Crime decreases; student population increases in Mission Hill over the past decade :: Journalism Journalistic Essays

Crime decreases; student population increases in Mission Hill over the past decade "When I first started here, the area was so bad, that we had patrolling guard dogs. Now, the crime has gone down so much, and the neighborhood has become a better place," said Dave Welch, a 30-year resident of Mission Hill, member of the Mission Hill Crime Committee, and head of security for the New England Baptist Hospital, located on top of the neighborhood known as Mission Hill. Mission Hill is located in Roxbury, a part of Boston, and has been known in the past to have a bad reputation of being a tough area of crime and poverty. Many residents believe that the neighborhood's name was tainted after the murder of Carol Stuart in 1989. Her husband was found as the killer, but the media attention of the homicide brought negative connotations to the neighborhood, according to Mary Todd, a member of the Mission Hill Crime Committee and life long resident of Boston. "The Stuart murder a while back made the city focus on Mission Hill as an area that was overridden with crime, but they came from somewhere else to here. They weren't from here," says Todd. All crime in the neighborhood of Mission Hill has decreased over the past decade according to the analysis of 10 years worth of crime statistic reports from the Boston Police Department. The entire city is divided into 12 districts, and Mission Hill is part District B-2. Also included in District B-2 are parts of Fenway and parts of Roxbury. "Mission Hill is part of District B-2, the statistics are representative of that area, as well as others in the Fenway and parts of Roxbury. You can't use the data as strictly representative of Mission Hill, but it gives you a good reference," said Detective Barbara Bowie. Both property crime, and violent crime, which this article is focused on, has decreased in District B-2, of which Mission Hill is a part of, by 40% over the past decade. The greatest decline was in aggravated assault, a 67% change from 1993 through 2002. "Six or seven years ago, it was kind of bad," said Abi Panicker, a bartender at Pat Flanagan's, located at the foot of Mission Hill. "The biggest fight I have ever seen here was about two years ago. There were 30 people that spilled outside and across the T tracks.