Minister: The carnage must stop

Minister: The carnage must stop

By Laura Crimaldi | Wednesday, September 29, 2010 | http://www.bostonherald.com | Local Coverage

Photo by Angela Rowlings

One of the city’s leading black ministers yesterday said a grassroots community effort is the answer to the violence ravaging the Hub.
“You can’t cop your way out of this,” said the Rev. Eugene Rivers while visiting Woolson Street, scene of a mass murder that left a toddler and three adults dead and another man clinging to life last night. “If we had 10,000 cops or 10,000 more cops, that’s no guarantee that the individual who went into this house wouldn’t have done the same thing.”
The Morningstar Baptist Church, which is located near the crime scene, was open last night to mourners. Temple Salem SDA Church in Dorchester also was keeping its sanctuary open to grieving friends and family, said Hugues Lafond, an elder with the church.
Rivers said the eruption of violence demands a vigorous response from the community.
“We got to get our hands around the culture of violence because our response currently is not adequate,” he said. “There is no organized, systematic strategy or model that’s being deployed on the streets, community wise.”
The violence facing the city now is more chaotic feeling than the drug wars that erupted more than a decade ago by dealers protecting their turf for peddling crack cocaine, Rivers said.
“Younger people are more violent,” he said.
Calling upon members of the black community to share what they know about the murders with police, Rivers pleaded: “Step up.”
Article URL: http://www.bostonherald.com/news/regional/view.bg?articleid=1285100