The Hyde Park Board of Trade (HPBOT) held its monthly meeting on Tuesday, Oct. 27. District 5 City Councilor Enrique Pepén was the evening’s speaker. However, he took a back seat to the Boston Police Department (BPD), of which there were approximately 15 officers, detectives, and leaders – from both the neighborhood’s E-18 police station and headquarters – in attendance.

They were there to address the recent rash of violent crime in the area, especially the four shooting incidents in and around Cleary Square – the neighborhood’s business district – over a two-and-a-half-month stretch from early August to mid-October.

This began just after midnight on Aug. 3 when a brawl started outside Little Haiti International Cuisine (1184 Hyde Park Ave.) and escalated into a gunfight that spread to the 7-Eleven parking lot across the street. This resulted in multiple injuries, including five people shot – one fatally.

The second incident occurred on Sept. 26, when a man was shot and killed at an auto body shop (54 Walter St.) on a dead-end industrial block next to a densely populated residential area.

The third took place on Oct. 7, when a 20-year-old man was shot and killed at Akiki Oil (1171 Hyde Park Ave.) – on the same block of Hyde Park Avenue as the Aug. 3 incident. This led to the neighboring residential area being locked down during the ensuing police search.

The fourth took place on Oct. 17, when two women were shot on Davison Street – about two blocks from the site of the Sept. 26 incident, in that densely populated residential area.

The greatest traveling distance between any of these four locations is about a half mile.

Since Jan. 1, there have been six shooting incidents in the district, during which 11 people have been shot, with four fatalities. The fourth homicide – of an 18-year-old woman found shot at 25 Malta St. on July 18 – took place in Mattapan but is within E-18.

Arrests have been made for the killings on Aug. 3 and Oct. 7. However, investigations are ongoing, so the information shared with the HPBOT by the police was limited.

“It doesn’t appear at this time that these incidents are related, as far as I know,” BPD Bureau of Field Services Superintendent John Brown said in response to a question about the bunched shootings, and whether they are connected. “We can tell you that, some of these things, it’s like you shoot on sight. They have different oppositions to each other. As soon as they see each other, something happens, so these aren’t, like, premeditated-type things.”

Brown had prefaced that answer by touching on his experience in the youth violence strike force and in homicide. “That’s why it’s hard to kind of nail it down and be, like, ‘Are these connected, is this going to happen again, is someone going to come back?’ It all depends on the relationships a lot of these young people have with each other out there on the street, which makes it so difficult.”

Lieutenant Detective Daniel Pusey – who oversees District E-18 investigations (except for homicides) – later presented an overview of crime in Hyde Park and offered his contextual insight on the recent gun violence.

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“We do believe these to be targeted events, and I don’t think it’s anything… that’s going to continue and is going to affect the business of Hyde Park.”

Pusey also reiterated that crime is down 5 percent in the district from last year. On Monday during a community CompStat meeting at the E-18 police station, the itemized major crime statistics from Jan. 1-Oct. 28 reflected that, with total violent crime down 8 percent and total property crime down 4 percent. Still, that “300 percent” upward move for homicides was the biggest number in the percentage change column for the nine tabulated categories.

In keeping with the overall content and vibe of last Tuesday’s meeting, Councilor Pepén also announced that there had been a Licensing Board hearing earlier that day regarding incidents at McDonald’s (1316-1342 Hyde Park Ave.) for which the police had been called in.

The first had to do with an armed robbery in the bathroom on Sept. 15. The others (taking place on Sept. 17 and Sept. 23) concerned crowds of 20-50 youths – stated to be from the Academy of the Pacific Rim – loitering and acting in a disorderly fashion in the restaurant and outside.

During the hearing, Cherag Selhi – the co-owner (with his brother and father) of the restaurant, as well as franchises in Roslindale, West Roxbury, and Roxbury – stated that, since early this academic year, they have been closing the Hyde Park site between 3 p.m. and 5 p.m. on weekdays. They have also been monitoring closing from 12:30 p.m.-1 p.m. on half-days, and whenever groups of students are approaching. The drive-through has remained open, although Selhi stated that youths congregating outside the locked restaurant have been blocking traffic.

Aside from receiving police assistance (E-18 had been assigning a cruiser to try to deal with the problem) and reaching out to the school’s principal (who had been sending teachers to supervise after school, which had helped temporarily), Selhi has been seeking community partners with which to work to mitigate the issues – which he had done before, with success, at the Roxbury location.

Speaking after the police presentation, Pepén said that he would likely be reaching out to the Hyde Park Y and the Munie/BCYF about partnering with McDonald’s toward that goal.

“I know that they’ve been very creative in the Roxbury McDonald’s,” he said of the collaboration between the Selhis and the Roxbury Y. “They literally activate the McDonald’s space and pay for lunches for the students, while also giving them activities. So there’s a solution to this.”

The HPBOT typically meets at 6:30 p.m. on the last Tuesday of the month. For information, contact Hyde Park Main Streets at info@hydeparkmainstreets.com or call 617-361-6964.