Councilor ……,
As far as vocal citizens like Juan Garcia and Sara Smith confronting the Council on the crime issues that plague our city, all that I see them asking for is public acknowledgment and thus recognition of the criminal events taking place so all have a clear picture of the state of Las Cruces.
Rob WoodCoalition of Conservatives in Action575-635-0803
Excerpt from an Article in the WSJ Feb 3, “Tactics Shift on Crime Hot Spots” by Joe Barrett and Cameron McWhirter
“NEWARK, N.J.—More than two dozen people recently sat around a conference table in this working-class city, poring over crime statistics and pondering how to bring the numbers down. Most weren’t police officers, and the focus wasn’t on boosting arrests.
Instead, the Newark Public Safety Collaborative, which is spearheaded by academics and includes social-service agencies, hospitals, schools, police and the city, talked about installing new streetlights and figuring out why bodegas seem to be magnets for crime. “Hammers see nails,” said Joel Caplan, a professor of criminal justice at Rutgers University Newark who helped pioneer some of the ideas behind the effort in the city of 307,000. Newark has worked to overhaul its police since a 2014 Justice Department report found widespread abuses. If police are the only ones looking at crime data, he said, they will come up with police solutions. When the community sees the data, “responses are much more comprehensive and multifaceted,” he said. Newark, Dallas and other cities around the U.S. are experimenting with approaches to combating crime that involve sharing information with affected community groups and asking them to help craft solutions. The focus is on changing the environment that helps fuel a city’s crime hot spots. “We’re not going to arrest our way into safer cities,” said Edgardo “Eddie” Garcia, the head of the Major Cities Chiefs Association and chief of police in Dallas. The approach is an alternative to creating police strike teams to flood crime-ridden areas areas areas with officers—a tactic that was generating growing opposition……………”
