Harrisburg leads the midstate in homicides but it is not the only regional city dealing with violence on its streets. Just yesterday, two teens were shot in Lancaster. In fact, Lancaster and Yorkjoined Harrisburg as the top three cities for crimes per capita in Pennsylvania for 2008 as measured by the PA State Police Uniform Crime Reporting System. That is not the kind of list one aspires to lead nor is it conducive to investment and growth in our inner cities.
We want to explore why violent crime plagues certain neighborhoods in Central PA – who are the victims, who are the perpetrators, what is their weapon of choice, and most importantly, what are some proven, effective strategies to curb the death and destruction being perpetrated in some of our neighborhoods. A number of neighborhood watch groups have sprung up over the last year with mixed results. Rev. Brenda Alton, pastor at Kingdom Embassy in Harrisburg, helped create three task forces that are working to unite the community and drive anti-crime initiatives. She'll share her experiences with us.
In 1996, the Ridge administration, through the Pennsylvania Commission on Crime and Delinquency, launched a state version of the federal Weed and Seed program. Lancaster was the first city targeted. Harrisburg, Reading and York were added later and there are 17 total cities now under the program.
The aim is direct: "Weed" the targeted neighborhoods of drugs, thugs, guns and nuisance bars, and then "seed" the community with social and economic opportunities. A Weed and Seed policy paper notes some of those strategies include, "Community Policing—law enforcement strategies that use community members that participate on crime prevention teams and encourage close cooperation and partnership between grass-roots organizations and local police departments; Neighborhood Watch Groups—community members engage at the block level in meetings to discuss and agree upon shared values, standards of behavior and to coordinate education and clean up efforts that help improve the neighborhood's quality of life; Drug Prevention and Nuisance Abatement—community members focus on preventing substance dependency and related crime in order to regain control over their community's health and quality of life; Economic Development—community members build their community's social and economic vitality by supporting micro-enterprise efforts and resident-owned businesses making their community attractive for the investment of private capital; Re-Entry—community members develop a strategy to facilitate the positive re-entry of residents who have been incarcerated back into the community. Jason Rissler, the Harrisburg aid coordinator for Weed and Seed, will join our conversation Friday night to talk about specific efforts in South Allison Hill, one of the hotbeds for homicides. But his work now is more difficult. The new state budget axes Weed and Seed funding by 62%.
WITF and the Martin Luther King Jr. Leadership Development Institute embarked last spring on The Blueprint for Prosperity - an effort to bring together public, private, religious and community leaders to implement effective strategies to battle urban violence. We’ll tap into some of that brain power on Friday’s program by talking to Gilbert Moore, senior public affairs specialist, U.S. Department of Justice. Moore works for the DOJ's Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS) unit and plans to bring his expertise to the second Blueprint Forum scheduled for this weekend. He explains, "Community policing differs from traditional, what you might call, reactive policing. That's things like response times and catching criminals after the crime has been committed and there's a victim. Community policing is generally proactive and it's about preventing crimes from happening in the first place. To have police and communities collaborate to stop disorder in the community." Harrisburg in July secured nearly $2 million in federal stimulus funding to hire 8 new police officers ... a major step to taking back the streets. But clearly, neither money nor police alone can solve this deadly problem.
The wave of shootings last spring and summer prompted local clergy members this fall to join a petition drive for President Obama to convene a national summit on youth violence. In their “Futures Not Funerals” letter, they wrote to the president, “Our children are dying at highly alarming rates, but they are not dying because of swine flu or other diseases like pneumonia. Our children are being killed by another epidemic-scale disease known as gun violence. This is a preventable illness, but we are doing all that we can as parents, as community activists, and as faith leaders. We are being the change that you asked us to be, but, Mr. President, we need you to act in the urgency of the moment. There is not a minute to waste. We are now faced with the fact that our children are no longer being killed solely by bullets, but by the unwillingness of others to act on their behalf.” The clergy urged the president and Congress to reinstate the federal assault-weapons ban, call a national summit on youth violence, and empower a federal agency to collect, track and disseminate statistics on firearm violence to youth. Reverend Nathaniel Gadsden,pastor of Imani African Christian Church in Harrisburg and community impact manager for United Way of the Capital Region, is a signatory to that petition and he will offer his thoughts on Smart Talk.
President Obama dispatched Attorney General Eric Holder to Chicago in the wake of a savage beating of a teenager there captured on cell-phone video and broadcast nationwide. In fact, some speculate that the savage attack helped deny Chicago’s bid for the 2016 Olympic Games. Holder vowed a renewed federal effort to fund and promote anti-violence initiatives but offered few specifics. Harrisburg, Lancaster and York residents will elect mayors next month whose primary mission is to ensure safety on their cities’ streets. Safety has to be their #1 job. Without a sense of security among residents, businesses cannot thrive and a community cannot flourish.
