How 2 towns are facing crime
Pottstown at crossroads: Time to ‘rise up’
POTTSTOWN >> When Jason Whalley was working to put those involved in the borough’s monthslong gang war behind bars, he kept remembering what Angela Kearney had said about her granddaughter.
During the first community meeting on crime in February, Kearney told the crime fighters about how her granddaughter was traumatized by shootings that happened close to her home.
“When she told us about that child not being able to sleep near the window, that really hit home with us,” said Whalley, the Montgomery County Assistant District Attorney who heads up the county drug task force.
Because the war between rival gangs revolved around narcotics, Whalley was among those most closely involved with the investigation.
Monday night, he was again joined by First Assistant District Attorney Kevin Steele and members of the Pottstown Police Department in a meeting with residents concerned about crime. The meeting, organized by attorney David Garner, was the first community gathering in the aftermath of the arrests of 39 people whose activities were at the root of the violence plaguing Pottstown, according to police.
“We’ve taken a lot of bad people off the streets, and now two things can happen,” Steele said.
“The good people of Pottstown can rise up and take their town back, or we can call it done, in which case new bad guys will fill in the gaps,” said Steele.
“There are a lot of people here who are trying to make a difference and we are moving into a critical time if we don’t want to lose ground,” he said.
Among community residents in the room was Robert Johnson. Chairman of Pottstown’s zoning hearing board with years of experience in law enforcement, Johnson told the group he is ready to stand up and help.
He said he was at the shore recently and when he told a stranger he was from Pottstown, they knew it by its reputation as a place where crime makes headlines.
“I told him to shut up about my town,” said Johnson, who said he wants to help form a coalition to build cooperation between the community and the police.
“This is my damn town and I want to see it survive,” Johnson said. “There’s a lot of good people out there, we’ve just got to wake them up.”
He has already rallied his Reynolds Avenue neighbors “to call 911 and to start writing things down when they see things.”
That is exactly what Police Chief Richard Drumheller wants to hear.
“Don’t be afraid to call 911. Keep doing what you’re already doing,” was his message to the community.
More and more often, tips emailed to the department’s new tip line are resulting in information which leads to arrests, Drumheller said.
“Help us help the community. Don’t just say it’s the police’s problem,” Drumheller urged. “When you hear about a success, get more involved.”
Those efforts are getting results.
Major arrests only part of success
Although gang war arrests grabbed a lot of headlines recently, that effort by the county Violent Crimes Unit is not the only success. The Pottstown police Community Response Unit has been grinding out success after success, said Corporal Mike Long, who helps run the unit.
Since February, Long said there have been 30 incidents that resulted in drug arrests, sometimes multiple arrests per incidence.
Additionally, there have been 106 standard drug arrests as well as 14 firearms arrests.
The unit has increased downtown patrols and placed plain clothes officers in stores downtown to watch for criminal incidents and call them in for immediate arrest.
Additionally, the patrol division has responded to 6,807 incidents since that February, “very few of which make The Mercury,” Long said.
But they are just as important in the everyday lives of Pottstown residents.
“We’re not taking our foot off the pedal enforcing these quality of life crimes,” Drumheller said.
He said grants will pay for two new flashing speed signs to slow down traffic in town without issuing tickets. On another front, the department has become
Pottstown Police Chief Richard Drumheller addresses a press conference May 14 at Pottstown Borough Hall outlining recent arrests made involving two rival criminal enterprises in the Pottstown area.
more active on Facebook as a way to get messages out to the community.
“We posted that we were going to do some stop sign enforcement, and we got dozens and dozens of suggestions for which intersections we should focus on, and we did,” Drumheller said with a touch of amazement.
The department’s unofficial historian, Drumheller is now asking residents who have old photos of Pottstown police scenes, officers and equipment to post it on their page for “throwback Thursdays,” known to Facebook aficionados as “TBT.”
Dealing with drug abuse
Another way to prevent drug wars from breaking out in Pottstown is to get treatment for the drug dealers’ customers, said Steele.
He said Montgomery County’s drug court is one way “to make sure the courts are not a revolving door for drug users.”
