David Benoit
Special to the Reporter

Boston Police officials have recently declared two new areas in Dorchester "hot spots" for robberies, while at the same time reducing the status of other violent hot spots.

Fields Corner and Church Street in Meetinghouse Hill have both been victimized by a myriad of robberies, specifically targeting food delivery services, leading the police to concentrate more personnel and attention on the areas.

On August 15, the Area C-11 police district - headquartered in Fields Corner - released a new alert through citizenobserver.com which detailed a rash of four robberies of delivery services from July 25 through August 13, all on Church Street. The suspects called in an order to a local delivery restaurant, giving an address of 67 Church Street, Apt 2, and leaving a fake cell phone number. In the fourth case, the address given was 52 Church Street, which has a vacant first floor apartment.

When the deliveries were made the drivers were robbed at knife-point by two black males who then fled the scene. In each of the cases there are similar descriptions given for the perpetrators, and police believe it is one group acting on the street. In most of the instances, the knife was held to the victim's throat during the attack.

Two weeks before that, C-11 issued a separate alert for the Fields Corner area warning residents of five street muggings, including three within a twenty-four hour period.

Today they believe that both areas should be considered hot spots and are putting stronger efforts to combating the trends there.

The district names an area a hot spot after they see a pattern of crime developing there that seems more active than normal. Much of the data that determines hot spots comes from the Boston Regional Intelligence Center (BRIC) a BPD agency that pours over statistics and incidents and finds recurring themes, and then alerts their districts.

"This is some research that was done from July 21 to August 14 they found that Fields Corner is a hot spot of street robberies," explained Lt. James Gaughan of C-11. "There may be many unrelated incidents that just happened to be related geographically, and in no other way, or maybe one or two are by the same participants but not all of them."

To help fight this wave the police have been issuing alerts to businesses and residents, and they created a special pamphlet for delivery people, detailing their warnings and urging caution. Some of their warnings include only letting drivers carry under $20 in cash and establishing a "firm policy on cell phone orders." Detectives in the district visited many of the restaurants to ask that if certain streets placed an order that the police be notified and they would escort the delivery. This policy led to a police sting operation in early July when a local business informed the police that a house on Olney Street placed a suspicious order.

"They got a flier, and a personal visit from the detective saying 'Listen, Olney Street's been getting hit hard lately, if you get a call let us know.' And the next day they got a call and gave us the information," Gaughan recalled. "So we know that's positive feedback, that's a success story."

Mike Stefanou, who owns Hi-fi Pizza Pie on Dorchester Ave., says one of his drivers has been robbed multiple times, and that the police have visited him and talked about the precautions he should take.

"One specific driver got robbed three times. I lost about 1,500 dollars," Stafanou said, adding that the last instance happened at around 12:30 at night. "Last time he got robbed five or six guys jumped him and smashed his rear windshield with bats."

Other local owners report that they too have been visited by police about the robberies, but say that calling before delivering an order is a tall task to ask when they are busy.

"There is nothing that we can do. We try not taking cell phones, we run into problems with that," explained a frustrated Kali Pappas, whose father owns Upham's House of Pizza, a popular delivery shop. "We are open until 1 and everything seems to happen after 11 a.m."

Gaughan explained that hot spots are constantly changing locations, partly because of the work the police do, and partly for reasons no one can quite identify. But when the BRIC sends them a report - usually consisting of a list of problems and a map detailing the areas that they see- they try and alert their officers to keep an eye out and be extra ready to answer calls for those locations.

"We know that we have areas that are plagued with problems, or that have problems and we try to address that. Sometimes it's through saturation, sometimes it's investigation. There are a variety of ways we try to deal with it," Gaughan said of their work on crime areas. "As a trend, we try to look at these areas and try to eradicate this hot spot and say what steps can we take and sometimes multiple layers for that strategy. Whether it's getting assistance with the gang unit, sometimes foot patrols, we've used that out of Safe Neighborhood Initiative Grants. Sometimes walking patrols are all it takes."

Some residents of the area didn't seem to be too pleased with the distinction as a hot spot, and while they understand the shortages in the police are largely budget issues, they expressed concern with the lack of presence in Fields Corner.

"I'm not surprised to hear that [it is a hot spot], unfortunately," said John Gallagher who owns an insurance agency in Fields Corner. "For a while we were having a walking patrol, Officer Sullivan, but we don't have much of a walking patrol here anymore."

Evelyn Darling, the director of Fields Corner-Main Street, said similar things about the lack of walking patrol, but wanted to make clear she felt that Fields Corner wasn't much of a hot spot.

"I don't know if there is a lot of activity going on, but I don't like the term hot spot. I think that Fields Corner has a lot to offer, it's not a scary place," she said. "I would hate to have Fields Corner have that tag as a hot spot."

Earlier in the summer, police identified the area of Geneva and Bowdoin Streets as a hot spot for violence, and increased their presence and walking beats there. Gaughan said that a permanent walking patrol had been put in place for that area, and that all officers were made aware that it was an area to be watched closely.

"It's kind of a saturation patrol," he said.

Today the area is now off the front of the radar screen as a hot spot, although the police continue to keep a walking patrol and a close eye. Gaughan was quick to say that they have not rid Bowdoin-Geneva of crime, and that it could return at any moment.

"Some places that were hot spots, we might have gone and taken some action, and we might have moved the problem," he said. "Things have quieted down the past couple of weeks in our district, but it hasn't happened city-wide."

And that work doesn't seem to be slowing down either. With the new targets on street robbers and delivery attacks, the police are constantly looking for new trends.

"I think the men and women of District 11 are doing a great job. We won't eradicate the crime from the district as you can see," said Gaughan. "We may have displaced it, but I do believe we have had an impact, some of it is because of our efforts, we can't make any promises for next week or down the line, except the promise that we will keep working to make it safe. The trends are sometimes beyond us."