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US PA: Column: We Need To Take Back One Neighborhood At A Time - Rave.ca
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News (Media Awareness Project) - US PA: Column: We Need To Take Back One Neighborhood At A Time
Title:US PA: Column: We Need To Take Back One Neighborhood At A Time
Published On:2005-12-02
Source:Philadelphia Inquirer, The (PA)
Fetched On:2008-01-14 22:18:56
WE NEED TO TAKE BACK ONE NEIGHBORHOOD AT A TIME

CAPT. JOHN Gallagher went to school for this stuff. He studied the
abnormal psychology of criminal minds and the sociological factors
that spawn violence.

But he probably learned all he really needed to know about the roots
of violent crime the first time he stared into the cold eyes of a
remorseless killer.

"What it comes down to," said Gallagher, who commands the Police
Department's Major Crimes Unit, "is that some of these people are
just downright mean."

Too mean to entertain a second thought before killing a man. Devoid
of the basic humanity that keeps the rest of us from killing each
other. Downright mean, with hearts as hollow as a gun barrel.

And they're making me mean - too mean to entertain my own second
thought about how to redeem or rehabilitate them.

I'm losing interest in the search for root causes. I don't want reasons.

I want relief.

I don't need to know why some soulless thug gave himself permission
to murder Terrell Pough. Was it for his car or over jealousy? Did they argue?

Answering those questions won't prevent the next cold-blooded
killing. We need relief.

Antoine Riggins, 20, and Saul Rosario, 18, the pair arrested
Wednesday for Pough's murder, may make an interesting study if it
turns out they did it. We may find that Pough's murderers were abused
as children or that they suffered the deprivations of poverty.

But that wasn't Terrell Pough's problem.

"The problem in this city is guns and drugs," Gallagher said. "You
can't imagine what may be in the car next to you when

you're driving home at night.

"The bottom line is there are people whose moral compass is not like
ours. You can't understand them.

"Public safety has to be our priority."

Like me, he wants relief.

The current plan, Gallagher tells me, is to deploy officers in swarms
along the 27th Street corridor in eastern Grays Ferry, where
shootings and aggravated assaults have become as regular as trash pickups.

"The area around 27th and Earp or 27th and Reed have been a concern
for two years," Gallagher said. "We call it Sector Q. There has been
a rash of shootings there this year.

"Some of it is drugs, of course. But when you peel the layers of the
onion back, it's amazing how often it's not about organized crime
activity at all."

The saturation strategy will involve making arrests for minor crimes
that police often are too busy to pursue. They will serve warrants on
fugitives, many of whom are hiding in plain sight.

And if they make a dent in Sector Q, they will swarm another
high-crime area. The 18th and 19th districts in West Philadelphia are
probably next.

If it sounds a lot like every other anti-crime campaign you've read
about lately, that's because it is.

"This one doesn't have a label," Gallagher said. "But it's like what
we called Operation Sunrise in Kensington."

Narcotics-strike forces, highway patrol and federal warrant servers
will augment heightened patrols in targeted districts.

Will it work? It always does - for a while.

But then the virus mutates and infects another area until the
response targets the next high-crime sector.

We can't count the lives that will be saved or the crimes that will
be prevented. We can't, any more than we can find good reasons for
why this keeps happening.

"We'll never figure it out," Gallagher said. "They're not like us.
Our morals are no measuring rod."

But, for one neighborhood at a time, perhaps it will bring relief.
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