CHARLOTTE TURNS ITS BACK ON OPTIMIST PARK

"We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union,
establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common
defense, promote the general welfare."

Those words are the beginning of the Preamble to the U.S. Constitution.
From the dawning of our country, this remarkable document has served as a
template for all other lesser governments. Our forefathers clearly
established that the first priority of government in the United States, any
government, is to protect its people. Somewhere along the way, our
Charlotte city bureaucrats and police seem to have lost sight of that
important duty.

Optimist Park is a neighborhood in north Charlotte that is afflicted with
the cancers of poverty and unemployment. With that, inevitably, comes
crime. More specifically, the crime is drugs.

With the heat of summer coming, the drug dealers will take to the streets
to sell their wares. Tempers will flare, old grudges will be settled and
bullets will fly. Last summer four homes in Optimist Park were fired into.
This is not a new phenomenon. It happens every summer.

Linda Williams, president of the Optimist Park Community Association
(OPCA), has been fighting the crime wars on this turf for many years.
Recently Williams led OPCA to apply for $25,000 through the Neighborhood
Matching Grants program. They wanted the money for a pilot program to hire
private police to patrol the neighborhood and supplement the regular
Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police patrols during the summer months.

The grant committee voted to deny the OPCA request. The reason given was
the grant request did not fit within the guidelines of the Neighborhood
Matching Grants program. However, according to the brochure put out by the
Charlotte Neighborhood Development department, the grant request fits
perfectly. Let's look at what the brochure says.

To be eligible:

1. Projects must provide a public benefit to the neighborhood. Clearly the
OPCA request does this in providing safety for residents.

2. Projects must involve neighborhood people directly in all phases.
Neighborhood residents would voluntarily match the hours worked by the
private police to fit the grant program specifications.

3. Money must not be used for the organization's operation budget. All
money would be used strictly for the company providing the private police
patrols.

4. Projects must be achievable in 12 months. OPCA's request is just for
three months this summer.

The brochure goes on to state that the grants can be used for "Neighborhood
crime watch signs, drug awareness and fire safety programs, and other
programs that reduce or prevent crime."

If the OPCA request meets all criteria for the grant, what was the real
reason why it was turned down? The Charlotte city staff and the police are
quick to point out how many patrols are currently at work in Optimist Park,
the benefits of the community policing program and how the crime statistics
for the year are markedly down from past years. But what the bureaucrats
and police department won't address is that none of this has mattered in
the past. When summer comes, crime increases dramatically.

There is a school of thought that says that the request was denied because
the police department doesn't want private police invading their turf. If
the private patrols reduce crime in Optimist Park, it makes the
Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police look bad.

City officials also fear that if the pilot program worked, other high crime
neighborhoods would make the same request. So what? If neighborhoods like
Villa Heights and Belmont made similar requests, it would only cost the
city $75,000 per year. That is chump change compared to what is currently
wasted on other projects.

It is also valid to ask why the police have been unable to eliminate this
crime in Optimist Park the first place. Linda Williams has supplied them
with addresses of crack cocaine houses, but they still operate with
impunity. There is the usual excuse that the bad guys must be caught in the
act in order to shut them down. But it is a fact that if a crack house
opened up in Myers Park or SouthPark or Providence Road, residents would
make one or two phone calls and the crime den would be out of business in
24 hours. Why? City officials live in those neighborhoods. They don't live
in Optimist Park.

Our city officials can find $231 million for a new uptown arena. They can
find another $25 million for a new baseball stadium. But they won't approve
a measly $25,000 for a program that might keep residents safe. Assistant
City Manager Vi Lyles said this was being too simplistic. The arena and
stadium funds would come from other sources of money. That is true, but it
is also true that if the city officials want to fund a project, they find a
way to do so. Why not find a way to fund Optimist Park's private police?

John

Petrie

Observer community columnist John Petrie is a television consultant,
producer, writer and executive.