THE WAR AT HOME

PBC's Spike In Violent Crime Recalls Miami Of '70s, '80s

Nearly 30 years ago, the Cocaine Cowboys with their "go fast" drug
boats and MAC-10 submachine guns ruled Miami, spiking murder and
mayhem to extremes that forced the medical examiner to rent a
refrigerated hamburger van to handle morgue overflow.

The cowboys, who lined the inside of customized "war wagons" with
bullet-proof vests, didn't care who got killed in their rampage for
more territory to sell dope and weapons. Daily news included tales of
high-noon gunfights, drive-bys where innocents were taken down with
the guilty and the infamous 1979 shootout at the Dadeland Mall.

Today, Palm Beach County Sheriff Ric Bradshaw says we are on the cusp
of becoming another Miami. The gang names have changed -- we've got
the Top 6, MS-13, San Castle Soldiers -- and their guns are better at
killing.

But, on a smaller scale, the terror is the same: 101 murders last year
with gangs related to 55 percent to 75 percent of all violent crimes
in the county, according to a countywide violent crimes task force.

Brazen random acts of violence -- daylight carjackings, unprovoked
beatings, cat-calls that turn into kidnappings and rapes -- leave law
officials, criminologists and sociologists speechless, beyond the same
old excuses to explain what's happening.

"In some cases, crime is linked to simply being able to say, 'I can
get away with it,' " said Richard Mangan, a Florida Atlantic
University criminology professor who spent 25 years as a special agent
with the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency. "We say we only solve between
12 to 13 percent of burglaries. Can you steal things from people's
homes and not get caught? Well, yeah."

Yet despite the 26 percent increase in murders last year and pleas
since at least 2004 from black communities to stop the violence, some
residents and public officials have been slow to acknowledge a problem.

In October, Bradshaw told a Palm Beach Post reporter, "This isn't
people walking down the street being randomly killed. This is bad
people hurting bad people."

Two months before he made that statement, an assault rifle killed a
blameless landscaper in a Boynton Beach drive-by.

West Palm Beach Mayor Lois Frankel was equally dismissive of crimes in
2005, following a spate of shootings that killed three young men in a
month.

"These are not random attacks on innocent bystanders," she
said.

Six months later, a hooded man shot and killed 24-year-old city worker
Courtney Lewis as he bent over to repair a weed cutter at Coleman Park
in West Palm Beach.

Some Christmas Eve shoppers at the Boynton mall continued standing in
checkout lines having their purchases rung up even as shots rang out
and police chased down a killer in their midst.

"We say, 'Oh yes, it's there, but it's not us, it's them'," said FAU
sociologist Tom Wilson, who teaches a class on social control and
deviance. "It's just that we don't know what to do. The police are in
the unenviable position of being asked to account for this behavior.
If you asked me to account for it, I can't. If I were the sheriff, I
couldn't be that frank."

The 'Nightmare' Begins

During a Jan. 5 news conference, as law enforcement was still catching
its breath from nine shootings and six slayings in a week's time,
Bradshaw promised not to let gangs make Palm Beach County another Miami.

The Boynton Beach Mall shooting was shocking but not unexpected, said
Sheriff's Capt. Jack Strenges, who commands the violent crimes division.

"We eventually expected something like this to occur in an area with a
lot of people," Strenges said.

Although any one of thousands of bystanders could have been killed in
the mall, it still probably is gang-on-gang violence: six shots being
fired into one person.

A week later, the killing of 8-month-old Tavares Carter Jr. in a New
Year's Day drive-by was something different all together: A baby,
strapped in his car seat, shot in the back.

Within two days, Bradshaw had contacted federal authorities in Miami,
who agreed to help prosecute gang members under the Racketeer
Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act. Members of the FBI and
Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives also will be
involved in the county violent crimes task force.

The sheriff's tone had changed since October.

"When we get people shot in the mall and have an 8-month-old kid
killed, we need to be upset," Bradshaw said. "It's totally
unacceptable to have this amount of violence."

