Kohut: Use Intelligence And Technology To Prevent Crime

Jeff Kohut, a candidate for mayor in 2011 active in a North End block watch, shares a commentary on what the city must do to stem the latest surge in violent crime.

As all Bridgeporters know, we’re off to a terrible start on the public-safety front this year. At 11:30 PM last night–5/9/12, a night punctuated by an armed-robbery and four separate shooting incidents–we experienced our ninth homicide of the year. Of course, this is all on the heels of the terrible, gang-related shooting of a child.

That violent drug-gang activity in Bridgeport, and other Connecticut cities, which has been rapidly and ominously increasing for the past seven or so years is no mystery to any urban dweller in Connecticut. It reached a crescendo in New Haven and Hartford (hopefully!) last year, and it would appear it is Bridgeport’s turn this year.

Please note I said violent drug-gang activity has been increasing in Bridgeport for the past seven years–but it has never ceased during the past 35 years, when it began to raise its ugly head in Bridgeport in a major way. It has remained at relatively high levels for about 30 years, and seems to be headed back to the chaotic levels of the late ’80s and early ’90s.

The very serious flare-up of violence over the past four years (coinciding with the Great Recession) is certainly a harbinger of very bad things to come in our economic shipwreck of a city. With Connecticut’s governor obsessed with containing the state’s problems to the distressed urban centers (Stamford of course doesn’t fit this description) and using only ineffectual, window-dressing policies and political grandstanding, rather than hard cash and innovative, fair-minded development policies to bring living-wage jobs to Bridgeport and other cities, things are only going to get much worse in urban Connecticut. Bridgeport, under the current mayoral administration–which has an unholy alliance with the Gold Coast money and power and its fair-haired boy in Hartford–will not see any significant, positive tax base or living-wage jobs developed in Bridgeport in the foreseeable future. (Our Congressional delegation is either clueless and/or presently uninterested in pursuing any viable options for the Bridgeport economy.)

So here we are, at a public-safety crossroads again–just when people were beginning to believe we were out of the woods.

But things aren’t hopeless. There are several measures that can be taken to address our public-safety plight. But first, the brave people from distressed Bridgeport neighborhoods who have been stepping forward in recent years to speakout publicly against criminals and criminal activity in their neighborhoods need to demand City Hall and the police department do much more than lead once-yearly, election-time, neighborhood marches–or orchestrate reactive activities to tragedies and near-tragedies. Among the measures that must be demanded by neighborhood leaders and activists:

1. It must be demanded that the Community Policing/Block Watch Program be treated seriously by the police department and City Hall, such that a truly competent, consistently well-managed community policing program–with competent, consistent oversight from the Chief’s office–is put into effect and properly maintained. There must be regularly scheduled, organized neighborhood meetings with designated community police officers in all neighborhoods, and regular, inter-personal contact by designated police officers with the neighborhoods at the street level. The shoddy, inconsistent management of the community policing initiative hasn’t helped Bridgeport’s crime problem and the unwillingness of the citizens to be part of the solution–nor has the politicization of the program.

2. All 20 city councilpersons must go out into the neighborhoods and help to organize and recruit citizen participation in anti-crime/anti-gang efforts, (This is why we have councilpersons–to reach out to and represent the community.) The City Council Public Safety Committee should hold public-safety summits and public hearings for input in this regard, and then draft and implement a plan to organize–and maintain organization–of such efforts in conjunction with the community policing initiative, the latter of which they need to monitor and oversee with diligence and consistency. Toward these ends, and as part and parcel of these efforts, a Citizens’ Public Safety Oversight Board should be created.

3. City Hall must earnestly request assistance at all levels–financial, organizational, and street-level participation of federal and state public-safety organizations–in addressing Bridgeport’s public-safety problems (especially the gang problem). While there are elements of federal and state law-enforcement agencies involved in addressing Bridgeport street crime, there must be much more extensive involvement of these agencies on a proactive level. (Indeed, the emphasis of all anti-crime efforts should, of course, be proactive.)

4. Lastly, the extensive, citywide, Internet-accessible video surveillance system, first proposed by then-State Representative Lydia Martinez (now Councilperson) and this writer in August 2004, must be created post haste. Our proposal was presented to the present police chief and his three predecessors–all endorsed the idea but failed to act upon it, even after we formalized our proposal for the state and received a $300,000 pilot-program grant for its implementation in 2006. This Internet-accessible system could be installed using minimal hardware, at minimal cost, by creating a wireless system utilizing standard wireless, Internet-accessible, security cameras that are significantly less expensive now than when the first $2 million, citywide system was proposed. The same system would cost less than $1 million now and would allow saturation of high-street-crime and problematic traffic-safety locations with surveillance cameras (there have been numerous, very serious traffic accidents in Bridgeport this year-–several involving pedestrians and children on bicycles).

The above camera system could be monitored by screened, citizen volunteers through a secure police department website. This option would allow “virtual patrols” by anonymous citizens in the safety of their homes, or from remote locations, using PCs, laptops, or Internet phones/devices. This option would draw many otherwise-unwilling citizens to participate in solving the crime problems in their neighborhoods. (This system could also cut police overtime by half.)

We know how useful surveillance cameras are at preventing and solving crimes. With all of the federal and state public-safety/homeland security grants available for such systems, there’s no excuse for Bridgeport to not have one.

The time is now to implement the above measures in a holistic, coherent manner.

The time is also now–it is an election year–to prevail upon our state and congressional delegations to get assistance in implementing the above, and perhaps more importantly, to get the assistance we deserve to create the tens of thousands of living-wage jobs and billions of dollars of tax base in Bridgeport that are needed to make our families viable again and to provide incentives for our children to pursue a better life and opt out of the destructive choice of involvement with drug-gang life.

(How about another visit from President Obama–only this time he doesn’t leave without making a real commitment to helping Bridgeport.)