CITIZENS AND LAW ENFORCEMENT WORKING TOGETHER • DURHAM, NC • DISTRICT 2

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5/21/2001 Partners Against Crime District II Minutes
 
E.K. Powe Elementary School, 6:00 PM
 
May 21, 2001
 
PAC II
 
* Introductions
 
33 people in attendance.
 
Co-chair Brooke Whiteford was absent. Co-chair Newman Aguiar facilitated. Officer Jim Adams, Officer Tony Scott, Lt. Blake and Capt. Tommy Morris from District 2 attended.
 
Rocky Rosen (rsr@herald-sun.com), Assistant Managing Editor from the Herald-Sun and Randall Williams, reporter from the Independent Weekly attended.
 
Neighborhood Watch Organization from Community Perspective.
 
Newman introduced attendees who discussed their experiences
 
Hank Majestic (Trinity Park): How a successful neighborhood watch works. It is a qualified success, keeping the energy going is important. It can fade otherwise. It started with 5 or 6 people, getting together in his living room. They divided their neighborhood into groups and identified the more social characters on a block to set up a watch. The association then set up a small fund to help fund get-togethers. About 15 houses make up a manageable group of people. The block captains get together twice a year to socialize or have presentations from Jim Adams and to discuss concerns. They set up a listserv for the captains strictly for crime concerns. A report is made at the monthly board meeting, and there is a newsletter that comes out every couple of months that contains safety tips. There was a door-to-door scam of a woman ringing bells and asking for money. This information communicated on the listserv and it was discovered that the perpetrator was living in the neighborhood.
 
Julie Holmes (Watts-Hillandale): How to start up a watch. She and her husband are newcomers to WHH, and had experienced a flurry of break-ins and bank robberies, and she started going to neighborhood and PAC meetings to see what could be done. She and 5-6 people who live on the perimeter of the neighborhood got together to set up systems of communication. While there is a good system for welcoming people into the neighborhood, there isn't a lot of information for the 2200 homes re: crime. Without a formal system in place, there is no way to keep a watch going. They have developed a block captain packet and have recruited 32 people. The block captain packets have been distributed to about 10 people who showed up to the first meeting. A second packet was prepared to be distributed to the neighbors by the block captain. These materials were given to them by the DPD. On June 11, there will be an effort to recruit additional captains with Jim Adams.
 
They have not set up a cruising group of people who would go through the neighborhood at all times of the day and raise visibility of neighbors being alert. Once these systems are put together, this will make it easier to move the project forward and keep people involved. There will be a monthly newsletter to captains that they can distribute to neighbors, such as tips on how to secure lawn mowers. They also plan to get names and phone numbers to use with the autodialer so that residents can be notified promptly about a particular issue. We would like to partner with some surrounding neighborhoods (Walltown, OWD, etc.) in joint efforts to educate citizens. They are also looking to replace the text-based neighborhood watch signs with ones that show a more graphical representation of the watch program. They are also thinking of refrigerator magnets to pass out.
 
Dot Heatherington (Watts-Hillandale): How a watch can fall apart. There was a good one for 4.5-5 years. What went wrong was that the duties were not spread around. Without delegation it is easy for the program to fall apart. She did a lot of door to door work, and she covered too large an area. It was hard to recruit new people to be captains. For four years she asked the neighborhood association to give her the names of new people so that she could recruit, unfortunately, this didn't happen. Her suggestion is for every one to know what everyone else is doing. If the effort is not kept up, within a short period you can really see a difference in the results.
 
Newman: On a larger scale, the goal is to develop a system to reach the most people in the least amount of time. The listserv was started a while back and this effort was successful, but doesn't help those without computers. The autodialer is a good way to reach many more people. Getting the data in the system has been slow, but once this has been completed, it will be very effective. If we can depend on the block captains, who receive the calls, to use their telephone tree to call neighbors we can develop an effective system to disseminate information in a relatively short period. We encourage neighborhoods to start lists of block captains and forward these lists to Officer Adams so that the information can be entered into the system. It is the responsibility of each neighborhood to begin the process. Jim Adams can assist by giving a presentation and recruiting more block captains. These captains can then get together and share information. There was a suggestion that there should be a volunteer from each neighborhood to act as a liaison for that area and that the liaisons should share information (e.g., Trinity Park Captains speaking to WHH). That may help alleviate burnout. This point person would attend the PAC meetings and help link PAC and the neighborhood. This is the model PAC would like to develop to make the communication more effective and keep more people involved. It does mean people taking an active role.
 
