Cops? Gangs? The Mayor? Whose Fault?

Comments sections in a number of posts below get into the Saturday night shooting that left one dead and three wounded at the Saima Park function hall, where a family was celebrating a 15th birthday. Some comments allude to gang involvement, almost all decry it as a another black mark on the city in general and the mayor and police chief in particular.

We're pretty uncertain about the gang part. Yes, it doesn't do the city any good, but we're not sure how much of an indictment this is on city leaders. Here we go... First, the alleged story: A family throws a birthday party. Late in the evening, some kind of fight starts outside, and it ends with shots. A 17-year-old is arrested in the shooting. Stories in Telegram, Globe, and Herald don't mention gangs. At all. (Sadly, as of 9:15 this morning, the Sentinel website has zero on this. Nothing. Yikes.)

So, for now, we're putting the gang issue aside until we're told otherwise. You can make some assumptions, but they likely would be based more on ethnic and age stereotype rather than publicly displayed facts. That said, it has all the earmarks of gang violence or the act of a gang member. We're not taking that as fact, so we're going to go with "youth violence" as our description for now.

In every city in Massachusetts, gangs and youth violence is an issue to some degree or another. If it was easily remedied, it would be by now, don't you think? The reality of this battle is that it is just about unwinnable. All the authorities can do is suppress it as much as possible. The question is, is Fitchburg doing all it can? There are about 90 cops on the police force. This is overly simplistic, but with three shifts, that means there are 30 cops a shift available. Obviously, some get days off. So that leaves, what, 20 cops a shift? Which means maybe 10 cars out on the street at once. Is that realistically good coverage for the city on a Saturday night, with or without shootings at 15th birthdays?

The city is adding officers when it can, but obviously has a long way to go. What would help in the aftermath is a good description of what the city is doing to battle gangs and whatever category of things that lead 17-year-olds to have guns. Is there a plan? What is it? To what extent is there a gang problem in the city? How many gangs? Roughly how many members? How good of a grasp does the PD have on where they operate and how they can be squeezed?

To expect the police to know that problems would happen at this particular event is too much. But to expect the city to crack down on the problems that created this incident is not. We ask a lot from the cops -- protect downtown, make sure my neighborhood is safe, fight gangs, get rid of the drugs, watch the parks, and so on. For a short-handed force, that's asking a lot. But such is life. The police can't be everywhere all the time -- Saturday proved that -- but they can be where the help is needed most day-in an day-out, making the city safer in the long term.