September 5, 2008
Wilder, Pantele have a tender moment
Rachel DePompa’s new blog for NBC12 hits the ground running with the story of mayoral candidate and council president Bill Pantele’s press conference this morning in Shockoe Bottom and the oh-so-coincidental appearance by Mayor Wilder to refute Pantele’s accusations of “finger-pointing” and confusion:
Pantele was touting his new plan to crack down on street level crime. He told a crowd of about 25 people he would adopt a zero tolerance policy for neighborhood crime if elected mayor. He said part of the focus would be on prostitution, assault, graffiti, loitering and vagrancy. Pantele said, “It all starts at the top, with having determination that neighborhood crime matters. It does and I’m serious about it and rather than finger pointing or confusing it’s time for real leadership.”
I wish we could have a “Zero Tolerance Policy” for corporate greed, selfish developers, coal burning plants, wars for oil, government intrusion,ie wiretapping, drug kingpins, etc. How come we have zero tolerance policies for street criminals and children in public schools only?
Bosnia!
Seriously though, I agree with you gray. In addition though, Bill does have point to finger. The City needs to figure out better crime fighting techniques.
One thing that I have been researching in response to some serious lack of communication between police and community in my neighborhood is better alerts.
Check out what Minneapolis has:
http://www.ci.minneapolis.mn.us/police/crimealert/index.asp#TopOfPage
You would think with all that wiretapping cocaine would never make it to shore let alone into rocks landing into pipes in out local crack houses.
Back to the subject…here in Church Hill our neighborhood crime watch has worked well over the years thanks to our great veteran crime fighting volunteer, Shelby Long. If anyone wants to know what neighbors can do to decrease crime, talk to her.
I would like to see more education on gangs. We do have gangs here, even if they are local groups, they still control the drug trade and kill teenagers. And, our kids probably know more about than we realize. Although they may not know the gangs signs they are flashing are actually gang signs.
I feel like many parents are in the dark about these activities. For example, check out the Bebo pages that your teens have set up and the “friends” they have on their pages. I went on a one-woman mission to shut down all Bebo pages for the Church Hill Boyz and the Fulton Bottom Riders until I realized that they were actually helpful for police investigating the gangs.
Wow! Where do these kids go to school? What ages are they?
Here’a page: http://www.bebo.com/Profile.jsp?MemberId=263832771