Speech
to Grants Pass City Council, April 20, 2011
Last
meeting, Public Safety Chief Joe Henner told us about a 6-month crime spree
that hit 61 businesses and residences and included ramming up to 21 stolen cars
into businesses in smash-and-grab robberies; 9 people were arrested.
He said
that they could have caught these men sooner if they had more officers on the
streets at night. Maybe if what Chief
Henner has been doing for years hasn’t been working, he should try something
different, something new—or better yet, something old.
What do his
officers do between calls for help from the public? It appears that they are out patrolling the
streets in their cars, “revenuing” as people call it, hunting traffic
violators. I ask you, how much can an
officer see from a moving car or giving tickets? It took a full 6 months for police to stop
one of these suspects and break the case.
Remember those pre-70s movies and TV shows with cops walking
neighborhood beats, not only in the city, but in the suburbs as well? Where all the yards were well-kept, and
litter didn’t just lie around until it rotted?
That world was real, and it was a result of routine enforcement of
nuisance codes by every cop that walked a beat.
That world still existed in Goshen, Indiana when I went back there for a
family reunion several years ago. Their
streets were a crumbling mess, but every yard and lot was groomed and
litter-free. We may look good next to many
western cities, but when I lived here in the Eighties, this town reminded me of
Goshen.
Councilor DeYoung had a point, saying that a lot of theft is
done by meth addicts. Thieves do not
love their neighbors, and meth addicts are known for their general neglect of
themselves and their surroundings. I
have a customer who lives next to one of those recently caught thieves. His yard is a weedy mess, spreading seeds
into my customer’s yard for years. I’m sure
that at least 8 out of those 9 thieves have a yard that violates city nuisance
codes regarding weeds and litter.
If our cops were out walking neighborhood beats enforcing
nuisance codes, even if their beats took a week to cover, they’d quickly get to
know every slovenly meth-head in the neighborhood, and their neighbors as
well. Think of how much they could see
and how many crimes they could solve by getting out of their cars, gently
nagging us to clean up our properties, and getting to know us, instead of being
highwaymen, revenuing for the city and state.
(Correction: 8 people were arrested, according to the Courier. This writer relied on Chief Henner’s
statement at the meeting that “8 or 9 people were arrested.”)
Published at Yahoo Voices
No comments:
Post a Comment