Getting Serious

Until administrators and elected officials get serious about combating gangs and the crime associated with them little will change in the way of seeing a difference in the crime rate.  Based on my experiences the biggest challenge is getting these officials to even admit that there is a problem.  When the leadership denies it exists how do the troops under their command effectively engage in problem solving?  They can't.  I dealt with this problem at Danville P.D.  The director of public safety, Larry Thomason, told me when I requested additional gang training for our department that he didn't believe our city had a gang problem.  He told me that if I thought we had a problem then I needed to prove it to him.  I responded by telling him that if 6 unsolved gang related homicides and an unsolved gang related solicitation of murder for hire on two police officers, all in less than a year, wasn't enough proof for him then nothing I said or did could prove it.

It is the old head-in-the-sand mentality.  Pretend the problem, the threat  is not out there and maybe it will go away.  This obviously is not the answer and it baffles me that the leader of the Danville police department embraces this attitude.  It is no wonder that Danville's crime rate soars.  I was not comfortable with Thomason's take on our gang problem so I went to the mayor, Scott Eisenhauer.  Denny Davis joined me.  We made our case and Denny offered the mayor free gang training for the entire Danville police department.  Eisenhauer did not accept Denny's offer and supported Thomason's position.  So I thought I would take it a step further and wrote to each member of Danville's city council, 14 aldermen in all.  I got 1 response.

The point is that the leaders of the community have to take the lead on developing effective and serious strategies at dealing with the gang problems.  They need to turn to experts who have the knowledge and skills to formulate a plan then put it into play.  They need to put aside their foolish pride and accept the fact that they are walking in darkness when it comes to dealing with criminal street gangs.  They need to get the training and allow their officers to get the training that will enable them to degrade these gangs.

Danville's  State's Attorney, while he was running for his first term, stated that he was assaulted by 3 gang members who threatened to bring harm to his family if he didn't stop all of this talk about gang crime prosecution.  His response should have been a vigorous effort to combat gang crime.  Instead he has done little that I'm aware of.

We, the voters, put these people in office to do a job.  If they are not going to do it then we need to fire them and put someone in that will.  And throwing money at the problem isn't the answer so I don't want  to hear that funding is not available.  In my letter to the aldermen I told them how to develop an effective strategy without spending a dime and they were not interested.  So my question is, what is the real reason they refuse to confront the issue?

It is a historical fact that flourishing criminal organizations have been able to infiltrate systems and corrupt them.  I happen to know some very specific information about some powerful individuals in our community who have succumbed to the pressure and influence of criminal organizations.  Reasons vary from having their own personal drug addiction to soliciting prostitutes to accepting blood money.  But whatever the case it is all corruption and we have to root it out.

Things get messy when you take on corruption but good people will fight the good fight.  I know you're out there.  Remember, all it takes for evil to triumph is for good men and women to do nothing.  Let's all get serious and do our  part to make our communities safer, if not for ourselves then for our children.