The news helicopters were in the air over our neighborhood again one day last week. It was just after 4 o'clock in the afternoon, and the sight of a news chopper circling over Codman Hill gave instant notice: there's another crime scene in our community.

Back home, a quick look at the TV had the information: in a horrific scene, two small children were dead, and a Milton Avenue woman was shot by police after they encountered her in the cellar, knife in hand, covered with her children's blood.

The cozy, comfortable neighborhood of single and two family homes at the corner of Fuller St. and Milton Ave. was sealed off in yellow tape, and neighbors gathered to wonder just what had gone wrong.

It was among the worst in a series of gruesome crimes that have plagued the community in recent weeks. An 11 year-old was killed at a Quincy Street playground in a gang shooting; two men were wounded on Mt. Bowdoin in a reputed drug-related revenge shooting. As the summer temperatures rise, so does the body count. And in their hearts, neighbors worry about a return to the bad old days of ten years ago.

The boom years of the mid and late 1990s brought a marked reduction in criminal violence in our town. As the economy grew and unemployment fell, police, prosecutors and the courts began an aggressive attack on criminal elements in our city. Task forces were formed, arrests were made, convictions were won, and a good chunk of the hard-core criminals were sent away or broomed out of town.

Now, news reports claim things have changed again: a good number of the criminals have served their time, and each day many are released back to the community. Also, a new generation of young people are walking the streets, with no memory of the bad times that preceded them. The good people who put together the plan to combat the crime a decade ago recall that a main hurdle was the so-called "turf wars" among various law enforcement agencies. A coalition of business, civic and political leaders got together at that time and carefully crafted a unified response that clearly had a long-term effect. State and federal officers cooperated with our city's police, and federal and county prosecutors worked together to gain control of the situation.

Some of those leaders became satisfied with their work, declared victory and moved on. Others wisely recognized the cyclical nature of the criminal activities, and fretted that the "bad old days" would come again.

Well, those days are here, and they are likely to get worse before they get better. The city is fortunate that our police department is headed by Commissioner Paul Evans, a man who lived through the old days and knows what can go wrong. He also knows how to make things happen, and what's needed is a unified response from across law enforcement, the political establishment, and citizens themselves.

Experience shows that today's neighborhood crime scenes become tomorrow's war zones. The city must re-learn the lessons of the past, and enlist all sectors in this new battle.

-Ed Forry