Roundup credited for decrease in gang violence

BOSTON — The streets are quieter these days in East Boston, but the marchers still gather in front of the police precinct house. They’ve done so nearly every Thursday evening for the past four summers, after a rash of brutal killings and attempted murders by the violent street gang MS-13 struck fear into residents of this majority Latin American neighborhood.

A dozen or so residents, police officers and church pastors set out across the neighborhood, handing out purple wristbands calling for peace and holding handwritten signs bearing messages in Spanish like “Los Jovenes Son El Futuro” (Youth are the Future) and “Juntos Por La Paz” (Together for Peace).

Police and community leaders in East Boston and other nearby cities where MS-13 has long been active credit a case winding down in Boston federal court for the current break in gang violence.

Some 60 members of MS-13 were rounded up by the FBI and state and local police in January 2016 in what authorities have touted as nation’s largest single takedown of the notorious Salvadoran gang. Most of those still awaiting sentencing are scheduled to have their day in court this month.

“It gave us a restart,” Chelsea Police Capt. Keith Houghton said of the raid. “We now have a chance to work with new kids coming to our community to show them things are different. You can come here and have a chance to be normal kid and not get mixed up in gangs.”

Since the Boston raid, violent crime in the communities where MS-13 is most active has dropped, though police note that less-heralded crackdowns on other violent gangs, including MS-13’S rival 18th Street, have also been a factor.

The crime decline also hasn’t been across the board, data provided by local police departments show.

In Chelsea, violent crime has dropped 46 percent this year compared with the same period in 2015, the year before the raid.

Nearby Lynn saw a similar crime drop — about 21 percent fewer major crimes in 2017 compared with 2015, but within that drop was a spike in murders — from just two in 2015 to 12 last year. Lynn Police Capt. Michael Kmiec said that while some of those 2017 killings were gang-related, they were not by MS13.

And in the East Boston neighborhood, there have been just two murders in the past two years, which police say are also not linked to MS13.