Roundtable discussion held on HS violence
Duane “Dak” Kees, the U.S. attorney for the Western District of Arkansas, said Wednesday his office plans to work with the Garland County prosecutor to make targeted, neighborhood-oriented arrests to help quell the violence in Hot Springs.
Kees was among a gathering of public officials and community leaders who met for more than two hours Wednesday night to address the recent spike in violence in Hot Springs.
“What is happening right now, this conversation we’re having, this is law enforcement,” Kees told the gathering.
“This is an aspect of law enforcement, interacting with the community, learning, putting out information and talking about the issues,” Kees said. “It’s not just the cop on the beat, not just arrests, not just sentencing — law enforcement is about the community, too.”
In response to a rash of shooting deaths and violent incidents that have occurred in the city within the last
two months, Police Chief Jason Stachey invited local church, school, government, business and law enforcement leaders to a literal roundtable discussion Wednesday night, with participants seated around a circle of tables in the HSPD’s training room.
“I would hope and pray that many other communities across the nation are having meetings similar to this after this past weekend’s events,” Stachey said, referring to what he called the “senseless shootings” in El Paso, Texas, and Dayton, Ohio.
“I don’t have a crystal ball and we can’t predict the future,” Stachey said. “But I know we can’t do this by ourselves so I appreciate your input as we move forward.”
“We’re a diverse group here tonight and we’re a diverse community,” Mayor Pat McCabe said. “No one entity will have the answer, but by working together we’ll be able to pool our talents and be able to move this community forward.”
“It’s really encouraging to see the number of people who came out to discuss these issues we have in the community,” City Manager Bill Burrough said. “We see almost every day in the newspaper, something is in there, either on the front or on the second page, of these events. We’ve had a rash, especially since Mother’s Day, of some very heinous crimes and we really want to get our arms around that.”
Stachey said the two underlying issues that have appeared after breaking down the recent homicides is an increase in “domestic and interpersonal violence,” noting that “in the last few days people have had more questions than answers about the violence occurring throughout our country. We cannot just sit around and do nothing.”
Kees said Hot Springs is “the first jurisdiction, the first county, the first town” where they plan to introduce their program, Project Safe Neighborhood, noting, “You may have heard of it back during the second Bush administration, about 18 years ago, but we’re calling this now Project Safe Neighborhood 2.0.”
He said 85 percent of all law enforcement is at the local and state level with federal authorities “only doing a very small portion. We rely on the cop who has a beat. We rely on the patrol car going through the neighborhood giving us information. You don’t see the FBI standing on the corner or the DEA driving through your neighborhood. That’s local law enforcement.”
Kees said Project Safe Neighborhood is “a philosophy of law enforcement,” noting that he and Garland County Prosecuting Attorney Michelle Lawrence have a great responsibility in how they decide to charge someone. “We are looking at who are we going to target with our limited resources. The goal is to take the violent offender off the street before they commit a violent crime against somebody.
“So how do we do that? We target them. We don’t do mass arrests. We’ve learned from the data that sometimes arresting one person out of a neighborhood can reduce crime in that neighborhood by 50 percent. We’ve noticed that just targeting four square blocks in a city can lower the crime rate in that city by 50 percent. So it’s very targeted. Very analytical data. Where do we get that from? From local law enforcement — that’s where the partnership comes in.”
Kees said when someone reads in the newspaper about an offender in state court getting 10 years on drug charges, they need to divide that number by six to determine how much time the offender will actually serve. But when the federal government charges them “with the same charge or similar, they will do 85 percent of it. We don’t have parole. We don’t do parole.”
He said when a violent offender is put in state jail for 18 months, “you’ve given them a vacation. In fact, nine times out of 10, you won’t even interfere with their illegal business. They will still be able to conduct their business from jail. Now, you take that same person and put them in jail for 15 years and they do 85 percent of it and they’re incarcerated, not in Arkansas, but in South Dakota, or Arizona, or California, when they get out and come back to Hot Springs, it’s a whole new ballgame. No one is going to know who they are. They are out of business. You have done something to protect the community.”
He said the goal of the program is to use mandatory minimums to charge “armed career felons” so “they go away for 10, 15, 20 and up to 40 years,” noting, “It’s a philosophy of charging but at the same time it’s a partnership with local law enforcement to get the information to do targeted approaches.
“We’re not going in and arresting for arresting’s sake. If you arrest 50 low-level drug dealers on one corner, tomorrow there will be 50 low-level drug dealers on that same corner. You have done nothing. You arrest their boss’ boss’ boss, you’ve done something,” he said.
“We’re going to get the bad guys and they’re going to federal court, not state court. And when Michelle has a state court case and she calls my office up and says the best this guy is going to get is two years, but you can get him for 20 and he will do 85 percent. When she gives me that case, she’s not being lazy, she’s not shirking her responsibility, she’s not passing the buck, she’s doing what is best for the community.
“She’s making sure that drug dealer, that violent assailant, goes away for a long time.”
Kees told the group, “We’re going to protect you, but we need you. We need you! This is law enforcement. What we’re doing here tonight is law enforcement.”