A 25+ Year Crime Wave We are Just Beginning to Acknowledge. WHY?
Posted in Greensboro
Dec. 18, 2007 at 11:47
by BrendaBee
Cara Michele has a very interesting post today here relating her interviewed with a policeman friend. The first question was of particular interest to me and I believe I understand why she asked that question. She asked him specifically about the drop in the homicide rate in 2004 and whether it was because the feds were in town. Cara Michele and I had a friendly debate of sorts when this came up last week (Dec. 11). I said the drop in homicides in 2004 was due to David Wray having gotten his programs in place putting more experienced police on the streets at the times that homicides generally occur which is at night. He did this by putting the force on rotating shifts. Now it is just common sense that the more experienced and older personnel on the force if given their choice of shifts to work will take the normal daytime shifts leaving the rookies and less experienced police officers to deal with the high crime times of the evening and night. I claimed therefore that David Wray had to resort to rotating shifts. Michele said it was the presence of the feds in town.Her policeman friends answer was, “ “Crime in the neighborhood is directly related to how visible the police are. That goes into your numbers. Where do most crimes occur? Where the police aren’t. [In 2004] there was more visibility. People were more cautious. That had an impact on the numbers.”
Of course he had a great deal more to say as he answered other questions so I do urge everyone to read this post. It was just that his particular answer proved the point I was trying to make that David Wray’s initiatives were the cause of the drop in crime in 2004. He came in to office in the summer of 2003 and in 2004 there was a significant drop in crime. This trend continued into 2005 and then in the summer and especially the fall of 2005 the City Manager Mitchell Johnson all but took over the command of the police department. David Wray orders were countermanded and then he was no longer allowed to hire or fire and finally he was locked out of his office by a City Manager whose training was physical science in college and a few seminars in management felt more able to run the police department than a man who had devoted 23 years of his life to police work.
Well, it just seemed to me that Cara Michele’s police officer friend in everything he said verified that David Wray was indeed on the correct path to putting Greensboro back on the path of being a safe city again after almost two decades of high homicide and other crime rates.
David Wray began many things while he was in office and one of them was more visibility for policemen. He had them in the streets and neighborhood policing. In order to do this he needed more policemen which the city council still hasn't seen fit to provide, or to make the most of those he had. This was the reason he had to go on the rotating shifts in an effort to make the most of the too few police officers he had. It is just common sense. Hospitals have to do the same thing because they are always short of people so they have rotating shifts so they can make the most of what they have and st the same time make sure that all shifts have a fair share of experienced people. Just common sense. David Wray then was the reason for the decline in crime in 2004 just as I said.
Please remember that in January 2006 I didn't know David Wray from, Mitch Johnson from Joe Blow. I knew who they were but absolutely nothing about them or what they were doing or not doing. I got into it on "David Wray's side purely because my psychological training taught me that it would have been impossible for this man to have worked with Blacks in the GPD and been promoted as he was for 23 years an never shown his racial tendencies. so when Mitch Johnson and the City Council said he was a racists there was no way I was going to believe them. There had to be another and logical reason why he was forced to resign. That is when and why I went looking for answers and reading everything I could find out about the man. Then of course there were the blogs and Ben Holder and The N&R and The Rhino. Bottom line the FBI said David Wray was no racist. And in 2004 because of more police visibility on the streets be causes of a program David Wray put into practice there was less crime. In fact the usual 30+ murders was dropped to 16 that year. Something bad has been going on in Greensboro and one man was turning it around. Something bad happened when people were able to get rid of him. Who but the criminals had a reason to get rid of him?
The last time Greensboro saw homicide rates were in the teens was under Police Chief Swing in the 1980’s. Again I will refer you to one of Cara Michele’s posts here Then Police Chief Daughtry ( Greensboro’s first Black Police Chief) came in in January 87 and the crime rate began to rise and has never come back down except for the first full year of David Wray’s administration when there were only 16 homicides in a city that regularly experienced 30 or more. So what caused the rise in crime from 1987 onward? What was different about the GPD. What was different about the make up of the police force? What was different about the goals and outlook of the police force? Was crime more tolerated by the Police Chiefs and police officers after Chief Daughtry took office. The after him we had Chief White, another Black man. And now we have chief Bellamy. These are question I believe that have to be answered before we get a handle on crime. Why did it climb so swiftly after 1987?
Going back in the newspaper accounts there was a good deal of rumblings about the police not caring what happened in the Black communities. But then if this was true why were there so many less crimes? Because the fact is, the vast majority of crimes are Black on Black.
Is it truly a cultural difference in expectations? I don’t want to believe this, but the crime rate did rise and therefore seems to be tolerated under Black Police Chiefs (Daughtry, White, Bellamy). Are White Police Chiefs less tolerant of crime and especially homicide? I’m going in circles here and I don’t necessarily like what I am seeing, or think I am seeing. I just know that something must be done about crime in Greensboro. Not because we are suddenly in a crime wave, but because we have been in a crime wave for the past 25+ years!
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Dec. 18, 2007 - Yep
Billy The Blogging PoetWhy? The answer is simple really. Suddenly rich white people are afraid they'll get gunned down while shopping or dining in their favorite restaurant. That's why an issue myself and others have faced for 30+ years is suddenly being talked about.
Posted by Billy The Blogging Poet
Dec. 19, 2007 - Untitled Comment
My question goes deeper Billy. It goes to the heart of the matter which is Black. Why are Blacks more prone to crime, violence, immoral behavior, and tolerance of criminal behavior in their elected officials? David Hoggard's article today in the N&R really surprised me coming from David who is so color blind, or trying to be color blind. And me, the all time see people not color girl, but I have been seeing it and blogging on it for a couple years now and being called a racist. That's okay I can take being called a racist because I know my heart. But what I can not understand is WHY? For God's sake, why are Blacks more prone to this behavior? Why are these particular people on a path of self destruction regardless of what is done? BBPosted by BrendaFayBowers
