Michelle Wu’s Not-So-True Crime Story
This week, Michelle Wu held a press conference announcing her plans to address rising crime in the summer months. She made this announcement at a time when gun violence is up substantially and when violent crimes such as shootings and murder rates are reverting to historical norms.
The timing was curious, because in case you haven’t heard, Mayor Wu has been declaring Boston is the “safest city in America” for months on end. It’s been stated, repeated and proclaimed to everyone and anyone that will listen. But is it true?
In this post, I want to dig into the numbers behind the mayor’s claim – how deep they go and the trends we’re seeing.
I want to talk about her approach to public safety in the coming months – and why people feel a lot of fear in Boston right now.
And, I want to look at what she promised as City Councilor when she ran for mayor – and the strikingly different approach she’s taken in office.
From Defunder to Defender: Mayor Wu’s Transformation to BPD Champion
It wasn’t long ago that Michelle Wu was viewed as no friend to law enforcement. In 2021, as a city councilor running for mayor, Michelle Wu called for a 10% cut to the police budget. She boasted about refusing to take donations from police unions and gravely warned about needing to “rebuild the culture” at the Boston Police Department (BPD). And she pledged to shutter the city’s gang database.
Today, the Mayor is posing for pictures with police unions and happily accepting their campaign contributions. She’s again proposing to increase the BPD budget as she has every year she has been in office. And she’s extolling how police officers “have built relationships in our communities over decades,” while bragging that “our approach to public safety is working.”
In the space of less than four years she’s gone from a defunder of Boston’s police department to perhaps its single biggest champion.
Why the about-face? In part, it’s because Boston being a safe haven from crime is a better story for a sitting mayor than the one she ran on. The problem is, of course, that story isn’t entirely true.
Stuck In the Middle with Wu: Crime Claims “An Oversimplification at Best”
Mayor Wu has gone to great lengths to defend her claims about Boston’s peerless safety record. “We have seen remarkable declines in some of the most important metrics that we track,” she said. “And especially when put up against our peer cities, that has been a sustained trend.”
When you dig into the numbers, however, the mayor’s claim mostly relies on a single figure: last year’s declining murder rate. In 2024, the number of people killed in Boston decreased to 24 from 36 in 2023.
But as GBH wrote last year, “Labeling Boston ‘the safest major city in the country’ is an oversimplification at best.”
Indeed, the closer you look, the more you realize her claims are based on some highly selective math. For instance, after claiming that Boston “was at the top of the list” of the safest cities in America when it came to violent crime, GBH reported that, actually, Boston was 16th out of 50 in 2023 – in the top 32nd percentile and higher than Chicago. While these numbers are certainly good, they could scarcely be described as exceptional or even superlative.
As noted by Jeff Asher, co-founder of AH Datalytics which conducted the report Wu has been touting, “If you’re talking violent crime, Boston still tends to be on the lower end, but maybe more in the middle.”
Growing Public Safety Concerns
So, is Mayor Wu’s “approach to public safety working”? And do citizens agree?
The evidence suggests trends in crime and violent crime in Boston are reverting to recent historical norms. Specifically:
Gun violence is up substantially so far in 2025 versus last year, according to BPD data. As of the end of May, fatal and non-fatal shootings are up 48% over the same period in 2024. Incidents of “shots fired” are also up 40%.
Homicides in 2025 are up 160% versus the same period last year, with 13 so far in 2025 versus 5 in the same period in 2024.
Larcenies are also up 24% compared to the 5-year average.
Given all this, it’s not too surprising that a recent survey by the Downtown Boston Neighborhood Association found that “70% of 320 residents and business owners feel less safe now than at the start of 2024. Over 90% described public safety as an urgent concern.”
I’ve already written about how her approach to law enforcement has turned human tragedy of the Mass & Cass crisis into a public safety threat that has spilled into neighborhoods across the city.
On Mass & Cass, the Mayor has deliberately deemphasized the need to enforce state laws and city ordinances. Which is to say, police are being directed to look the other way when it comes to public drug consumption, trespassing, and encampment on private and public property. As a result, crimes like shoplifting, larceny, disorderly conduct, drug possession, and resisting arrest are being prosecuted less.
