Wicomico Neighborhood Congress – January 2008

Unlike the last time our countywide group met in November, the topic at hand wasn’t one that had two opposing sides with viewpoints of at least some validity. Tonight we talked about crime, which has only one side that’s lawabiding. (I did talk to one gentleman though who said there could be two groups against us – criminals and law enforcement.) And it wasn’t surprising that we had an overflow crowd in the Delmar Town Hall for the event.

Two speakers dominated the bill this evening. One was Troy Williams, who serves us as the Assistant United States Attorney for the state of Maryland, and the other was Dan Dougherty, the Assistant Wicomico County State’s Attorney. I’ll start with Williams, who spoke about a crimefighting technique discussed in the book Fixing Broken Windows by George L. Kelling and Catherine M. Coles.

The title of the book is a metaphor for an approach to fighting crime that takes what Troy called “unpredictable individuals” off the streets through aggressive enforcement, creating a perception of a more safe area. It didn’t necessarily mean the crime rates went down, but people felt more free to move about neighborhoods where this theory was tried. As my memory serves, it’s a similar-style approach to one Rudy Giuliani took as mayor of New York City.

One example Williams gave was that of the Robert Taylor Homes in Chicago, which became a gang haven. When the police engaged the community, they gained the support of the residents who could help eradicate the problem by keeping a sharp lookout. The police were also given a bit of leeway to come in and “kick ass” as well. It was one thing that Troy stressed, as the approach works best in smaller communities and sections of larger areas as the population is more homogenous with common values – otherwise, some may object to the possible infringement on indivdual rights the method sometimes entails.

He also talked about some of the techniques needed to repair communities that were at the “tipping point” that weren’t necessarily law-enforcement related but required community support, such as drug treatment, employment and housing assistance, help for ex-offenders, and most importantly an increase in expectations from the community – don’t shrug our shoulders and accept the problem.

While Williams gave several examples of crime-fighting programs (such as the EXILE sentencing for gun crimes we have locally, along with the federal “Weed and Seed” program that Salisbury participated in), the most intriguing to me was called the “Drug Elimination Program” from High Point, North Carolina. In this instance, law enforcement builds a case against overt drug dealers but intercedes prior to arrest with a warning that they should cease those activities because there’s enough evidence against them. It gives these (mostly) at-risk youth one chance to keep their record clean. Troy spoke of a similar program proposed in Baltimore for the secondary-level dealers, the ones who would take over after the worst offenders were taken off the streets without that second chance. Then there would be examples to point at.

One possible problem I see with that approach came up in the discussion when Dan Dougherty took over. His topic was “Gang Resistance in Wicomico County.” Even though our county is more rural than urban, yes indeed we have a gang presence – close to 500 gang members have either been confirmed or suspected in our 90,000 resident county.

The problem comes, as Dougherty noted, in the gang mentality. That mentality has three main traits to it:

• If gang members want something, they take it. They don’t respect others’ rights.
• They don’t expect to live past the age of 30, which leads to the point above.
• Prison doesn’t scare them; in fact, it’s a rite of passage. Dougherty compared it to a crime academy.

(Come to think of it, if you look at the first part inversely and think of being converted to a religion you may not want to become part of by threat of death, this could well sum up an al-Qaeda jihadist as well.)

Then Dougherty gave five reasons that the mentality was taking hold in our youth:

• A culture of violence, from mass media in particular.
• Easier access to guns and weapons.
• The breakdown in the family (“it’s not parents, it’s parent.”)
• No fear of punishment. (The line from the Offspring song “Come Out And Play” comes to mind – “you’re under 18, you won’t be doin’ any time.”)
• A stressful environment and constant anger, like road rage.

All in all, gang membership was becoming an “alternate lifestyle” and even children who would appear to have all the advantages in life were drawn to it. One example Dan gave was of an upper-crust girl arrested with three other gang members in a car, who explained, “I always wanted to date a gangsta.” In her rebellion she became an accessory.

What I got out of the things Dougherty said is that most of what is needed to combat the problem comes from the family, with the help of law enforcement. My shorthand way of putting it is to work on the problem from both ends – get the ones who are already too far gone off the street and dry up the supply of youth by becoming more involved as parents in our children’s lives. (Of course, we have to work on those single-parent families as part of it.) Dan made the point that the Fourth Amendment only applies to government, not to parents.

There were several slides of gang graffiti as part of Dan’s presentation, many of which were found in county schools. One commentor noted after Dan spoke that the teachers tried too hard to be friends to their students and “let things go by.” But it was countered that the schools can’t be all things – Dan noted now that students get free breakfast and lunch, pretty soon they’ll want dinner and a place to sleep too. As I noted above, parents have a role to play in their child’s upbringing. Sorry, Hillary.

At this point in the proceedings we were supposed to break into groups by county region, identifying problems and brainstorming about solutions. While we had a small group representing our part of the county, to me this portion of the program was the weakest link. You really can’t get a good discussion of the entirety of the subject in fifteen minutes, but that was all we had allotted since our speakers went a bit long. Perhaps the best original solution was by one of the other groups that suggested we clone our Sheriff, Mike Lewis.

With that said, a question came up about growing the Sheriff’s Department, but County Executive Rick Pollitt was “not aware” of any plans Lewis had to get more personnel. Their prior approach had been to “shore up the people who were here” by increasing pay and benefits for the Department.

Truly I think our expert speakers were more valuable than the community brainstorming in this case. I actually received a copy of Fixing Broken Windows and will have to thumb through it when I get some free time. While it may not work perfectly here, at least I’ll be more informed about some alternatives in doing something practically everyone in our society wants to accomplish, fighting crime. But as Dan Dougherty asserted in his presentation, it’s not going to happen overnight because it took 40 years to get to where we are now.

Our next meeting will be sometime in early April and that’s going to be another doozy for me as we discuss the environment. Yep, I’m going to get along great there…

Author: Michael

It's me from my laptop computer. View all posts by Michael