Editor's note: A version of the following article ran as an editorial in the Oct. 8 edition of the Mattapan Reporter, a sister publication of the Dorchester Reporter.

A serious problem related to public safety has developed over the last several months in Dorchester and Mattapan's police districts.

Despite an overall decline in crime over the last year in the neighborhoods- something that this paper has repeatedly reported on- there is a troubling and potentially harmful dynamic unfolding in the way the Boston Police communicates with the residents of city neighborhoods.

Last week, the Mattapan Reporter was denied permission to discuss the particulars of two very serious shooting incidents with the Area B-3 commander, Captain Tim Murray. (Area B-3 covers both Dorchester and Mattapan.) Officers at police headquarters also failed to supply to the Reporter specific information requested about a shooting incident last Monday, in which a bullet was fired into the crowded Mattapan branch of the library.

Under a new policy instituted by the Boston Police this year, all media inquiries about anything related to police activities must be submitted in writing to the department's Media Relations office. That office then either grants permission to the Reporter - and other media outlets - about whether or not a police official will be allowed to speak to the media.

In years past, there were no such restrictions enforced on community newspapers, such as this one. In its twenty years of reporting in both Dorchester and Mattapan, this newspaper has enjoyed limited but reasonable access to police command staff at the district level. Commanders, to varying degrees, chose to share information to editors and reporters and through them to their readers. At times, district commanders withheld information that was deemed too sensitive or potentially damaging to a case. More often, they elected to share important, public information with the neighborhood press as a way to inform the community.

At the height of the 1990s community policing renaissance, the past-commander of a Dorchester district even invited the editor of the Reporter to attend a monthly citywide crime analysis meeting at Schroeder Plaza, in a sincere effort to inform the Reporter- and through us, the community- about crime trends in Dorchester, Mattapan and citywide. These sorts of common sense decisions were left to the discretion of the field commanders, the men and women who best understood the day-to-day events in a given police district.

Now, under this new policy, the field commanders must withhold any and all information - including basic facts and figures related to the policing of Mattapan and Dorchester, unless they are given express permission to speak from the Commissioner's Media Relations office. Even if district commanders wanted to share information with the public- and Capt. Murray at B-3 and Capt. Armstrong at C-11 have indicated to the Reporter that they do- they are prohibited from doing so by their superiors.

In particular, the public in Dorchester and Mattapan should know that the BPD's Media Relations office, in responding to the Reporter's requests throughout the past several months, have repeatedly denied formal and informal requests to address questions to B-3's Capt. Murray.

In the most recent instance- the shooting at Mattapan's Hazleton Street library branch last Monday - the Reporter's repeated attempts to gather information were stymied. Our chief reporter covering the case was told that officials were awaiting clearance to allow Capt. Murray or another official to discuss the incident, some three days after it occurred. One Media Relations officer who claimed that he was not "authorized" to approve an interview with Murray said he was reluctant to call a superior to get authoriziation because it was "too late" at 9:10 p.m. at night.

Finally, the Reporter spoke to the citywide commander of uniformed officers for the BPD, Superintendent Robert Dunford, who was reached at his home in a last-ditch attempt to get information about the police response to these shootings. However, Murray was never given clearance to speak to the Reporter.

The chilling effect of this new policy has been profound. The Dorchester and Mattapan community is not getting detailed, timely information about incidents, crime trends, arrests and a myriad of other law enforcement-related issues due to the blockade on communication at the district level. In particular, the information freeze has eliminated the flow of ideas and information from the B-3 police district to the community: The commander there, who once was eager to share news about progress made on B-3 with the community press, is similarly prohibited from calling us with news. It raises the question about whether the gag order is also stifling the dissemination of public information in other venues, such as community meetings.

The result, alarmingly, presents a serious threat to the very concept of community policing in Boston. One result is that a trust has been arbitrarily broken between the community press and the police command, evidently in an attempt to control the particulars of what this community knows and understands about its police department- and who tells it to them.

For the last several months, our newspapers have - reluctantly and with some private protest - attempted to "go along" with this new policy. For that, we apologize to our readers. We should have done more to resist and expose this attempt to limit information gathering. And we should have shared this problem with you sooner.

Now that we have, we hope that the people of the neighborhoods we cover will ask police commissioner Kathleen O'Toole to fundamentally change the way that her staff handles the release of information to the community press. In order for this, or any city neighborhood to respond to the kinds of serious public safety issues that present themselves in the form of such things as broad daylight shootings outside schools and libraries, there must be a functioning relationship between the media and the police.

That system has been broken. It's long past time for it to be fixed.

-Edward Forry
Publisher

-Bill Forry
Managing Editor