David, How many people that live in neighborhoods where this type of crime will never happen are going to call their council members, the mayor, the county commissioner, the legislators or the governor and tell them how outraged they are that this type of crime continues to go unchallenged in neighborhoods like Phillips, Whittier, Stevens Square and Central? The answer is....NONE! (although if we are lucky, this e-mail may provoke a few people to call)
The emphasis of the public complaints always seem to focus on the police not doing their jobs or doing them too zealotly, or the city council, mayor and chief not taking leadership on crime issues. The police are arresting these people over and over and over again. How many times do the police have to arrest the same person before they actually spend time in jail? On the average, it takes a couple hours to book a criminal and now of course there is what I call the "Hilton fee". That is the $186 booking fee the county charges the city to incarcerate a criminal for a couple of hours. You don't think cops get tired of busting the same person time after time and nothing happens. In fact, the criminals laugh in their face. As for the mayor, I have seen him, the chief and the precinct commanders at more crime and safety meetings lately than I care to count. Oddly enough, I haven't seen any city council people other than Dean Zimmerman. Those of us who have had the unfortunate opportunity to become well educated about crime issues learned very quickly that a great deal of the problem resides within the judicial system and the laws themselves. The many volunteers who work intimately with this issue have tracked case after case after case through the system. The case gets sidetracked here and lost there and never gets over there and so on and so on and so on. If it actually ever gets to court, there are several treatment options, community service hours, restorative justice, probations, plea bargains and outright dismissals. Some of us have made great strides in changing some laws to help law enforcement do their jobs more effectively. Taking that route is exhausting and very time consuming but we will keep trying. Communicating with the judges is quite a different thing. This is a hard group to affect and quite frankly at this point I am not even sure how to go about it. I am trying to find out though. At this point I think we need to just keep chipping away at the crime issues one by one and finding resolutions for each one. It's not fast, it's not easy, but eventually we have to have some effect. I just don't know what else to do. It is frustrating. Barb Lickness Whittier ===== "Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it's the only thing that ever has." -- Margaret Mead __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Yahoo! - Official partner of 2002 FIFA World Cup http://fifaworldcup.yahoo.com _______________________________________ Minneapolis Issues Forum - A Civil City Civic Discussion - Mn E-Democracy Post messages to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subscribe, Unsubscribe, Digest option, and more: http://e-democracy.org/mpls
