<p>This was in yesterday's Globe...</p>
<p>Mr. Mayor, speak up
By Brian McGrory, Globe Columnist | November 22, 2005</p>
<p>It was exactly 4:17 one morning last week when the blare of a car alarm woke me and everyone else on my block. Most of these alarms shut off after a few minutes. Not this one. An hour later, as people shouted out their windows, the alarm still pulsed down the long alley.</p>
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Sign up for: Globe Headlines e-mail | Breaking News Alerts Daybreak revealed the probable cause: an Audi had been propped up on wood pilings, and every one of its tires and wheels was stripped off by thieves.</p>
<p>When I was telling a neighbor about it later that day, she shrugged and told a story of her own. She was looking to leave her car in an alley that same night, but decided to keep driving when she saw a man sprinting away from the smashed windshield of a parked car.</p>
<p>I don't bring this up by way of complaint. To the contrary, I live in a veritable Shangri-la, one of the safest neighborhoods of Boston. That same week, the city experienced five shootings over the course of four days, resulting in three deaths. Men were killed in Dorchester, Roxbury, and Mattapan, bringing Boston's murder tally for the year to 62, just about double the year-to-date figures of six years before.</p>
<p>Now, make it 63. Yesterday, a young man was killed in the South End. It becomes painfully matter-of-fact after a while.</p>
<p>All of which is to say, Boston is starting to feel as if it's fraying at its seams.</p>
<p>The ideas feel old. The effort feels tired. The newly reelected mayor is starting to seem as if he's losing a little bit of control.</p>
<p>Police have solved only 19 of this year's slayings, meaning that someone is getting away with murder just about every week.</p>
<p>Two killings of elderly women in Jamaica Plain and South Boston remain unsolved. By last month, shootings in town were up 28 percent over last year.</p>
<p>Here's how bad it is. Tom Menino visited a group of eighth-graders at an afterschool program in Codman Square this past Saturday, kibitzing with the students, taking questions, posing for pictures.</p>
<p>The kids wanted to address topics from Iraq to Tom Brady, but more than anything else they pressed the mayor on violence. According to someone in the room, two of the 17 students said they had family members who were murdered. One girl from Dorchester said she hears gunfire every night.</p>
<p>When Menino asked the group how many of them know someone who owns a gun, nearly every hand was raised. Think about that for a moment. These kids are 13 and 14 years old. They're familiar with guns in the way that teenagers in Newton and Wellesley are familiar with iPods, just another expensive accessory that fits in your palm.</p>
<p>The day after he was overwhelmingly reelected, Menino told Globe reporter Andrea Estes that he's ''full of ideas." That's great. Problem is, he hasn't shared them. He certainly didn't share them during that lackluster campaign. He hasn't shared them in the two weeks since.</p>
<p>If he's waiting to include them in some flowery State of the City speech in January, then he's waiting way too long.</p>
<p>I'm sick of hearing about diminished federal funding and state aid cuts. I'm sick of hearing how things are better now than they were when he came in. This is true, but meaningless. Fourth terms are perilous times, incubators of inaction, and the silence from City Hall is already stifling. If this mayor is smart -- and he is smart -- he will outline a specific agenda in the next couple of weeks.</p>
<p>Tops on that agenda should be a plan to hire 250 more patrol officers -- roughly what his police commissioner says she needs -- to prevent future killings. He should demand that the department redouble its efforts to solve murders that have already taken place.</p>
<p>Menino likes to say that people in Boston feel safe. He's kidding himself. Property taxes are up. Services are down. Patience is wearing thin. As people die, as killers walk free, he needs to show in very short order that an aging mayor can learn a few new tricks.</p>
<p>Brian McGrory is a Globe columnist. He can be reached at <a href="mailto:mcgrory@globe.com">mcgrory@globe.com</a>.</p>