Publication Date: Wednesday, February 09, 2005
Editorial: A powerful start on crime prevention
Editorial: A powerful start on crime prevention
(February 09, 2005) New East Palo Alto 'Crime Prevention Task Force' outlines a comprehensive, high-impact, multi-agency effort both to fight crime and build a new community vision
As East Palo Alto's crime rate has started to climb back up after a decade of relatively lower numbers, the Weekly has urged re-creation of the famous multi-city "Red Team" that helped end a murder and crime streak in the early 1990s.
So far the local police agencies have not had the resources to put into that, due largely to continuing recruitment, budget and other problems within each agency.
In other words, things haven't gotten bad enough just yet for a pull-out-all-stops approach -- despite tragic drive-by shootings (see the "Our Town" column on page 4 of today's Weekly) and rising crime rates generally.
Yet the lack of a cross-Bayshore effort does not mean there haven't been solid collaborative efforts within San Mateo County, involving the East Palo Alto Police Department, the Sheriff's Department, the Probation Department and others. These clearly have not been enough, however.
As we have noted repeatedly, crime is not just an "East Palo Alto problem" but affects Palo Alto, Menlo Park and all other communities in the Midpeninsula. Past experience shows that the "drug problem" includes both sellers who may be based in East Palo Alto and buyers who come from beyond its boundaries.
Now Rose Jacobs Gibson, a San Mateo County supervisor and former East Palo Alto mayor, has done our past suggestions one better. She has spearheaded creation of a new group, the East Palo Alto Crime Reduction Task Force -- which held its first meeting May 3, 2004 and has since taken a broad view of the intertwined problems.
On Jan. 31, the group released a 35-page report that calls not just for a vigorous response to crime and known criminals but also includes a comprehensive array of programs designed to divert young persons from crime and gangs, which are also reported growing, and help create a new, more peaceful "vision" for the community.
The report is a masterwork of concise description of the problems and proposed efforts to address them. It is the product of representatives of 17 disparate community and government entities. Its focus, clarity and candid frankness -- and absence of hyperbole and sweeping pronouncements -- in itself creates confidence in the process.
It is an intelligent, practical outline that combines tough monitoring of known criminals with visionary programs to marshal community resources to provide "pro-social alternatives to our youth in lieu of gang and criminal activities."
There will be continuing dialogue about community values and standards, and an attempt to create and sustain close partnerships between government, police and community leaders.
There are no guarantees that the effort will be effective. There have been many high-sounding programs in the past that have failed to achieve their vision, lost funding or faded out after the initial enthusiasm.
But Jacob Gibson's track record of commitment and determination to improve the community and region are a huge plus as this effort moves forward in coming months.
The membership in the task force is astoundingly broad, and includes everything from state parole officers to Little League representatives, from ministers to housing-outreach officials, the city manager's office to the College Track organization. A danger may be that it's too broad to be sustainable over the long run, but at the same time each component has a defined and meaningful role.
So far, most media attention has focused on the "get tough" policies of an intensive-supervision plan for individuals on parolee or probation who have a history of criminal violence. This will entail weekly visits, frequent drug testing and close monitoring of "the most violent offenders in the community."
This will complement an expansion of the "highly functioning, well-established law enforcement collaborative effort to reduce crime, violence, drug sales and gang activity."
But we believe the most powerful element of the multi-faceted plan lies in two areas: (1) concentrating resources to provide positive alternatives for young persons and (2) creating mechanisms to build a stronger vision for the community's future -- built upon work in recent years by One East Palo Alto, the community initiative funded by the Hewlett Foundation.
This is a long-overdue effort. But the focus and intelligence with which it has so far been put together indicates it may well have been worth the wait.
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