Crime "Holiday" Is Over...


Last week's snowfall in Fort Wayne should have told us something interesting about human nature. While even the USPS will get the mail delivered, violent crime all but dropped off the radar (for a few days). But as the weather improved with rising temperatures, and the road crews plowed and salted the streets and highways clean, all the cabin-fevered perps came right back out again. In the past several days, we've had a Vito's pizza deliveryman shot in the face, several apartments out by Getz Road invaded (with one woman suffering pellet gun wounds), and within the last 24 hours, two men were shot (one fatally) on the 3300 block of McKinnie Ave. near Hessen Cassel Rd. Looks like "business as usual" again in the Summit City.

I can truthfully say that the past week (for me) has been like the "good old days" of about ten years ago with the QUIET I've been privy to. Our neighborhood has actually been liveable..something I haven't been able to state with any conviction for the past several years! Several factors come into play with this. We have a good number of EMPTY rental houses (a godsend). We had adverse weather conditions (thank you, Mother Nature), and people stayed the hell inside for the most part (a little common sense DOES go a long way).

Now we're NOWHERE on the road to having Indy's crime (thankfully)...yet, but we do have these "people" (for lack of a better word) that just do NOT fit into a civil society...and we know who they are, if not by name, then by actions. I believe we have had THREE homicides (suicides apparently don't count) thusfar this year (Indy currently has 12), and Philly is even higher that that.

With the recent drug bust near Muncie (Alejandro Duran of Fort Wayne) of a huge amount of cocaine, we can only conclude that we indeed have a VERY serious problem here, and it's getting worse by the year. With federal grant money rapidly drying up for these drug enforcement programs, what is to become of whatever strides FORWARD we have made to date? What can we expect in the future?

I would point to the Homeland Security Department, and state emphatically that we need to protect our HOMELAND...and if that means targeting drug dealers (and other violent behaviors) within our city confines...so be it. If we can nab someone delivering a million dollars worth of drugs to a city the size of Muncie, who is making it possible to HAVE that quantity in Fort Wayne in the first place...and where is THAT stash coming from? And how much of this ill-gotten money is funding terrorist activity elsewhere? These are pertinent questions that NEED to be asked..and soon. The ability to find some answers would be nice as well, don't you think?

Personally, I'm all for the drug dealers killing off ONE ANOTHER (that can't happen soon enough in my opinion, and I'd be glad to assist with about 671 grains of "diplomacy"), but when they bring their trade to decent neighborhoods, turning them into killing zones (for THEIR amusement), chasing good people away, or at the least, making them too fearful to conduct their lives in a normal fashion...well, something has to be done. When innocent people become so much "collateral damage" in the bullet-strewn carnage that may erupt at any time on their streets...something needs to be done. And when businesses cannot operate without having inch-thick lexan between people...something needs to be done.

One thing that "should" happen is that ALL funding for further section 8 housing be STOPPED...in it's tracks. I have YET to see ANY good come from ANY project that section 8 housing was a part of. This helps NO ONE, and devastates good neighborhoods. Tapping Homeland Security to fund interdepartmental agency "units" such as the DEA, FBI, ATF (OCDETF) and local authorities needs to be pursued with renewed vigor. Here's where our representative bodies could EARN their (over abundant) salaries!

Education can only do so much...especially when people choose to IGNORE being educated (as we have seen all to often). Strict enforcement, with even stricter penalties for such aborrent behavior must be put into play. We have the resources to place crime on a much needed forced holiday.

Sadly, crime will never just "go away", but we CAN make it a lot harder to flourish.