The treatment court program, funded by the county commissioners, is an innovative approach to disposing of drug-fueled criminal offenses in a way that offers participants intensive help to fight their addictions, encourages them to change their lifestyles and offers them the opportunity to earn a dismissal of the charges against them or to have their court supervision terminated early.
“It’s a long and difficult process, but graduates tend not to get arrested again and go back to prison,” said Steele.
Of course the best way to prevent drug addiction is to avoid drugs in the first place. Toward this end, Steele said he recently spoke to Pottstown High School and Pottsgrove Middle School students about the dangers posed by drug use.
“Our efforts are not exclusive to ensuring justice is done, it’s also protection of the public,” Steele said.
Community has ideas, too
The public also had some ideas Monday.
Cheyney University professor Ralph E. Godbolt said “in the long term, the best way to decrease crime is to increase education and work with youth.”
Towards that end, a charity basketball game with Pottstown Police officers versus teachers from The Hill School has been scheduled for 2 p.m. Saturday, June 13 at The Hill.
Godbolt is also CEO of Hip Hop Inc., which organized the game as one way to help Pottstown youth develop positive relationships with local police.
Activist and former borough council president David Garner, who organized both the February meeting and the one held Monday, again raised the potential of seizing the properties used for drug activity.
“The people who are doing these things live somewhere,” said Garner. “It seems to me one logical way to try to root out these problems is to make it difficult for them to find a place to live. All this work you’ve done, and it’s great, can be undone if similar people can find a place to lay their head.”
“This seems to be an easy place to come for bad people,” said a resident at the meeting.
“Good landlords come to meetings like this, and the good landlords are getting hammered by this stuff because it’s so extreme,” he said.
John Waclawski is a landlord who was at Monday’s meeting.
“I screen tenants with credit and police background checks, but I’m losing tenants because they’re afraid to live here,” Waclawski said.
He said he owns a property only a few doors away from the property at the corner of King and Washington streets where a woman was shot to death in December and has been a site of numerous code violations.
“I have tenants who have a small child and they want to move now,” Waclawski told The Mercury. “They’re scared to live there.”
Addressing problem properties
Garner said he would like to see drug forfeiture laws used to seize property, an action, Whalley said, that can be initiated by any citizen, or by borough council.
Drumheller said a similar initiative is underway, to use code enforcement as a way to address blight-related problems.
“In the past, there has been a disconnect between the police and the licensing and inspections department,” he said. “But now, for the first time ever, the code inspectors have been authorized to go into overtime to come out if we call them.
“When we’re doing our jobs, we get into a lot of properties and if we see a really bad problem, we’re authorized now to get on the radio and say we need a code inspector out here right now,” Drumheller said.
Assistant District Attorney Heather Hines said she undertook several aggressive prosecutions for code violations, but even when she won and asked a judge to order that the house be torn down, the judge “didn’t feel comfortable telling borough council what to do.”
Councilwoman Sheryl Miller, who, with Councilman Ryan Procsal, attended the meeting said her fellow council members “are more aggressive” than in the past and would be more likely to undertake an action like that.
“The house is still standing,” said Hines.
After a period of inactivity, however, Hines said her office and the borough will once again begin to step up aggressive code enforcement, and move beyond.
“We have a list of properties that we’ve put together with the borough to begin working on,” Hines said.
Be the eyes and ears
An increasing number of properties in the central area of Pottstown are now also equipped with street cameras, said Drumheller.
Just in the last few weeks, 13 new street cameras have been placed around Pottstown.
“There are six new cameras at King and Washington alone,” said Drumheller.
Steele said some of those cameras provided crucial pieces of evidence in the gang war investigation.
“We want to make sure people know if they come here and commit crimes, they’re going to get caught,” said Steele.
And for that to happen, the community must join with police and be their eyes and ears, Drumheller said.
“Twenty years ago, there were areas of Manhattan where you couldn’t walk safely,” said Whalley.
“But that has changed now. It was not just a police strategy that changed it, but a community strategy.”
“There are good people here trying to build a life,” said Whalley. “We are not writing Pottstown off and neither should you.”