After Two Shootings in Two Days, Cambridge Residents Raise Concerns with Safety, Communication Lapses

Cambridge residents questioned the city’s emergency notifications and response to gun violence during two meetings held by city leaders to address two separate shootings that occurred last week.

Acting Police Commissioner Pauline E. Wells and Mayor Sumbul Siddiqui hosted drop-in office hours on Monday and Tuesday in Fresh Pond Apartments and St. Paul A.M.E Church— addressing residents of both the North Cambridge and Port neighborhoods, where the shootings took place.

Wells emphasized that both shootings were “not random,” but she recognized that does little to negate residents’ fears.

The first shooting occurred near Russell Field in North Cambridge at approximately 3:20 p.m last Tuesday, injuring one person. The field hosts multiple afterschool youth programs, including serving as a practice facility for school sports, and is located around a half mile from Peabody Elementary and Rindge Avenue Upper school. The shooting occurred just five minutes after the schools were released for the day.

In Monday’s meeting, held in Alewife near the location of the shooting, parents expressed frustrations over the delay in communication from the city and CPS administrators.

The city released an emergency alert informing residents of the shooting just after 4 p.m., sparking several parents in the moment to be concerned for their children’s safety. At Monday’s meeting, four parents said their children — many who frequent Russell Field for sports and recreation — were “terrified” by the shooting.

Jadyn Damon, a Cambridge Public Schools parent who lives off of Rindge Avenue, said that message was the only communication her family received from the district — more than half an hour after Cambridge police had sent a citywide notification of the shooting.

Damon said she noticed the emergency response around the time she expected her older child to arrive home. Knowing her child could be on the bus, she called the district’s transportation office, but said she did not receive useful information about his safety. Her child arrived home just before 4 p.m., she wrote in an email, just as she had left home to check for him.

A ParentSquare notification that Damon provided was sent at 4:35 p.m. It said that, as of 4 p.m., buses traveling in the Rindge Avenue area were being directed to the Peabody School and Rindge Avenue Upper School campus “due to police activity and road closures” near the route traveling past Russell Field.

“I would say that while I understand that this was an unanticipated and rapidly developing situation, I do think that when an event like this happens while kids are being let out from schools and on school buses, it would be ideal to have a rapid communication and a plan,” Damon wrote.

Wells said police had notified schools, the Department of Human Service Programs, and the bus company. But she said officials were examining how those notifications reached families.

“We notified families of students who ride afternoon buses, though we know that there was a miscommunication with one of the routes and we sought to address that with the vendor,” CPS spokesperson Jaclyn Piques wrote.

Siddiqui also said the city was examining how to make information easier to access. She and Wells encouraged residents to subscribe to city and police alerts, but attendees questioned whether residents knew they needed to enroll in separate notification systems and suggested promoting sign-ups at schools and community events.

“We need to do a better job of figuring out how people are getting information,” she said.

Piques wrote in a statement the district “communicated as we deemed appropriate at that time,” noting that subsequent communications were affected because the shooting happened after schools had already been dismissed. She added that the district also communicated with the families of Peabody and Rindge Avenue Upper School students the following day, when more information was available.

Piques wrote that the district’s first priority was student safety, and that police, the city, and local media were all simultaneously sharing information.

The second meeting on Tuesday was held in Central Square to address the shooting outside of Columbia Terrace that happened shortly before midnight on Wednesday, less than two days after the Russell Field shooting.

Wells said during Tuesday’s meeting that there were two assailants who fled the scene on an electric scooter. She also noted that the victim underwent surgery at Massachusetts General Hospital and is now in stable condition.

During the meeting, Wells also said that the shooting did not trigger a notification from ShotSpotter, an automatic gunshot detection system that requires gunfire to be picked up by three different sensors before notifying police. Wells did point to additional technology that could help CPD solve similar violent crimes — like automated license plate readers, which the city removed last December.

In Tuesday’s meeting, Wells and Siddiqui said that the newly established resident forum will evaluate a range of surveillance technology, including ShotSpotter. The 40-resident assembly was formed after the City Council temporarily reinstated ShotSpotter in August after the fatal shooting of 32-year-old Xavier Bautista in July.

The residents comprising the assembly were selected last week and are set to have their first meeting on October 24th.

—Staff writer Claire A. Michal can be reached at [email protected] and on Signal at ClaireMichal.154.

—Staff writer Tess E. Sumner can be reached at [email protected].