He called the first few days of 2007 a "nightmare."

That sounds sadly similar to what Miami Police spokesman George Lucas
said 28 years ago as murder rates grew in the first two months of the
year.

"It doesn't look good for 1979," Lucas told The Miami Herald. "Crime
is on the increase. I don't know why. It's too early to tell."

Five months later, police were blaming the Cocaine Cowboys for killing
two people and wounding two employees in a bloody shooting spree at
the Dadeland Mall.

By the end of 1980, The New York Times reported Dade County's murder
rate had reached 554 people, compared with 360 in 1979.

The area saw a reduction in murder rates during the past two
decades.

But The Miami Herald reported that 258 people were murdered in 2006, a
40 percent increase compared with 2005. The newspaper also reported a
50 percent increase in murders in Broward County last year, leaving 90
people dead.

South Florida's increases are not unique. Criminologists had predicted
growing crime rates as a bubble of the population reached the ages 18
to 24. It began to show in 2005.

National statistics from the FBI showed a 4 percent increase in
violent crimes in the first half of 2006. That followed a 2.5 percent
jump in 2005.

Don't Panic, Expert Says

As for the random crimes, such as the November carjacking and
kidnapping of a woman and her two young children as they waited in a
Taco Bell drive-through near State Road 7 and Southern Boulevard, or
the Gaines Park maintenance worker who was beaten bloody by three
young men on Jan. 2, one criminologist said there's no need to panic.

"We're going through a cycle here. Those things are still not the
norm," said FAU criminologist Charles Massey. "We are a very unstable
community and, in fact, we don't have much of a community, but the sky
isn't falling."

Douglas Bradlow, a resident of a small trailer park in Lake Worth,
isn't so sure about that. His neighbor recently was the victim of a
home invasion, losing a small safe and other valuables to a man with a
gun.

"If I could afford to leave, I would," said Bradlow, 41. "I am so
afraid of what is going on in my community today."

Because of that fear, Bradlow got a concealed weapons permit and arms
himself with a Glock semiautomatic handgun.

"I carry it wherever I'm allowed to carry it by law," Bradlow said.
"It's a security blanket. I have a better chance with it than without
it."

Wellington resident Ed Schmiedl, who lives in a gated community, said
he has friends bracing for an "uprising" if the economy goes bad by
keeping loaded guns in their homes. As a substitute teacher, Schmiedl
is highly critical of public school teenagers with "their cellphones,
iPods, gold jewelry, but no idea about behaving like a human being."

Schmiedl, a retired IBM engineer, said he thinks police are
overwhelmed.

"I've been following the stories about murder and mayhem, people
riding around in stolen cars with weapons and drugs, and it's so crazy
that the deputies can't make a dent," he said.

Palm Beach County Sheriff's Lt. Michael Wallace disagrees and said
Palm Beach County can reverse the recent crime wave.

But, he acknowledges, law enforcement may not have been paying enough
attention to predictions of an uptick in crime and local early warning
signs.

"Maybe we didn't get in front of the eight ball as quickly as we
should have, because we have been told this was coming," said Wallace,
who leads the violent crimes task force. "We have documented shootings
in Lake Worth that are Top 6-related going back four years."

Top 6 is a gang made up mostly of aspiring rappers of Haitian descent
who are also dealing in prostitution and drugs and committing
robberies, Wallace said. Under Top 6 are other gangs, including the
B-Town Boys and San Castle Soldiers.

Ask Wallace why gang violence, and violence overall, has grown, and he
repeats a familiar refrain.

"We have raised a generation of people that have a complete and total
disregard for right and wrong," Wallace said. "These guys now don't
care where or who they shoot. If they want to shoot me, they'll shoot
me and everything and everyone in front of me."

Wallace is joined by Riviera Beach Mayor Michael Brown in blaming
gangster rap music that glamorizes the thug life for some of the
crime. He also adds to his list violent video games, drug dealing that
pays infinitely more than McDonald's, and bad or no parenting.

