BETTER QUALITY OF LIFE? STOP GANGS AND GUNS

Here's a partial snapshot of what happened on the streets of Peoria
in the last week:

Early Tuesday morning, shots were fired at a car in the 1000 block of
Western, with bullets narrowly missing the driver's head. Just after
midnight Monday, a 19-year-old was shot and killed in the 1200 block
of Frink. Twelve hours later, in broad daylight, a woman riding in a
car at Lincoln and Westmoreland was shot in the shoulder. On Sunday
night, a young woman had a gun pointed at her head while she was
withdrawing money from an ATM at Glen and Sheridan. And last
Thursday, an 18-year-old was murdered just blocks from his East Bluff
home in a bold, afternoon exchange of gunfire.

South Side. West Bluff. North Side. East Bluff. Is any Peoria
neighborhood safe?

It's a fair question as we enter a summer that looks ever more likely
to be long, hot and deadly, unless something dramatic happens in the interim.

In just the past six weeks, Peoria has experienced five murders.
Arrests have been made in only one. Authorities aren't saying much,
other than that the violence isn't random, they believe it involves
money and drugs, and police need the public's help. The cops can't be
everywhere, can't see everything.

But it's not so easy to stand up in the middle of a gang war, which
is what this appears to be. Police believe there are more guns on the
streets than ever before. That ought to elicit shudders in City Hall.
Nothing will send Peorians packing faster than the shootout at the OK
Corral happening outside their front doors. Folks with choices won't
have to hear a second gunshot near their homes.

Mayor Jim Ardis seemed to recognize that in his mayoral campaign last
year. There was hardly a neighborhood organization in the city that
didn't hear his pledge to make fighting crime his top priority. It's
been a year now, yet city streets don't feel any safer. Lots of ink
has been spilled about loud music, litter and the sex-for-pay trade.
Putting greater emphasis on quality-of-life issues has merit. But
gangs and the drug traffic that feeds them are really what's
crippling the city.

Police Chief Steve Settingsgaard has indicated those two issues will
get a lot more police attention in the months ahead. That is welcome.
So would the strongest signal possible from police that Wild West
shootings won't be tolerated. Peoria can't survive many more weeks
like the last one.