‘Out of control’: Boston residents call for end to city’s ‘Murder Triangle’

BOSTON — In Boston, there is a lot of talk about how the city’s murder rate is collapsing.

But not every community in Boston is feeling safer. Most of Boston’s murders are taking place in historically Black neighborhoods, in an area some call, “The Murder Triangle.”

“I didn’t even make it to the 6th grade before I had to go to a friend’s funeral,” Sheryle Cox told me.

“How many funerals do you think you’ve been to since then?” I asked

“I don’t know, I don’t know. I can’t count,” she said.

On New Year’s Day 2023, violence struck too close to home for Sheryle Cox.

Her cousin, Jymal Cox, was shot to death in Mattapan where he was working security at a New Year’s Eve party.

“I believe he was caught in the crossfire,” Sheryle said. “There was some other people shooting. They did not intend to shoot him. But, unfortunately, he was the one who caught the bullet.

Jymal Cox was Boston’s first murder of 2023.

“As the murder rate goes down, we still find a disproportionate amount of murders located in what we call the Murder Triangle,” Reverend Kevin Peterson, founder of the New Democracy Coalition told me.

Jymal Cox lost his life in the “Murder Triangle.” The area includes the neighborhoods of Dorchester, Roxbury, Mattapan, Hyde Park, and the South End.

When you compare the first ten months of 2024, Boston’s homicide rate has dropped from 33 in 2023 to just 18 during the same time period in 2024.

But many of those murders took place in the Triangle.

Rev. Peterson helped coin the phrase “Murder Triangle.” He hopes to see the murder rate plummet in the Triangle just as it has in more affluent, white neighborhoods.

At at time when there is great concern about over-policing, Rev. Peterson is calling for more police in the neighborhoods.

“There’s a tension between over-policing, but there is also a great need for the police to be in murder hotspots so that murderers are apprehended,” Rev. Peterson said.

Reverend Peterson says he wants law enforcement to do more to get illegal guns off the streets, but he is also urging people in his community to speak up.

“The more we get neighbors to speak to the police about who the murderers are, the better the chances are that they’ll be apprehended,” Rev. Peterson said.

I asked Sheryle Cox if she thinks Boston’s murder rate is dropping.

“No,” she said. I hear sirens every night.”

Sheryle tells me she is tired of attending funerals for so many people who died before their time. As she raises her children, Sheryle tells me she is focused on her family’s future.

“I’m sick and tired of it,” Cox said. “I don’t want to live here in a war. I love Boston, but it’s getting out of control.”

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