"Tag you R it"

[Jolly Rancher]

And, btw, didn't the article in the paper say that Terry Malone would be GLAD to take the misdemeanor cases? Let him have them. The funds received by court costs is returned to the city. If county does it, the funds go to the State. I don't see where the bit**ing is coming from. It would help keep our city mill levy down.

[Zeb]

Cheap protection. Go to Radio Shack or Wal-Mart and buy a simple wireless camera/monitor for under a $100. Everyone has an old VHS around, hook it to the monitor and set it for SLP (super long play).

Only problem would be you need to hide the VCR/monitor someplace that they wouldn't find, so they won't steal that too. Fake camera's work well too. Even stupid theives know to look for camera's outside.

I had a guy walking by my house and started to walk up in my drive towards my car. He looked up and saw the camera right on him. I walked out and stood in my drive and stared at him walking away. He saw me. Bet he told his friends too.

[daVINman]

Good point Zeb! The more surveillance help we get from the community the better. Community policing is a huge help and makes more of a difference then people realize. It helps increase our numbers in a sense.

Vin

[tat2me82]

I'm not so convinced on video surveillance, most of the time it's hard to make anything or anyone out on it right?? We have surveillance at work and when we had a break in w/ one of the cars we gave the tape to police and they didn't do anything w/ it. Whether they can or can't make out what's on the tape, what lengths are they willing to go to to catch the person?

Not trieng to bash or anything, just wanting to better understand how it works

[Army_of_One]

Originally Posted by tat2me82

I'm not so convinced on video surveillance, most of the time it's hard to make anything or anyone out on it right?? We have surveillance at work and when we had a break in w/ one of the cars we gave the tape to police and they didn't do anything w/ it. Whether they can or can't make out what's on the tape, what lengths are they willing to go to to catch the person?

Not trieng to bash or anything, just wanting to better understand how it works

MY OPINION is that there is so much crime in this town and so few police officers that they are pretty much REACTIVE and have no time to be PROACTIVE. We probably have so many cases working that there aren't enough detectives to give the crimes the attention they need. I wonder if we could get a stat of how many crimes in Dodge or Ford County go unsolved compared to what gets solved.

[Army_of_One]

Perhaps this answers my question...lol


UNSOLVED CRIMES: Dodge City, KS - Official Website - Unsolved Crimes

SOLVED CRIMES: Dodge City, KS - Official Website - Solved Crimes


Perhaps it's just a mistake on the website?!?

[Army_of_One]

2006 Crime Statistics


Crime Cases


Criminal Homicide
1


Rape Robbery Assault/Battery Buglary Theft Motor Vehicle Theft
30 22 542 287 1117 42


30 RAPES in a year? That's almost 3 a month. Does that bother anyone? 42 Stolen cars? that's over 3 a month in a town of only about 25,000 people. I wonder how many of these crimes are solved???? I wonder how many vandalism reports there are?

Dodge City, KS - Official Website - Crime Statistics

[Army_of_One]

More.... Stats from 2003 but we are worse than the national avg in many area's.

Dodge City Crime Statistics (KS) - CityRating.com

[WizardofOz]

The problem I have seen in regards to gangs is that the law is always lagging. In many communities where gangs are spreading, you have to hit them hard with the wrath of the law and community. If they get seeded, like in Dodge City for example, they are pretty much there to stay. Gangs have an organizational structure with the head bangers recruiting the young kids to go out and do their dirty work (graffiti). I recently read where the fed's used the RICO statutes to go after the bangers in Wichita. Gangs are about a textbook example of RICO applicability because of the violence, intimidation, theft, prostitution etc and Dodge City is no example.

All the security cameras in the world won't make much difference if the criminal penalty is a low level misdemeanor. Expanding on some of the posts in this thread, I think that increasing the penalty for gang related graffiti to felony level would be a start. Possibly adopting a state version of the RICO statutes could be used to bring in a whole group of them instead of singling them out. The gang leaders are the ones running the show but keep their hands clean in terms of being linked to the street violence but use something like RICO could help bring them down.

As far as punishment, I really like the idea of tent city (Maricopa County Jail). No cozy jail cell with three meals a day, medical care, TV, and air conditioning at the taxpayers expense without some kind of real punishment. Get a chain gang together and have them scrub or paint over the graffiti, pick up garbage , or something. Oh yeah, and make the family pay the tab especially if they are juveniles.

[gunnar1073]

What it amounts to is the visual gratification of your rebellion against the system.

You want to make it stop. Then paint over it when it happens; immediately. Don't give the depraved little vermin the opportunity to enjoy what they did.

Also keep this crap out of the papers and off the 6:00 news.

And if you do happen to catch the little bastards that did it. Wait till they go to work at McDonalds and then spray paint "I Garth Brooks" on the side of their tricked out Honda Civic.

That'll teach em.

If they can read.