Published: May 26, 2008 01:50 am            

CITY OF LOCKPORT: Public safety: Who rules the neighborhood?

Since when do the police go around suggesting good citizens should stay indoors after dark?

Jack Smith, a member of a Waterman Street-area neighborhood watch group, popped that question to the Common Council earlier this month, after relaying two incidents involving group members and city police.

In one instance, Smith said, the group was walking at night, taking note of abandoned properties that might need securing, when they were stopped by police. In another late evening instance, the group walked past a house on Genesee Street where a man emerged from a group of six or so on a porch and pointed toward the group as though he was holding a gun. Police were called immediately.

In both instances, Smith said, the group members were ID’d by police and were then told, essentially, “You probably shouldn’t be walking in that neighborhood at night.”

That was it, Smith said. And he was not pleased.

“Don’t tell me not to walk in my neighborhood. It’s my neighborhood; I live there,” Smith said. “What I’d rather have (police) do is go to the individual that we identified for ’em and check him for weapons. ... I’d like to see some public support (for) organization in the neighborhoods.”

Police Chief Larry Eggert was given the full text of Smith’s comments last week and a chance to respond to the group’s upset.

In this week’s Q-&-A, the city’s top cop takes on the issues of policing a neighborhood on the edge.

•••

Question: Is Mr. Smith’s account — basically, the irony of the good guys being warned to stay off the streets — credible to you?

Answer: There’s probably two ways to look at it. One is from the police officer’s standpoint. We’re here to protect people and, of course, we see what goes on in the neighborhood. It’s getting better, slowly. ... As for the officers, I wouldn’t have them do it any other way. They’re looking out for the safety of the people there, so their best advice would be to stay indoors.

But I also understand the neighbors’ perspectives. They want to be out there, be proactive; there’s nothing wrong with that either. I guess it’s both sides doing what they think is the right thing.

•••

Q: Is ‘stay indoors after dark’ good advice?

A: A lot of the neighborhoods are in transition; they aren’t near as bad as they used to be. Some of the areas we’re having problems with, if you look back to the early ’90s, the place was horrible because of the drugs, the prostitution and everything that goes with it. Now we’ve suppressed a lot of it, but you still have these times and places when it pops up and you have to deal with it. ...

If I had advice to give any of the neighborhood watch groups, it’s that they live in the neighborhood and can probably tell the tenor from day to day. So if they go out and see a lot of faces, see some obvious things going on ... that might not be a day to go out and be as confrontational, or be as proactive, as other days.

Drug dealers and the people who congregate with them are like rats. They don’t want to be seen in the light. The more people that are out there that are not engaged in that activity, obviously the more uncomfortable it makes them feel, so it’s a good thing they choose to (go out) — but what level of risk do you want to take in your neighborhood? ...

Everybody’s a little different. Some people sit on their porch and just be seen. ... People in this culture, because it’s illegal activity, they have to have that anonymity, that cloak of darkness where nobody’s watching. Once people watch, they don’t have that anymore, they get uncomfortable and they tend to move on.

There’s no black-and-white answer. It depends on the neighborhood, the people, the problem.

•••

Q: If ‘stay indoors’ is the best advice, isn’t the department really saying it can’t secure the neighborhood?

A: That’s the other side of the coin. Yes, technically, you’re giving the streets away to the bad people. So, again, it’s a tough choice. If you barricade yourself in, you know what’s going to happen: Nobody’s out there watching, you know what they’re going to do. ... Probably the No. 1 reason that a lot of parts of the city are in the shape that they’re in now is because back in ’92 when this stuff first came in, all the ‘good’ people left and there’s nobody to call the police, so now you can pretty much do what you want unless we get lucky enough to drive by and see something ... .

We’ve really pushed ‘proactive’ on our people on the street; we’ve beaten it back down to the point where I think people are starting to move back into the peripheries, and now what we have to do is go after the last bad areas — and those pop up all over the place.

It might be bad on Genesee Street one month, and then we’ll do a search warrant or two and an arrest warrant, and identify people, and then it’ll move over to South Street; then it might move over to Oliver Street. Now we have it where they’ll go out to Hawley Street.

They’re moving out of the area a little more, and what’s nice about that is it gives us a reason to respond — because if it’s next to you, it’s gonna take you about 30 minutes to figure out something’s not right and you’re going to be calling us.

•••

Q: Back to the watch group’s second encounter with police, there doesn’t seem to have been a big effort to by police get after the individual who appeared to point a gun. Why not?

A: Without being there, it’s hard for me to say. By the time you get half the story, the other half is gone; they go in the house. The one misnomer is that people in drug dealing are ignorant, and the fact is they’re not; they’re very sophisticated social animals. ... We pull up in a car and, as we’re talking to the people who say ‘we were threatened,’ I’m going to bet that everybody else just kind of disappeared ... . In that 30 seconds, people went in the house, locked the door, they went behind the house, they go running, and if they do have a weapon, it’s probably already in a bush or buried under something so we can’t find it. ...

I don’t know if that happened here. I’d be surprised if they wouldn’t interview the bad people ... . The only reason I would think they wouldn’t is the parties were gone.

•••

Q: Is it appropriate for police, when they see groups lingering — and have a hunch they’re up to no good — to approach ‘just because’?

A: It depends. I’ll give you an example: I drove down the street just now and there was a group of about 8 people, and one guy was trying to conceal himself behind a post on a porch ... all I could see was his arms. So I see that, and I see a couple other people when I go by, they get real nervous; I have one guy walk around behind the house real slow, but always watching me. If you can articulate that later on, say this is why I stopped, and this is why I frisked ... could it hold up in court? Yeah, but you have to be that articulate.

Just a group standing on the corner, and you don’t know any of ’em, and they’re just standing there, they’re not blocking traffic, not blocking the sidewalk, not on somebody’s private property, they’re not yelling, not screaming, not obviously intoxicated, there’s nothing wrong with this group ... can I legally stop and ask? Probably not. We have to have reasonable suspicion; that’s a key word here ... .

Sometimes people get frustrated. I know the block clubs especially — because I used to run one in the ’90s, we had a bunch back then — they get frustrated because you’d see a police car come up and they didn’t do anything. There’s a lot of times where we pull up, and legally you can’t. If there’s any way we can do something, we will — as long as it stays within the parameters. ...

•••

Q: When the Waterman-area block club got started, members were advised to call police whenever. A year later, they feel like not too much has changed in their neighborhood. Why should they keep calling?

A: Here’s an example of how we’re making a difference: We were giving out tickets for jaywalking on Genesee Street; one of our guys stopped a guy for jaywalking on South Street that same day, and he came up with a huge bag of crack out of the guy, because the guy gave a false name ... . When the neighborhood group gets going, they don’t relate that success on South Street to the jaywalking on Genesee Street. ...

We can run plates (in the neighborhood) and find a car with suspended registration; as soon as it gets a couple blocks away, we’d stop it and, if we get lucky, we’d pull out some drugs or whatever. The people on Genesee or Waterman wouldn’t know that because it didn’t happen there, even though it started there. ...

When they call, that gives us the reason to stop and talk to someone. If I drive down the street and a guy’s standing on the corner with his hands folded, not doing anything, legally, can I really stop and talk to him? Not really. But if you call and say you’ve seen this guy walking up and down the street five times, and he’s acting really suspicious, now, we’ve climbed up to the level of suspicion where now we can stop and start asking questions. ...

The phone call is our key. Sometimes we’re really busy and have to prioritize — a guy standing on the corner with his hands folded would have a lower priority than a car accident — so sometimes it might take us a while to get there. Other than that, a phone call is what we want. It allows us to better do our job.

        

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