Crime-fighting initiatives good news for Youngstown

Two recent front-page headlines in The Vindicator — “23 indicted on gang-related charges” and “OSHP aims to step up efforts” — should reassure Youngstown residents who must live with crime day after day, and should serve as a warning to the gangbangers and other criminals that they face a formidable foe.

The 42-count federal indictment of 23 members of the LSP Street Gang on the city’s South Side is the result of investigations conducted by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives and city police. The alleged gang members face a slew of charges, including carrying illegal firearms and theft. The United States Attorney’s Office is using the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act to prosecute the accused.

The decision by the Ohio State Highway Patrol to increase its presence is the result, to some extent, of Gov. John Kasich’s public pledge to help Youngstown deal with its crime epidemic.

“ ... we’re helping Youngstown now, our great highway patrol, our great security people working to try to settle things down in Youngstown after that terrible shooting,” Kasich said March 8 during his State of the State address to a joint session of the General Assembly. “We lost a leader in Youngstown that night. He’s got a great mom. I talked to his mom about a day or so after the killing. I met his mother and I called her up, Mrs. Hill, and she said to me, ‘I’m praying for the parents of the people that shot my son.’ That’s the power of the Lord.”

The shooting the governor talked about occurred Feb. 6 at a house party on Indiana Avenue just north of the Youngstown State University campus. A 25-year-old YSU student, Jamail Johnson, was killed and 11 others were wounded. Six men have been charged in the incident.

The timing of the ATF and OSHP initiatives couldn’t be better. As the mercury climbs and the days get longer, criminal activity increases. By the summer, if the past is any indication, some neighborhoods will become war zones with drug-dealing gangs fighting each other for turf and markets.

The victims invariably are residents who cannot afford to move and who become prisoners in their homes.

But it is also a fact that greater law enforcement presence in Youngstown, aggressive weapons interdiction programs and regular raids on crack houses and other drug havens do have a positive effect on crime.

Mayor Jay Williams and police Chief Jimmy Hughes have said that Youngstown will again join forces with federal and state law enforcement agencies to saturate high-crime areas, especially during the summer.

The residents of the city deserve no less.

The killing of Johnson turned the national spotlight on Youngstown — just as last year’s murders of 80-year-old Angeline Fimognari and 75-year-old Thomas Repchic did. Then, Father Gregory Maturi, pastor of St. Dominic Church, launched a community-wide campaign to rid the city’s South Side, where the church is located, of vacant and dilapidated houses. His effort became a national story.

Now, the Republican governor, who took office in January, has made the violence near YSU’s campus a trigger for his administration’s involvement with the city.

Firm commitment

Comments from state Public Safety Director Thomas Charles, a native of Hubbard who served as the state’s inspector general and is a former highway patrolman, and highway patrol Superintendent Col. John T. Born leave no doubt that the state is in for the long haul.

In a meeting with Vindicator writers, Born used the words “sustained effort” to describe what the patrol is planning. But unlike previous efforts in which highway patrol cruisers, at times as many as 30, came on announced visits for a week at a time, the new program entails shorter, more random visits.

“Some of the worst criminals we have are pretty much without proper driving abilities,” Chief Hughes notes.