By Johnna Pinholster
VALDOSTA — City leaders are taking a proactive approach to combating violence in the community.
At Thursday night’s Valdosta City Council meeting, the council approved the organization of a Community Task Force on Violence.
Tonight at 7 p.m. Serenity Christian Church on 1619 Lee St. will hold a forum with area youth discussing the issues they are facing.
The time to take a proactive approach, many feel, is now.
Mayor John Fretti said many of the resources are already in place for outreach, but they need to be highlighted more.
D.A.R.E., neighborhood watch programs, school resource officers at the schools, after-school programs, the Boys and Girls Club and the Lowndes Drug Action Council are just some of the programs that offer services, he said.
“All those things are intended to be outreach and education and intervention,” Fretti said. “But some of these youths, they are not going to go, they are not going to listen. These agencies are a punchline to some of these kids that have been raised by thugs.”
Getting character and personal respect messages out into the community could be a direction to go in, he said.
“From bill boards to downtown banners to Twitter and Facebook,” he said. “Whatever gets it to them, even if it’s little posters on the side of the walls of where they hang out.”
They need to see that they matter and others care about their future, Fretti said.
The reason behind the task force is that there is only so much the city government can do, City Manager Larry Hanson said.
“It’s got to begin with families and parents and schools and church,” Hanson said. “It’s not any single entity that can perform that service.”
Sixty percent of the city’s $30 million general fund budget is committed to support the Valdosta Police Department. At the first of the year stimulus, funds will provide the police department with seven additional police officers.
To succeed in apprehending those who do commit violent crime, law enforcement needs the help of the community, Hanson said.
“There is rarely a violent crime that is committed that people don’t know or have some knowledge of in advance or certainly know as it is occurring,” Hanson said. “But that message is not being communicated and the public has to be part of the solution.
“It’s going to take a change in culture and a change in society, something the whole community has to commit themselves to address,” Hanson said.
“We have to de-glamorize that lifestyle and try to instill in these people that while getting an education is the harder road to choose and work a job and becoming a productive member of society is the righteous path,” Fretti said.
There is no single institution that can do this alone; it begins with families, Hanson said.
Families can mean Big Brothers, Big Sisters. It can mean aunts or grandmothers or even the church, he said.
“It means connective love and consideration by someone who cares,” Fretti said. “That’s a family.”
In a recent interview with The Times, Valdosta City Councilman James Wright revisited a time, before he joined the council, when his district was infested with drugs, property destruction and loiterers.
Wright partnered with Pastor J.D. Martin to combat the crime and find new ways to improve the conditions in the high crime areas.
"Our plan was two-fold," Wright explained. "We said we would do something about our children going to jail and stabilize the community."
Wright and Martin's partnership was effective. Community members created groups and started patrolling the communities with Wright and Martin.
"The crime went down significantly," Wright said.
These efforts actually inspired Wright to run for city council, he added.
Over the years, however, Wright feels that the community has developed a lack of coordinated effort between law enforcement, the school systems and the various crime prevention programs in place.
"Our priorities are just not in order," he said.
Wright said that he was frustrated to hear about the recent mass shooting because he feels that it may have been prevented if the problem with the rise in crime had been addressed earlier. Wright actually contacted The Times after the shooting occurred, indicating that he has been trying to get the issue addressed since July.
"I have sent documents to the mayor and council suggesting ways we can prevent the crime and meeting with the housing authority," he said. "One example of crime prevention methods I suggested included parking police vehicles in high crime areas to deter crime. I was told that it would cause the insurance to increase and the vehicles may be damaged. I got so frustrated because I questioned how you can rationalize the value of a car being more important than saving someone's life."
Nonetheless, Wright said that he was still willing to try any effective anti-crime program, whether it included his suggestions or not.
The approaches that Wright has identified to combat crime are not made up, but taken from other cities that have proven those approaches to be successful. He expressed plans to develop a program that includes ways that the government, churches, schools, businesses and community members could all be involved and contribute to the safety of the city.
"The plan is still in the works and should help solve several problems in the city. The council will play a vital part of the program, but this will be a combined effort."
Malynda Fulton contributed to this story.
