PLATFORM : The Little Stuff Counts

The important perception is whether or not residents think their neighborhood is safe. It’s never a coincidence which neighborhoods have drive-by shootings and which don’t. They’re the ones that look like they should have it.

We traditionally put our emphasis on murders, rapes and robberies. Smaller crimes are ignored and we’re forgetting that those are what generate the serious crimes. Everything from trespassing to dope dealers blocking traffic, intimidating people, littering. When I would prosecute a gang member for assault, it had no impact on the neighborhood. But when I put him in jail for two days for littering, and had the judge order him to stay out of a 26-block neighborhood, that spread like wildfire through both the community and the gang.

You could visually, from month to month, see a neighborhood get better, feel safer, see more pedestrian traffic, more kids on the street, see the lawns get greener, see people outside walking the dog. Services (from trash pickup to pizza delivery) came back in.

Weekend gang sweeps are not what this is about. Those just sweep entire neighborhoods without concentrating on the people identified as the problem.

When these criminals are committing all of these little violations, they know, and the system knows, that nobody is going to care. And so if you can swallow your pride and make a big deal about trespassing, it’s phenomenal how much effect it has.