Commentary : The Battle Is On for Control of Neighborhoods

There is a war raging in San Diego--a battle for the future of our neighborhoods. It’s impossible to pick up a newspaper or switch on the news without seeing the casualties of the battle. Drive-by shootings, drug busts, gang violence, assaults--so many stories that we begin to lose sight of the terrible human tragedy each one of these headlines represents.

In Normal Heights, where I live, major crime increased 70% from 1983 to 1987. Overall in the 3rd Council District, the number of strong-arm robberies increased 98%, the number of aggravated assaults increased 130%, the number of motor vehicle thefts increased 122%. (My own car became a part of that statistic earlier this year.)

The sheer magnitude of the problem works to make us feel powerless. We hesitate to hold anyone in particular responsible for solving the problem because there is an unstated assumption that no single individual can do much to remedy a problem so widespread.

This attitude discourages individual attempts to make our communities safer, and it leads to misplaced hopes for intervention by outside authorities--most recently a request for $34 million from state government.

In the traditional liberal versus conservative debate, one side says the solution is for more police and jails to lock up the gang members and drug dealers. The other side calls for more drug education and rehabilitation, job referrals, recreation programs, counseling and other youth programs. The truth is that both sides are right, but neither side has the full solution.

San Diego does need more police. The national average for police officers per 1,000 population is 2.0. Many large cities have 2.5 officers or more. In San Diego, we have 1.6 officers. The city manager’s proposed budget for next year would reduce that number even further.

San Diego does need more jails; the current jail system is severely crowded.

And San Diego County does get the short end of the state funding stick for drug and alcohol-abuse treatment programs.

But we can more effectively battle crime and begin to reclaim our streets with the resources we have, if we begin taking personal and collective responsibility for the safety and the health of our own neighborhoods.

Programs like Neighborhood Watch and Business Alert have proven records for substantially reducing crime. Police say that Neighborhood Watch communities have 35% less crime over a sustained period of time. These programs are a cost-effective way of fighting crime because the effort is voluntary. They also can break down isolation in communities, which can help residents solve other problems.

We should greatly increase such programs and find creative ways to incorporate them into police crime-fighting efforts.

This is difficult because the police lack sufficient personnel. Even if a neighborhood tries to form a group, it may have to wait months for a police officer to be available to hold the initial training session. As a result, many groups die before they are born, and law enforcement suffers.

For Neighborhood Watch and Business Alert groups to succeed, there must be an individual or group willing to take responsibility for recruiting leaders, doing the initial training, and supporting the groups once they are started. The Police Department cannot afford such a commitment.

Instead, there needs to be a nonprofit organization, funded by private contributions, established to expand and strengthen our Neighborhood Watch and Business Alert networks.

Rather than waiting for a break-in to prompt a neighborhood to ask for help, the nonprofit organization could be pro-active, using paid, trained organizers to recruit volunteer block captains and help them set up an effective Neighborhood Watch.

There is a precedent for this in San Diego. In the early 1980s, Alpha Project, a community youth organization in the Mid-City area, hired workers with federal funds to form Neighborhood Watch groups. They were active for three years and set up about 3,000 groups before they lost their funding. Since then, many of the groups they helped form have become inactive.

My own experience also convinces me that recruitment can broaden the Neighborhood Watch program.

Over the last two years, the El Cajon Boulevard Business Assn. recruited Business Alert block captains for 40 blocks along El Cajon Boulevard. The association helps maintain those groups--a critical component of continuing success--with a newsletter and monthly meetings.

This type of organizing and maintenance could work with businesses and neighborhoods citywide.

But, for Neighborhood Watch and Business Alert to be fully effective, police have to make better use of them.

I recently participated in a police ride-along during which a convicted felon wanted for parole violation was sighted near his family’s home. Officers combed the neighborhood on foot and in a helicopter. The sergeant in charge, who had been assigned to that beat for more 18 months, didn’t know a single person in the Neighborhood Watch network in that neighborhood. The suspect was well-known in the neighborhood and could easily have been spotted by residents if they had been aware that a search was under way. Instead, a lack of communication between residents and police resulted in inefficiency and the eventual escape of the criminal.

Individuals can do something to change this. We can demand that elected representatives make funding for police their No. 1 priority, to ensure adequate numbers of officers. A City Council willing to spend millions of dollars in public funds on a Soviet Arts Festival or the remodeling of a local theater ought to be able to find the money to maintain adequate levels of police service in our neighborhoods. Individuals can also demand that the council insist on closer cooperation between beat patrol officers and neighborhood groups.

This requires taking personal responsibility for the welfare of our own community.

In some of our larger cities, the criminals have already won the war. They won because the residents didn’t care enough to put up a fight. If we want a different outcome in San Diego, now is the time for us to make our stand. Working together, we can do something about crime in San Diego.