Warren mayor answers crime concerns of neighborhood groups

Photo

Warren Mayor Michael J. O'Brien

By Ed Runyan

The public may not understand how police officers do their work, the mayor said.

WARREN — Eleven neighborhood watch organizations in the city signed a letter asking Mayor Michael O’Brien to take bold steps to fight “rampant crime, flagrant solicitations for prostitution and drug dealing.”

O’Brien says that the city is addressing those issues aggressively but that for practical reasons its police department cannot exchange information with the groups in quite the way they would like.

The letter says the public needs to perceive Warren as being “zero tolerant on crime,” or the work of the neighborhood associations “will be in vain, and no plan of revitalization will ever prevail in the City of Warren.”

Many of the neighborhood associations have formed within recent years, though the group led by Frank Bodor, Neighborhood Takeback Inc., has existed for more than four years.

The letter makes these recommendations:

UConduct frequent sting operations to arrest “johns” and prostitutes in cooperation with local media to publicly name the offenders.

UProvide bicycle or foot patrols in areas of high prostitution and drug dealing.

UFormulate a surveillance camera plan with the neighborhood associations that can be used by police and the associations to combat crime.

UProvide a liaison between the police department and neighborhood associations to attend each neighborhood association meeting to trade intelligence on crime.

Bodor said prostitution and drug dealing are an especially big concern in his area, which is north and east of the intersection of High Street and Park Avenue northeast of Courthouse Park. Bodor’s law office is on Porter Street Northeast.

On some street corners, prostitutes beckon people, and “if the car door is open, they just jump right in,” Bodor said.

There are drug dealers walking around shaking plastic bags like they have something for sale in them, he added.

O’Brien said the city has had undercover officers working the area Bodor refers to, and arrests were made.

But citizens may not realize just how much officers are there because they are blending in, he said.

The police department did attempt a prostitution sting this summer that was not successful because the undercover officers used were too attractive to be believable, O’Brien said.

It may not appear that there have been a sufficient number of arrests for drug dealing and prostitution, O’Brien said, but officers questioning such individuals can often obtain information on more serious crimes by talking with the prostitutes and low-level drug dealers and letting them go, he said.

O’Brien said he personally drives through such neighborhoods several times on an average day and believes drug dealing and prostitution are declining, not increasing.

He said the city is listening to the neighborhood groups and implementing some of their suggestions, but there is a limit to how much information the police can share with the organizations.

It’s great to have the neighborhood groups serving as the “eyes and ears of the neighborhoods,” but sharing information on crime with community groups “makes no sense” from a professional policing standpoint, he said. It just isn’t safe, he said.

“We’ll continue to work with them [the organizations,] but we also have a job to do,” he said.

Likewise, it would be difficult to find a way for police and citizens groups to work together on the use of surveillance cameras, he said.

O’Brien said one reason it may appear that crime is up in Warren is that the weakening economy and the value of copper has led to a lot of copper thefts.

Violent crime, however, has not risen, he said.

runyan@vindy.com