But fewer prosecutions doesn’t mean that there is less crime – in fact, in several neighborhoods it’s quite the opposite.
For instance, Downtown Crossing has had some of the largest numbers of violent crimes in recent years. According to BPD figures, approximately “1,000 crime reports were filed in Downtown Crossing and Boston Common in 2024” – the most in at least six years. Meanwhile in 2025, we’ve seen tragic losses of life in neighborhoods like Roxbury, Dorchester, Mattapan, Charlestown, and Allston.
The Crime Problem She Doesn’t Want to Talk About
You would expect that the mayor of the safest city in America would be concerned by these trends. However, when the Boston Globe asked the Wu administration what its plans for the summer months, when gun violence tends to go up, all a spokesperson could muster up was they were “working on a response.” This week’s press conference was that response and, well, it was really just more of the same.
As we head into a tight budget environment, I believe Boston needs a mayor who is focused on public safety – not just cherry-picking isolated data points to reassure people but actually doing something about the problems in different neighborhoods.
As the Globe recently reported, this issue has hit close to home for my campaign. Earlier this month, one of our volunteers, a man by the name of Andrew Owens, was shot and killed in Nubian Square, apparently caught in the crossfire of gang violence.
Unbelievably, neither the mayor nor her office had any response to Andrew’s senseless loss of life.
I’ve spent over three decades working with people like Andrew Owens, as well as Justin Bettencourt, Shakar Caterson, Peggy Yousef, Mauricio Lawrence, Joseph Donohue, Leroy Ryner, and Kareem DaVeiga-Booth – the other seven people who have been murdered this year in Boston.
How We Make Boston Neighborhoods Safer
As mayor, I won’t ignore the problem of violent crime to make myself look better. I won’t shy away from speaking the names of those who tragically lose their lives.
I’ll get to know their families.
And I’ll work with law enforcement to make sure we are protecting people by enforcing the law and forging partnerships. I won’t be “working on a response” for how to keep people safe over the hot summer months – because I’ve been part of those efforts for three decades.
Over that time, the work of the Boston Police Department and our non-profit partners has been a sustained effort. That collaboration has made Boston a safer city.
Ironically, Mayor Wu has simultaneously taken credit for those long and consistent efforts while abandoning some of the work that got us here. Only skeletons remain now of the prevention and intervention work that has long been done.
For example, there’s been no meaningful outreach to those most vulnerable to gun violence or gang involvement. No dedication to creating opportunities for those assuming risk in our neighborhoods but are ready and willing to make alternative choices. No real effort to identify those returning home from incarceration who are most at risk to reoffend or commit a crime.
These are just a few instances of decisions made by a mayor that has no plan.
As a result, too often the Boston Police have assumed the burden for neglect in services from this administration – neglect that will impact our neighborhoods for years to come until we revitalize and revamp a meaningful collaborative strategy. The safe summer that our communities deserve is not a hastily-arranged press conference in the wake of criticism – it’s a twelve-month, 365-day endeavor, year after year.
The Hard Work of Keeping Our City Safe
In 1993, I founded a Boys and Girls Club in nearby Chelsea along the Mystic River. This was a hard time, when the city and its schools were in state receivership. We operated out of the basement of a public housing development – one of four in the neighborhood. We didn’t have too many resources for the kids who came by after school – some folding tables and board games.
We had an idea: a summer basketball league with kids from the four developments playing each other. One guy told me there was no chance it would work – that they had tried it before and there were always fights. So, we said, “What if we had cops referee and coach?”
So, I went door-to-door raising money from local businesses and banks. I personally recruited local police officers. We paid them ten bucks to ref a game and five bucks to do the scorebook. By the next summer, we had Kayem Foods sponsoring the league.
One summer league will never solve all the problems in the community. But ours brought the whole neighborhood together. It gave kids an opportunity to stay out of trouble. And it provided them a chance to build relationships with the cops charged with keeping people safe and all the nonprofits we partnered with to help people break the cycle of addiction, unemployment, and recidivism.
Boston needs a mayor that understands that we don’t keep people safe with press conferences, spreadsheets and empty slogans – but through proven plans forged by partnerships and the leadership to make them work. That’s the kind of leadership I’m going to offer. It’s what our city deserves.