Plan for Wilmington

It is said that if you want to get rid of the weeds in your garden that you kill them at the root, not just cut them back. To trim a weed means absolutely nothing, because it will just grow back, usually stronger and thicker than it was before. It also spreads silently, to where your entire garden is surrounded.

The same can be said for violence and crime in a city. You can push it out of the business district, to make that area safe, yet it continues to grow, get stronger, and soon, will overtake the area you are trying to protect.

This is what is happening in our beloved city of Wilmington right now. According to the latest crime rating, Wilmington scores a 3. No, that is not a typo, it is the actual number. It means that it is safer than only 3% of the cities in the US. The crime rate is also roughly 203% higher than the rest of the state of Delaware combined.

Here is the projected data for 2014 according to the City Rating Crime Statistics:

2014 Crime (Projected Data)*	Incidents
Aggravated Assault	705
Arson	0
Burglary	1,033
Forcible Rape	47
Larceny and Theft	1,523
Motor Vehicle Theft	253
Murder and Manslaughter	26
Robbery	621
Crime Rate (Total Incidents)	4,129
Property Crime	2,798
Violent Crime	1,400

So, what can we do about this you might be wondering. I will admit I am not the “expert” in this matter, though I bet my plan will get a lot more traction in weeding out the problem than requesting a study by the CDC, or pulling officers from the gang and narcotics squads to protect the business district.

To cure the problem, you need to start in the neighborhoods. The reason why the community won’t do anything, or testify against someone is fear. They are afraid for their lives, and the lives of their family. They know the police are slow to respond. How to you curb this fear? Give the police the tools and officers they need to patrol these neighborhoods more frequently, work with the residents, and street by street take the city back.

To help this, put all of the officers that were reassigned to jay walking and babysitting duty back onto the narcotic and gang task forces. Let them go in mass and purge the weeds from the city. It doesn’t take a math teacher to tell you that 12 or 14 is more than 3 or 4. It is also common sense that if you cut off the drug supply, and take the gang members off the street, that crime drops, and the safety level rises.

Of course, people have no faith in the judicial system either. They know that as soon as these people get arrested, they will be released back out onto the street in a short amount of time. In most cases they will never see jail time either. To cure this, make examples of them. Give them the maximum you can under the law.

Oh I know, that raises the argument that it will cost tax payers more money to keep them locked up. Well, think about all of these beautiful neighborhoods in our city that have been reduced to slums. Houses boarded up and abandoned throughout the highest crime rate areas, that no one wants because it is to dangerous. The price to keep someone locked up is small in comparison to what it is costing us as a city and a state.

Lets face it, before any community watch program or outreach program will work, we need to crack down on the problem, and give the people faith and hope that everything is getting better.

This is just my 2 cents of the problems facing our city.

Remember, together we can build the future.