Depending on whom you speak with, it's all of those things, or none of
them.

"When The Beatles came here, my parents said it was the end of
civilization as they knew it," said Wilson, the FAU
sociologist.

Looking For Solutions

No one wants to hear this, but Wilson doesn't believe the
anti-bullying, anti-drug and anti-gang programs that pop up every year
in the public schools work.

The Drug Abuse Resistance Education program, or DARE, was introduced
in 1983. Students signed sworn statements not to take drugs or
participate in gangs. But in 2003, the U.S. Department of Education
concluded that the program was ineffective and now prohibits federal
funds from being used to support it.

The Palm Beach County Sheriff's Department replaced DARE in 1998 with
a school program called Aggressors, Victims and Bystanders.

In other attempts, Palm Beach County schools have had fourth-graders
take the Youth Education Series, or YES, to warn children about drugs
and peer pressure. There's GREAT (Gang Resistance Education and
Training). Training in "verbal judo" is offered to deal with difficult
students. Peer mediators are used in elementary, middle and high schools.

"In good faith, we do common sense stuff, but generally speaking, it
doesn't work very well," Wilson said. "In the end, we don't know what
to do."

Wallace said his task force will try different tactics this year in an
attempt to turn around the murderous trend set in 2006 and so far this
year.

Until recently, the force has been a mostly reactive group, coming in
after a crime is committed.

But Wallace expects task force members to become more active by
becoming better known in high-crime communities.

Already, Wallace has spoken at the funerals of two teenagers killed in
shootings.

As a white man and a member of law enforcement, Wallace is often an
unwelcome visitor in high crime neighborhoods, where his appearance
usually means something bad has happened and he wants you to tell him
who did it.

Wallace said the adults accepted him graciously at both of the
all-black funerals. Many young men in the audience, however, sat
glowering at Wallace with their arms crossed in defiance.

"We want to move away from doing things the traditional way," Wallace
said. "These guys are going to have three options: Stop being a bad
guy, be a bad guy somewhere else, or go to jail."

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DIFFERENT TIME, SAME PROBLEMS

Palm Beach County's police officers and sheriff's deputies are facing
similar problems today as were seen in the Miami crime spree of the
late 1970s and early 1980s, as evidenced by comments police made then
and now.

'Nobody will tell me anything at all,' Miami homicide Detective
Edward Hanek said in 1981 after a noon gun battle in Miami that was
believed to be drug related. 'They've all got amnesia. Nobody wants to
prosecute. The victims won't tell me who did it and said even if we
find out, they don't want to prosecute.'

'If people will give information anonymously, we'll do everything
in our power to protect them,' Palm Beach County Sheriff Ric Bradshaw
said during a Jan. 5 news conference where he asked witnesses to come
forward with information on recent crimes. 'These witnesses have a
legitimate right to be scared, but at a certain point in time, they
have to come forward and trust us.'

'I have never seen a shootout like this in my life,' Assistant
Dade County Medical Examiner Charles Diggs said in July 1979 following
the use of a submachine gun in the Dadeland Mall shootings. 'This is
another Chicago.'

'This may be retaliation,' said Palm Beach County Sheriff's
spokesman Paul Miller on Jan. 2 following the use of an assault rifle
in a New Year's Day drive-by shooting that killed 8-month-old Tavares
Carter, Jr. 'They were spraying the whole area' with gunfire.

'These people have no sense of value,' Miami Police Sgt. Steve
Jackson said, following the 1979 Dadeland Mall shootings, where two
shoppers were killed and two employees injured. 'It's a damn shame.
They just want to prove their point. They don't worry about some
mother walking by with her kid, or a couple going shopping.'

'These guys now don't care where or who they shoot,' said Palm
Beach County Sheriff's Lt. Michael Wallace about the Christmas Eve
shooting at the Boynton Beach Mall and the drive-by shooting on New
Year's Day in Riviera Beach. 'If they want to shoot me, they'll shoot
me and everything and everyone in front of me.'