City officials address local and national violence during National Night Out

National Night Out events were held across the country on Monday night as leaders nationwide called to end the violence after the shootings in El Paso and Dayton have left at least 31 people dead.

Those communities are not so different from our own; El Paso is roughly the same size as Boston, while Dayton is roughly the same size as Springfield, Mass.

Mayor Marty Walsh and Commissioner Gross told Boston 25 News that the communication within departments and with community groups is constant in the wake of any mass shooting – let alone two in one weekend.

City leaders made six stops on Monday for National Night Out. They also worked to unite people here at home coping with grief and tragedy in their own lives.

"Bullets don’t have names on them," said Cheryl Austin, the mother of a murder victim.

The conversation on this National Night Out in Boston turned out to be an especially chilling one. In these tense times, city leaders worked to lift shattered spirits.

Related: "If you don't go out, they win;" Local residents react to weekend shootings

"I would say never give up hope," said Boston Police Commissioner William Gross. "There are bad people in the world, but we outweigh them by millions."

But in the communities visited by Commissioner Gross and other public officials, there is unresolved loss and heartbreak that dates back years.

"We have dealt with that personally," said Latanya Jones. "This is my cousin whose daughter was murdered, and we've never had closure."

The family of murder victim Rana Jones among the local families who can speak to their own experience with senseless violence nearly a decade after the single mother was found beaten to death in her Dorchester home on Vassar Street. The killer has never been caught.

Sharing her daughter's story at Madison Park in Roxbury, Cheryl Austin, surrounded by other families who can relate to the pain of losing a loved one too soon and the current uncertainty in our nation facing one tragedy after the next.

"I'm raising two grandsons, and my biggest fear is someone is going to come and do something to one of them," she said. "And it would tear me up. It's […] crazy that people don't care."

Cox Media Group