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Residents in North Cambridge said too many of their questions have gone unanswered since an outburst of gun violence in their neighborhood.

Friday night, it was a handful of ranking Cambridge Police officers trying to answer some of those questions.

“This is unbelievable,” Clifton Street resident Doloris Webb said. “I can’t leave my door open at all, even during the day. I have seven grandchildren, I’m afraid to let them walk through Russell Field. I don’t think they’re safe.”

Last Friday, about 40 North Cambridge residents turned out at the Peabody Elementary School for an informational meeting with city police.

“It’s frustrating,” Lt. Jack Sheehan said. “At a meeting like this, it’s very difficult to tell people that crime is down, because people don’t want to hear that. They’re concerned about what’s happening outside their window. If it’s happening in their neighborhood, they don’t care that crime is down.”

Though it insists violent crime in the city has been reduced in the last 12 months, the department called the meeting after a pair of gun-related incidents sent shockwaves through the neighborhood in late August.

“It was clear to me that the residents want a good relationship with the [police department],” Pemberton Street resident Nancy Hutchinson Erdmann said. A mother of seven school-aged children, Erdmann lives mere feet from the spot where residents reported hearing gunfire one evening in August. Erdmann said the central issue she felt residents wanted addressed was what many perceived to be broken lines of communication.

“I thought both the residents and the department were concerned with establishing better two-way communication,” Erdmann said. “I think, ultimately, the residents are looking for good, solid leadership, and a plan that wouldn’t take years to come up with.”

Police responded to a call for gunshots in the area of Rindge Avenue and Clifton Street Aug. 28. One witness told police he heard about six to seven gunshots, and looked out of his door and saw two bullet holes in the windshield of his neighbor’s 1993 Mercury Grand Marquis.

A day later, police responded to the intersection of Pemberton and Middlesex streets for another report of gunshots. One witness told police he heard two gunshots, a pause and then heard two more gunshots before hearing a car with a loud exhaust speed away Aug. 29, according to reports.

In June, two Cambridge teens were shot in their car while leaving a family birthday party in the Briston Arms apartments on Garden Street. In May, a Dudley Street convenience store owner was shot during a violent robbery.

Sgt. John Fulkerson blamed the violence on neighborhood gang rivalries.

“We may have some information on who and why these shootings have been happening,” Fulkerson said, adding that the information had come from a contact at the Nashua Street Jail in Boston, and that the August shootings may have been a feud over territory. “We have a handle on it. We think it’s a problem between two neighborhoods.”

Despite the assurance from police that crime in Cambridge is on the decline, residents shared horror stories of assault and harassment, theft and vandalism. One woman recounted the night a group of boys tried to tip her car over in Jefferson Park last winter. Jackson Street resident John Doucet told the assembly a group of young boys threw a bike at him as he rode past them on Harvey Street in August.

“I was very lucky,” Doucet said. “When I rode by them, one of them assaulted me with his bicycle, picked it up and threw it at me. For no reason, it was just insane.”

Residents offered police a number of suggestions for combating the emerging pattern of violence in North Cambridge, ranging from camera installation in public parks, ball fields and walkways to simply stepping up arrests. Residents said they wanted better communication from the department on all fronts, from emergency alerts to meeting announcements.

“One of the purposes of this meeting is we’d like to see how we might be able to provide a better service,” Sheehan said. “Every time we come to one of these things, we learn something. The big issue we heard is communication.”