October 17, 2005

In my State of the City address last January, I announced a new initiative called B-SMART (Boston Strategic Multi-Agency Response Teams). B-SMART aims to reduce crime and build community capacity by targeting hot spot crime areas with a collaborative government and community partnership strategy led by my Office of Human Services (OHS) in collaboration with the Boston Police Department (BPD) and my Office of Neighborhood Services (ONS), which coordinates basic city services. As a team, this coordinated government ensemble works with community partners that are knowledgeable and representative of the neighborhoods where they are established.

While Boston continues to experience an overall crime rate reduction, we have been seeing an increase of serious and lethal violence, especially among our youth since 2002. We acknowledged that police arrests cannot be the only city response, and thus B-SMART was born. B-SMART operates as a complement to law enforcement by bringing city and social services where they are needed, thereby improving the quality of life and working towards community stabilization.

It is clearly unique to have Human Services leading what is ultimately a public safety strategy. But given that the underlying causes of most public safety problems are human service, health or economic-based, this approach seems most fitting. B-SMART can be seen as the natural evolution of community policing, but initiated from the level of a Mayor’s office. It builds on the work and lessons of community policing, but brings the missing components of human service programming and city service prioritization and delivery.

While there are certainly efforts by numerous cities around inter-agency coordination, what we think makes this Boston initiative stand out is the inter-agency coordination coupled with community partnerships and empowerment. B-SMART encompasses a unique combination of collaborative and coordinated governance AND civic/community engagement.

In Boston, we launched B-SMART teams in four of our neighborhoods in March and are rolling out the second set of four teams in August-September. Of course ongoing tracking of results and short and long-term evaluation will ultimately determine the success of this initiative, but we are finding that B-SMART is already bringing a mobilizing energy and revitalization to the residents and community and faith based organizations that have been struggling in these neighborhoods for many years.

Implementation: B-SMART in Action

Step 1 – Team Composition: The B-SMART Initiative brings together a team of people comprised of a high-level OHS staff lead, a BPD Captain, an ONS representative, as well as any additional Community Centers staff or other city personnel deemed necessary.

Step 2 – Partnering with the Community: This team of coordinated city government staff then partners with the community and faith based organizations engaged in the targeted area to jointly identify the most pressing and immediate needs of that neighborhood.

Example of a B-SMART Team composition (Boston’s South End Team):

• Michael Kelley – Director of Rental Housing, coordinates basic city services, (team co-lead)

• Selvin Chambers – OHS Director of Youth and Families (team co-lead)

• Captain Robert Flaherty, BPD Area D-4 Commander

• Carolyn MacNeil, Police Community Service Liaison

• Sergeant Kevin Powers, Police Community Service Officer

• Talia River, OHS Street Worker for South End

• Keith Houston, OHS Director of South End Community Center

• Vanessa Caldaron Rossado, IBA Housing Development Management Company Director

• Noah Youngstrum, YMCA Director Youth Programming

• Sheila Gage, Salvation Army Executive Director

Step 3 – On the Ground: This government-community collaborative that is the B-SMART Team then designs a set of initiatives and activities, based on the pressing needs identified in Step 2, and swings into implementation. This team meets weekly in the targeted neighborhood to implement their localized set of initiatives and address any new pressing community concerns that may have surfaced.

Examples of B-SMART activities include: