Friday, October 29, 2010
It’s an unfortunate reality that sometimes it takes a tragedy to awaken a community in ways that may — just may — avert a larger tragedy.
And so it is with three of the highest profile murders in Youngstown this year: the January murder of Angeline Fimognari, 80, in the parking lot of St. Dominic Church; the Sept. 15 murder of real estate agent Vivian Martin, 67, in a house she was showing on the city’s East Side; and, the murder of Thomas Repchic, 74, and wounding of his wife, Jacqueline, 74, 10 days later in a drive-by shooting near St. Dominic’s.
The victims had something in common that set them apart from so many urban homicides: they had done absolutely nothing in their lives to deserve the cruelty that befell them. That is not to say that any others deserved to die, but too often becoming a victim is an almost inevitable by-product of a life lived within or on the fringes of crime.
Not so with Fimognari, Martin and the Repchics. One other thing Fimognari and the Repchics had in common was their attachment to St. Dom’s, a South Side landmark that sits in a neighborhood that faces the same challenges of any aging, urban neighborhood, but which is clearly salvageable and worth saving. The church, which for generations played an important role in the spiritual life of its community, has become a focal point in a multipronged effort to fight crime and neighborhood deterioration.
A serious beginning
Wednesday the church hosted a meeting of local, state and federal officials, police officers, clergy and community activists and folks who are concerned for their own safety and for the future of their community.
As some of the speakers noted, this is not exclusively a Youngstown problem. As the city and its neighborhoods go, so are likely to go adjoining neighborhoods, irrespective of urban and suburban boundaries. Even those inclined to take a fatalistic attitude — crime, like poverty, will always be among us — must recognize the necessity of doing everything possible now to combat neighborhood blight and the poverty of spirit that it brings. These are among a multitude of factors that contribute to crime.
A multipronged attack was described Wednesday that includes demolishing vacant houses, dispatching saturation police patrols, strictly enforcing all city housing codes, working with neighbourhood watch groups, connecting children with youth organizations and providing support for the elderly, creating neighborhood parks, treating juvenile recidivists as adult criminals and expanding community service for those on probation.
We would expand on that to stress zero tolerance by police and the courts for criminals of all stripes.
This is just the beginning of a movement that is going to have to be pursued by everyone at Wednesday’s meeting and by many others not for months, but for years.
If there is one certainty, it is that to the extent these and other initiatives are successful there will be fewer innocent victims. To the extent these efforts are abandoned, more people will suffer and die, more neighborhoods will cease to be places where people dare — much less desire — to live.