BOTH THE Boston police and human service workers who specialize in crime prevention speak with one voice about the need to maintain a strategic partnership. But this is an alliance in which the police often get the meat while their community-based partners are left with the bones.

The overtime costs alone for the Boston police reached $34 million by the end of March, with one-quarter of the fiscal year still to go. By comparison, total spending for the operation of the city's 46 city-funded community centers and pools, summer jobs program, and other human service initiatives is expected to be about $30 million for the entire year. City Councilor Michael Ross, who chairs the council's committee on youth violence prevention, called attention to the ongoing disparity in an April 24 hearing on Mayor Menino's proposed budget. And now some of the city's religious leaders with close ties to the mayor are speaking out.

The paucity of street workers who intervene in gang disputes and redirect youths is especially acute. Currently only 24 such workers are on the city payroll, with an additional four slots in the mayor's proposed budget for 2008. The Rev. Jeffrey Brown, a founder of the crime-fighting Ten Point Coalition, calls that figure "woefully inadequate." Anthony Braga, a Harvard University researcher who helped to design some of Boston's best crime-reduction initiatives during the 1990s, reinforces Brown's belief in street workers. Braga says that a contingent of 40 to 50 workers could help to reduce homicides in Boston, roughly half of which are gang-related.

Menino needs to rebuild his street worker program to its 1990s strength level, when roughly 50 specialists in youth violence worked individually with specific gangs, instead of today's weaker model, which requires a single street worker to cover swaths encompassing several gangs.

The Rev. Ray Hammond, a founder of the Ten Point Coalition, is among a few dozen ministers who are trying to fill that void by engaging young people during periodic walks through the city's most dangerous neighborhoods. He senses a growing willingness on the part of many gang members to lead decent lives. Brown is working with a dozen ministers and support staffers funded largely with private donations who mediate specific disputes among some of the city's roughly 40 gangs.

The success of these innovative efforts, however, often depends on intelligence provided by street workers about brewing conflicts. Such a force is also essential to follow up on the pastors' efforts to provide gang members with jobs, social services, and other alternatives to criminal activity. The Menino administration must take steps to ensure that the good works of the ministers do not go to waste.

Public safety priorities

Menino defends his commitment to human services. He says that any evaluation of his administration's record must look at programs operated by the Parks, Public Health, and other departments that serve young people outside the scope of his human service cabinet. City Hall, he says, also exerts steady pressure on local companies to provide summer jobs. He notes increases in his proposed budget for extended weekend hours in the city's community centers. And the mayor's office announced yesterday that it will provide $300,000 in grants for nonprofit groups that specialize in youth violence prevention.

"My heart is in human services," says Menino.

Menino appears ambivalent, however, about the street worker program operated by his Center for Youth and Families. While the mayor is not known to obsess about performance measures for city services, he is plenty tough on his street workers. Recently he and top city officials visited the nonprofit community service center ROCA (Reaching Out to Chelsea Adolescents) and contracted with the group to provide some guidance and case management for the Boston street workers.

Streamlining and centralization are fine. But the mayor should also remember that his street worker system worked best in the 1990s when its members were drawn widely from community centers, schools, and public health fields.

A break in the action?

This is a heady period for Boston police officials. Last week, they announced the arrest of two men in connection with the murder of 22-year-old Chiara Levin, an unsuspecting visitor from New York who was caught in the middle of a gang feud at a Dorchester party. And this week police finally succeeded at tracking down a fugitive wanted for the 1995 murder of Bobby Mendes, a slaying that sparked a cycle of retaliatory violence in Boston's Cape Verdean neighborhoods. These high-profile arrests came just days after Menino's budget proposal that makes room for 2,235 sworn police officers, just shy of the department's peak of seven years ago.

While supportive of the police, the ministers continue to challenge the one-sided funding priorities. Brown cites a recent report about a wasteful $2.6 million vehicle leasing program that steered cars to police officers who did not require them for undercover investigations.

"If we had $2.6 million to put on the street, that would make a huge difference," says Brown.

The Boston police know the value of the ministers and the nonprofit groups that work with young people. Police Commissioner Edward Davis has built his career on community policing. Superintendent Paul Joyce, who heads the department's Bureau of Investigative Services, led an effort in 2004 to identify and provide social services to young people in families where criminal behavior passes from generation to generation. But that effort faded when police became overwhelmed with unsolved shootings.