis said.
“Many times, when something bad happens in a community, people are at a loss,” Louis said. “They feel desperate, they feel discouraged, and they don’t know who to turn to. We help them find out how to be independent, how to look at services and how to find resources to help themselves out.”
Participants in the program come in approximately equal numbers from Cambridge and Boston, Louis said.
Ann Scales, director of communications at the Boston Public Health Commission, said the city funds a Boston Medical Center program which offers emergency care and counseling services.
“We look at violence as a public health issue, meaning that it is preventable,” she said.
The program, which started in 2006 with a $50,000 grant from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, also involves improving trauma response services, Scales said.
“[The program is] more about trying to make sure that when violence happens, what can we do to prevent it from happening again, and one way is to reach out to the victims or the perpetrators,” she said.
Whether it’s a homicide or a shooting, Scales said, the city works with the victims.
“It’s fair to say that people certainly appreciate the help that we’ve provided them with,” she said.
Scales said she believes the right government programs can reduce street violence.
“If the resources and the support that young people, or old people for that matter, need, if they’re in place, then you’re less likely to see people turn to violence to settle the score or to put food on the table,” she said.
The Boston Medical Center program also links people to services which help with enrolling in GED programs, job training and acquiring temporary housing, she said.
“We put a program in place that allows the lives of the young people to flourish,” Scales said. “We structure the program to meet the needs of young people and their families.”
-Lisa Newman contributed to this report.