What about areas that are not organized? PAC has to work to get people from these areas. Also, for areas that have more transitional residents - renters- it is difficult to maintain neighborhood watch. The neighborhoods should pay special attention to these kinds of situations in order to keep neighborhood watch active. Newman has developed a database for Jim Adams, and PAC could distribute a template of this database to neighborhoods so that transferring the information to Jim would be simple. Walltown Ministries is working on developing a system. Shirley Street (resident since 1975) presented a letter that described efforts in community clean up, reaching out to residents. It asked that lawns, sidewalks and porches are kept clear, keep music at a tolerant level, to keep pets indoors, and to keep drugs out of the community, not to keep children at home alone and unattended while at home. This letter is to be sent to every tenant, landlord and homeowner and newcomer. Wayne Weathers, of the ministry explained that this letter was composed by a committee to make a difference. There are 110 children listed as attending a summer camp to keep children safe and occupied. They work with people in the community to assist others. They are working with graduate students at Duke Divinity School to talk to some of the gang members that were hanging out on Onslow. Newman said that PAC can build on these kinds of efforts to address the individual needs of the communities.
 
Audrey Mitchell from the Walltown Community Association (active 15-16 years), explained that group's efforts to address similar issues with neighborhood watch. They had block captains in place for a while and it began to fizzle out. They do distribute essential phone numbers to captains. One of the issues that developed was that the captains didn't want the police identifying them as having placed a call to 911. They are working on having block parties to unite people in the community. They work with the city to bring in funds for beautification and safety projects. They meet with the landlords to try to encourage them to keep up their properties. Many have begun to do so. Self-Help Credit Union is also working with them to rehab houses on Lancaster; over 30 homes have been rehabbed over time. Jim Adams has been to several watch gatherings to do safety checks. They plan to revitalize their efforts in Walltown.
 
Jim Adams then spoke and said that the community has done a good job to get people involved and they need to keep up the good work. Neighborhood watch: it removes the opportunity for crime to occur. You can get an individual home inspection to help you make changes to secure your home. PAC is working on an operation identification program to help people ID valuable items so that if stolen, they can be returned. He also said that people should be able to contact him or Tony Scott, as the community liaison officer, when issues arise and you need action to be taken. He emphasized that your community is all of Durham, not just your block or neighborhood and to always keep that in mind. It is critical for us to all work together. He applauded the efforts of the Walltown Ministries re: keeping children involved in positive activities and providing mentorship so that they do not turn to gangs.
 
Newman mentioned the anti-gang initiative being developed by the Mayor's office in conjunction with the PACs, so that there will be a unified, concerted effort to address the problem. There will be a level of coordination to help effect change. The first meeting of this anti-gang initiative will be held on May 24, 6PM at City Hall. It will be broadcast on cable access. There will be 6 meetings in all and will be held on the 4th Thursday of each month.
 
Captain Morris on crime update: Last month 4,135 calls in this district were answered. The major problem in the area -- larcenies. It is down to 175 this past month is District 2. This is significant because of the number of malls and strip malls. This figure also includes car break-ins. He has off duty officers coming on from 6PM-2AM to get into areas where break-ins appear to be a problem. There are also a large number of gas drive-offs, but this number is coming down. Officer Adams has been in touch with the gas stations about how to reduce these.
 
Northgate Mall has a lot of car break-ins. There are some neighborhoods that have a problem with some criminal activity, but until they come forward to tell the police on how they can work together to reduce the problem, it's difficult to address.
 
Someone mentioned the packs of dogs running through the neighborhood and the unavailability of animal control on the weekends. This is also complicated by the fact that they will not send out one person to address a pack of dogs. Captain Morris said that this is a budgetary matter, that the County doesn't have enough funding to have more than one person available on the weekend.
 
