Keller @ Large: Time To Find An Answer

BOSTON (CBS) - In the wake of that horrific shooting on Wednesday next door to the Jeremiah Burke High School that left a 17-year-old boy dead, a familiar scene played out.

A day after the mayhem, in which two other students and a 67-year-old woman were wounded in the middle of the day as scores of students milled around after a fire drill, a furious Police Commissioner William Evans chastised witnesses for not coming forward.

"Enough with the stop snitching stuff," he said. "Shame on everybody if the parents and kids don't step up here."

That in turn drew a rebuke from Boston City Councilor Tito Jackson, who claimed Evans had "re-victimized" the students and was "pointing fingers."

If all this sounds familiar, it's because it is.

It has been a dozen years since spectators wore "stop snitchin'" T-shirts into a local courtroom for the trial of the accused murderer of 10-year-old Trina Persad.

Then-mayor Tom Menino pressured store owners to stop selling the shirts, which touched off the same controversy playing out in the back and forth between Evans and Jackson.

What we have here is an apparently intractable failure to communicate.

Police and prosecutors can't protect people from violent criminals without the public's help.

But even in a city like Boston where officials and community leaders have worked hard to promote cooperation, too many witnesses either feel the risk of talking is too great, or just don't trust the police, or both.

And in the meantime, innocent people continue to be terrorized and killed, right here in our backyard. Time for all sides to find an answer, once and for all.