Opinion: Holding the line on crime


Crime and jobs are always the biggest stories around here, so Thursday’s release of Henderson’s preliminary crime numbers for the first half of 2005 is important.

So what can we learn from the stats, which show a decrease from 860 to 857 among Part 1 crimes, the most serious type, but an increase from 70 to 77 among violent crimes?

Not much.

We can take hope from the fact that crime has stayed roughly the same as it was a year ago, which statistically was Henderson’s best year under Police Chief Glen Allen. We’re particularly encouraged by a 16 percent drop in the number of burglaries; perhaps the city’s law enforcement efforts, from community watches to the courts, are making Henderson tougher on break-in artists.

On the other hand, not one measure of violent crime declined, and the total rose from 70 to 77. That’s a 10 percent increase.

That points to an important truth about violence in Henderson: Because of the city’s size, the numbers are small enough to produce huge statistical fluctuations with slight changes. Rape is up 300 percent if you want to alarm people; it’s up three incidents if you want to encourage calm.

And that leads to another harsh truth about violence in Henderson: It’s an all-or-nothing proposition. If you were one of the three victims of rape or the two homicides, the 28 aggravated assaults or the 43 robberies, the violent crime rate for you in the first half of 2005 was 100 percent. If you weren’t a victim of any of those 77 crimes, the rate for you was zero percent.

It’s easy to take a bunker mentality if you’re in the latter group and just hide out, hoping the predators pass you and your home by. Then something shatters your isolation, and you’re victimized, and you’re forced to fight for a better city or flee Henderson.

Some people have criticized the Vance County Coalition Against Violence because its founding reflects such a shattering event. The group came together in the fall of 2004, during a year when violent crime fell dramatically in Henderson, in large part because of the murder of Samir Rasheed out in the county in the spring. That death was no more or less important than any other in Vance County, but it hit closer to home for many community leaders because of the prominent positions of Rasheed’s parents, Abdul and Marolyn Rasheed.

The same critics could jump on the statistics from January to June and say they show that the coalition has accomplished nothing. People are still being murdered, raped, robbed and assaulted despite the “Stop the Violence Now” signs, the Faith Summit, the newspaper columns and all the talk that weekly meetings can produce.

But that’s an unfair attitude. We didn’t become a notorious place for crime overnight, or over six months, and we won’t become Pleasantville in any six-month period. We need long-term solutions, which take time to implement and time to produce results. The Weed and Seed initiative is promising, and we doubt city leaders would have taken on the extensive application process without pressure from the coalition.

A major focus of Weed and Seed is an attack on the drug problem. You’ll note that Part 1 crimes, as categorized by the U.S. Justice Department, don’t include the word “drugs.” The use and sale of drugs aren’t crimes against other people, so they don’t make the list.

But if you accept law enforcement claims that drug dealing and drug abuse are connected to most of our crime, and we do, then you know that we can’t get a true picture of Henderson crime without considering drugs. And you know we’ll never make much progress against the violence and fear in this area until we put the dealers in prison (weeding) and open eyes among those who despair to the opportunities and answers beyond the drug world (seeding).

Until Weed and Seed or some other approach kicks in to full effect, we need to hang on, and we need to thank our understaffed, overworked Police Department for fighting the criminals to a standstill in the first half of 2005.