Crime sweeps, CPU fortify city’s anti-crime arsenal
In a city as deeply entrenched in crime as Youngstown, the police department must latch on to as robust an arsenal of law-enforcement tools and tactics as possible.
That’s why we applaud and welcome last Tuesday night’s launch of weekly crime sweeps in individual wards of the city by a united front of Youngstown Police and affiliated units, including the vice squad, Violent Crimes Task Force, Adult Parole Authority and the newly re-established YPD Community Police Unit.
Detective Sgt. Pat Kelly, head of the Community Police Unit overseeing the sweeps, said of this week’s blitz through the high-crime Sixth Ward: “I figure if we can flood the area with enough people we can start to clean it up a little bit,” He added that he had instructed his officers to adopt a “no-tolerance” attitude toward any signs of criminal behavior.
To Kelly’s credit, the premiere sweep yielded significant results including several arrests stemming from drug, weapons and outstanding warrants. One woman was even cited for impeding the flow of traffic after stopping at an intersection to talk to someone on the sidewalk.
Clearly, when Kelly says “no tolerance,” he means “no tolerance.
CRITICISM
As a result, some critics may argue that the strategies of the aggressive weekly sweeps run counter to the aims and philosophies behind officer-friendly community policing.
Youngstown’s CPU, launched in June after an absence of several years due to budget constraints, is based on proactive policing. It stations one officer permanently in each of the city’s seven wards to form bonds with residents, community leaders, faith leaders and others. Its foundation rests upon the notion that with stronger interaction between law-enforcement officers and neighborhoods, police will be better able to learn about neighborhood problems and concerns before they snowball into criminal mischief.
Some critics of mixing crime sweeps into the CPU protocol elsewhere in the nation have argued that such “zero-tolerance” actions could be perceived as brutal, suspect or even militaristic, thereby discouraging residents from taking active cooperative roles in the crime prevention initiatives upon which community policing is based.
Such critics are off base. Just as myriad motivations and factors have fueled the growth of crime in Youngstown, myriad tactics to combat lawlessness become essential.
In its purest form, community policing can strengthen ties between the vast majority of law-abiding residents and the cops. Those ties can help CPU officers better target areas of criminal mischief and pinpoint individual offenders.
But CPU should not be viewed as a warm and fuzzy “soft on crime” unit. The police department’s primary mission must remain security and protection of all city residents. Sometimes tough tactics prove to be the only tactics successful enough to rid the streets overrun by pathetic thugs and sleazy dope dealers.
SIGNS OF SUCCESS
In its larger mission of community engagement, however, early signs point to success for the CPU. Kellysaid the unit receives on average about two dozen calls a day. He said that is the biggest surprise since the unit began operations in July. The high volume of communications on quality-of-life issues in neighborhoods bodes well for the CPU to address and remedy them.
Though some say the jury remains out on the overall effectiveness of community policing in high-crime areas of the nation, clearly some positive dividends have resulted from their implementation elsewhere.
Even with such encouraging findings, realists must recognies that clearly the ward by ward crime sweeps and the CPU neighborhood patrolling will not in and of themselves create a panacea for ridding the mean streets of Youngstown of all serious crime. But if working together they serve to put a noticeable dent in the city’s abysmally high crime rate, they will have proven to be well worth the time, effort and expense of their activation.