BLAME MURDER RATE ON DRUG DEALS, GUNS

While other major North Carolina cities have seen declines, a devil's brew
of guns, drugs and poverty is driving Greensboro's homicide rate higher.
Finding out why should be a priority for the city's yet-unnamed new police
chief.

Investigations into the city's 17 homicides to date this year show
disturbing trends. Since 1993, 60 percent of the city's homicide victims
and more than 70 percent of the offenders have been black men. A handgun
most often is the weapon of choice, and an argument with acquaintances over
drug money usually is the reason. Two-thirds of the adult victims had not
reached their 35th birthday.

The proliferation of guns has exacerbated the situation. Detectives
lamented in a News & Record special report on Sunday that "nobody gets beat
up anymore. It's too easy to get guns.'' Combining firearms with short
tempers fueled by turf wars and drug debts can lead to murder. Yet illicit
gun trafficking would slow if the courts meted out harsher sentences for
illegal possession, particularly by convicted felons.

Equally perplexing is what to do about the tight hold of poverty and drugs.
The entire community -- not just the schools -- must continue trying to
devise creative ways of keeping at-risk youths engaged in the classroom and
off the streets. They constitute a disproportionate number of murder
victims and offenders.

A lack of adult supervision and structured activities too often leads to
bad choices that can result in "hanging out'' and quick-money drug deals. A
life marked by joblessness, guns and drugs frequently ends in prison or murder.

Possible remedies to this cycle of despair and death are job training and
drug treatment programs, as well as mentoring programs for children who
often are starved for positive role models, especially males.

When the proactive approach fails, a get-tough response such as the city's
Violent Crime Task Force, modeled after High Point's, still has its place.
Repeat violent offenders are warned in no uncertain terms that commission
of a crime will result in vigorous prosecution. And the uncompromising
message comes across loud and clear -- recidivism in the program is less
than half the national ratio.

Less clear is why Greensboro's rising homicide rate hasn't shown the steep
declines during the last decade reported in Winston-Salem (60 percent) and
Raleigh (25 percent). That must be addressed.

Murder too easily is written off as an unpredictable crime of passion, but
that's not always the case. Choking off easy access to guns and drugs while
working to prune the early roots of crime may stop more needless deaths
than we realize.