Thread: Get Serious About Gang Violence

http://www.oregonlive.com/editorials/or ... xml&coll=7
August 10, 2005

Get serious about gang violence

A larger police presence is needed downtown, but the city has done too little to prevent violence.

Gang violence is spilling over into downtown Portland and if you aren't worried about it, you ought to be. Mayor Tom Potter and the City Council should be worried, too -- enough to get serious about preventing it, and not just downtown but throughout Portland.

How to do it isn't a mystery. The city must hire more police officers. It must strengthen outreach to gang members and work to convert them. But the city must also be ready and able to crack down on them.

The city can't do this alone, of course. Right now, Multnomah County's dysfunctional jail system isn't helping. The monitoring of gang members as they leave prison and re-enter our community isn't vigilant enough, either. One key to preventing gang violence is to make the coordination between police and probation officers so tight that gang members can't slip through it.

True, downtown nightclub hoppers interviewed for last Sunday's Living cover story ("Partiers, not worriers") appeared to be oblivious. Shootings? What shootings? some asked in response to questions from The Oregonian's Inara Verzemnieks and Su-jin Yim. Then again, they were interviewed before more shots were fired early Sunday and again on Monday.

On Monday, a 28-year-old man was killed, a teenager was wounded and in the investigation that followed, eight downtown blocks had to be cordoned off. This wasn't a shooting; it was a gunbattle. As The Oregonian's Maxine Bernstein reported, as many as four guns may have been involved. Police collected more than 40 shell casings.

To control gang violence, the city needs every ounce of leverage it can get. The city needs to be able to cut down on liquor-fueled fights, for instance, by insisting that clubs and bars cooperate. Amazingly, however, in the final days of the 2005 session, the Oregon Legislature weakened the city's hand.

As The Oregonian's Anna Griffin reported this week, most liquor-related incidents don't happen tidily inside the place that sold the liquor. Fights break out nearby. Right now, when three complaints are filed about an alcohol vendor in a single month, the city can require improvements or challenge the vendor's license to sell alcohol. Doing the bidding of the Oregon Restaurant Association, however, legislators approved a bill that would confine the city's authority to what happens on vendor's property, not near it. Gov. Ted Kulongoski should veto this bill, and give the city the leverage it needs over nightclubs and bars.

As we've been pointing out for years, gang violence only gets worse unless there's a concerted strategy in place to prevent it. There's no excuse for inertia, yet that's been the city's response. Since 1998, the gang enforcement team has gone from 35 officers to 23. Apparently, the council would rather use taxpayer money to finance political campaigns than to hire police officers.

Maybe we'll get lucky and one of those publicly financed city candidates will run on a platform next year of adding police -- and preventing gang violence. For now, though, the question is: How many young people have to be shot before the council takes this seriously?

Just use eminent domain and seize those properties.

The gangs couldn't behave, so they ruined it for everyone.

-n