Boston Police Commissioner Ed Davis: deviants will ‘pay a price’
Hub murder rate soars
CRIME SCENE: A makeshift memorial in the form of graffiti covers the convenience store on Warren Street where a mother of four was gunned down Saturday.
By O’Ryan Johnson | Wednesday, October 27, 2010 | http://www.bostonherald.com | Local Coverage
Photo by Mark Garfinkel
As the city’s grim murder toll climbs, Boston cops are zeroing in on gangbangers to issue one-on-one and group warnings that there will be consequences for gun violence, Boston Police Commissioner Edward Davis said yesterday.
“Individuals who do this are going to pay a price,” Davis said. “There has been an uptick in violence and it’s concerning, to say the least. We have been working hard to target those individuals.”
Davis said members of the Youth Violence Strike Force, known as the gang squad, have been going face-to-face with the city’s impact players after seven shootings — including three murders — rocked the city last weekend.
The homicide toll this year is 59, compared to 41 at the same time last year. The last time there were 59 murdered by this date was 2007, when the city recorded a total of 66 homicides. In 2005, when the city reached a 10-year high with 75 homicides, Boston had notched 58 murders by the end of October.
Yesterday, Ethel Berry- visited the Dorchester intersection where the city’s most recent homicide victim, her son Jermaine Berry, 30, was shot and killed Monday.
“He was a good dad,” she said of Berry, who was the father of two boys. “He was a good person, too.”
Ethel Berry identified her son’s body Monday night after cops came to her door. Detectives slid Crimestoppers pamphlets under the windshield wipers of cars along the street as she spoke feet from where her son was killed.
Jermaine Berry had a lengthy arrest record, according to filings at Dorchester District Court. He had seven cases that included a 1997 arrest for assault and battery on a police officer, a 2003 assault and battery charge and a 2006 charge for carrying a firearm without a license. The dispositions of the cases were not available yesterday.
Police said Berry was shot about 8 p.m. at Geneva Avenue and Waldeck Street. He was taken to Boston Medical Center, where he was later pronounced dead.
A man shot early Saturday morning succumbed to his injuries yesterday, police said. He was not identified. Police said that shooting happened about 1:49 a.m. near Breezeway bar on Blue Hill Avenue. The victim was taken to Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, where he died yesterday.
Tahitia Milton, 39, of Roxbury was identified by police as the victim in a Saturday afternoon bloodbath in a Warren Street convenience store. Milton and a man were sprayed by bullets from an assault rifle. A woman who answered the door at Milton’s home yesterday declined comment.
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