Let me begin by saying I'm not scolding the Greensboro Police Department. I know many GPD officers personally and think very highly of them. My conversations with Chief Ken Miller have always been cordial and ended with positive results on the part of Chief Miller and GPD as a whole. That said, I'd like to publicly suggest what I have long believed is a better solution to neighborhood drug houses and liquor houses:
Starve them out. Even if you never catch the bad guys, make doing business so difficult that they either give up or leave Greensboro altogether.
Now I realize that politicians and police chiefs worry about police resources. And I understand that there is lots of money to be made from the sales of confiscated properties taken in the big busts. I understand feathers in caps and many other reasons GPD and law enforcement agencies everywhere have for the way they go after these types of criminals but you have a bit of a problem:
Everyone knows the War on Drugs is failing and worse than that, in Greensboro we have neighborhoods that have suffered drug and liquor houses non stop for twenty, thirty, forty or more years.
I think it was Albert Einstein who defined insanity as doing the same thing over and over while expecting different results.
So with that in mind I'm suggesting what has long been a very effective policing tool be used right in front of suspected drug and liquor houses-- police license checks. Station officers and cars, blue lights flashing in front of suspected drug and liquor houses every night until they give up and move away. Right in front of the house, even if the house is located at the end of a dead end street. Then, as soon as they turn up elsewhere, rinse and repeat until clean.
Yes, someone will probably shout something about individual rights. Just remind them that these criminials have been infringing on the rights of their law abiding neighbors for 20, 30, 40 years or more and tell them to come talk to me. I'll send them packing. As a raging liberal I'll be happy to remind them that their rights end when they infringe on the rights of others.
The customers won't come near the flashing blue lights. The "business man" won't make any money. He will be forced to go elsewhere. Do it enough times and he'll either give up or get out of town. After all, sooner or later, everyone has to eat.
Do this and I won't be writing about the murders I witness on the streets of Greensboro. Young men like Reginald DeMarcus Wrenn who was shot to death last Sunday morning will live to marry the young nurse he was planning to marry (I know her) buy a home, raise children, start a business and help build a better Greensboro.
Or you can keep doing what police departments have always done while expecting different results.
Thanks -Billy Jones