A concern about know drug houses was raised. If there is a house known for drug dealing activity, it can be addressed as a nuisance abatement. However, this is a very slow process because of the bureaucracy. Part of the problem is the high number of calls required to start the ball rolling and the fact that many residents are afraid. Captain Morris said that you can request that an officer NOT stop at your house if you fear repercussions from the drug dealer. There have been administrative changes at 911 that have made some of these citizen requests have spotty results and that more communication is necessary. 911 is a separate organization that refers calls to the DPD. Work is being done to reduce problems citizens are having with 911 calls. Captain Morris said that if you ask for a supervisor, that more likely than not, the problems can be straightened out.
 
Someone asked about which models of cars are broken into most -- most are Chrysler products, but Honda Accords are #1. There are a lot of Olds and Buicks in the 83-87 range that are also getting targeted.
 
There was a request to deal with loud music and disturbing the peace, and how often the noise ordinance is enforced. Can this be addressed at the gang initiative? Someone spoke of gang activity in Old Farm and there has been drug activity in the Riverview shopping center. Nancy Scott offered the use of Northern Durham library for a future PAC meeting.
 
--The Herald-Sun/PAC listserv incident.
 
The auto-generated crime reports are distributed to the PAC II listserv every day, reporting most area crimes. Julieta Giner asked why additional information on a particular sexual assault was not provided. This question was answered -- the incident occurred in June 1999 and involved a juvenile. The DPD is restricted from releasing information regarding a juvenile. Unfortunately, the Herald-Sun took her query and used it as a reason to justify its position that the police are withholding information from the media – they did not ask for a clarification or explanation from the person who posted, and Julia felt that the intention of her question was distorted. A person felt that being quoted from the listserv is not fair and possibly is a copyright issue. The Herald-Sun reporter then stood up to address the floor.
 
The dispute is not with the police department, he said, the H-S thinks that it is the best force in the Triangle. They have a problem with a specific policy instituted by Chief Chambers. She changed the access to police records (previously 2x a day, 365 days), to M-F, once a day. This means any report after 6AM Friday are not released till noon on Monday. While the H-S was going back and forth with Chief Chambers on this, there was a memo to the City Council with her name on it that contained habitual felon program that had inaccurate numbers. She was very angry and demanded a meeting with the publisher. She demanded a retraction, which she did not receive. He found it ironic that PAC is trying to implement all these communication methods within PAC to spread crime information, and the person writing this Buzz column (who remained unidentified) feels that the H-S feels the same way. A resident asked if the chief's policy is any different than in any other city. The reporter said that Chapel Hill releases every day, 7 days. The county has the same policy as the DPD. Their reasoning for harping on the DPD more often is that there is more crime in the city.
 
His defense for the H-S using the listserv post is that an editor saw the post and thought it was interesting in the framework of the policy of distributing information. Julieta felt that this was a problem and she read a letter that she is sending to the H-S that expresses her dismay at how the use of the post was taken out of context and reiterates her point that the benefit of the listserv built by citizens to share information is jeopardized by careless use of that information. Newman related that the particular dispute between the H-S and the DPD has colored their viewpoint, and that the reporter (Buzz), decided to lift the post, even though they knew the context, and still distorted the facts. PAC wants to see this issue resolved in a way would help the community. He said that he assumes that Julieta´s editorial will be published, though there was no guarantee.
 
There is a sense in the community that this is a "personal" problem between the H-S and the DPD.
 
What is the H-S's policy on publishing listserv postings? They don't know, and cannot commit to notifying PAC what the policy is or will be.
 
Question from the floor: If you (the reporter) are not in the position to make administrative change -- this could happen again. What can be done to effect change? Bill Hawkins has the ultimate decision-making power on paper editorial policies, he said, but isn´t necessarily going to make public their policy when decided. A citizen then recounted hypocrisy in the H-S´s policies of reporting all the facts. There was a rape in the area in 1998, and it turned out that the rapist was a member of the Herald-Sun family and that story never ran, proving that there was no full disclosure in that instance.
 
MEETING ADJOURNED
 
Contact information for the Herald-Sun reporter attending tonight´s meeting:
 
Rocky Rosen
Assistant Managing Editor
Durham Herald-Sun
419-6649, 419-6889 (f)
rsr@herald-sun.com
PO Box 2092
Durham, NC 27702

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