Crime down in Boston, shootings on the rise - Boston News, Weather, Sports | FOX 25 | MyFoxBoston

DORCHESTER, Mass. (MyFoxBoston.com) -- A memorial to 16-year-old Jonathan Dos Santos, who was gunned down while riding his bike in Dorchester, is a testament to a sad statistic. The Boston police commissioner says several neighborhoods have seen more than their share of violence and there are simply too many guns on the city's streets.

They are recruit class 54-15 and the newest members of Boston's finest. And even before they'd taken their oath, Police Commissioner William Evans admitted there will be challenges ahead.

"I think we've seen over the last 10 days that we can have flare ups, but we have you more than ready to hit the streets," he said.

Recently two shootings involving children have been deeply troubling to Boston leaders, including seven-year-old Divan Silva who lived and Dos Santos who lost his life. Overall, the number of murders in Boston is down so far this year, but the number of shootings is up.

When asked what these new police officers will face when it comes to fighting concentrations of violence in the city, Mayor Marty Walsh said, "these new officers are going to be put right in the middle of where the violence is happening."

They'll start Saturday, heading to areas police refer to as "hot spots" such as Mattapan, Dorchester and Roxbury. Some studies show 70-percent of shootings in Boston happen in just 5-percent of the city's streets.

"We've had the same hotspots over the last 30 years," Evans said. "Anywhere you have people who don't have opportunities, where you have unemployment, social disadvantage, any city you go to, that's where you're going to have hotspot areas."

The police department confirms, 75-percent of the city's shootings are a result of kids involved with gangs.

Linda Collymore lives in the Dorchester area and says, "something has to be done with guns and the violence, the young kids."

But she says the numbers don't tell the full story of the neighborhoods, and Collymore says that even though there's been a lot of violence in the area, there are more good people than bad.

The commissioner tells FOX25 that crime, overall, is down 16-percent in the first part of the year in the City of Boston.