Tag Archives: crime

It’s All Over But the List: Sorry, but I have to drag you through 2020 one last time

A few years ago, after finishing my annual “top 10” news list, I had a revelation.

“All the stories this year are good news,” I cheerfully told a colleague, who, as I recall, seemed less impressed than I.

Well, that’s definitely not the case this year. The year 2020 will go down in history for many things, but “good news” will not be among them.

Nonetheless, at least in Harrisburg, it wasn’t awful soup to nuts. There were a few bright spots amidst the gloom. So, with apologies to all readers and to humanity in general, let’s revisit 2020 one final time, as I return with my annual, totally subjective ranking of the top 10 local new stories of the past year.

10. Land Shark. In this annus horribilis, let’s begin on an upbeat note—perhaps the one unalloyed, unexpected joy to come out of 2020. Naturally, I’m talking about Harrisburg’s one-and-only skating fish, Sharkman. Back in May, he glided into our lives, a vision in blue-and-white felt, offering fleeting comic relief for a pandemic-weary city. Before long, Sharkman sightings abounded, the costumed critter becoming a social media celebrity and even making a Burg cover. A few months later, a young musician named Jordan Dandy took up the inspirational cause in Harrisburg, holding up signs with messages like, “I value you” and “You’re so important.” When I look back on the chaotic, divisive, dark year of 2020, I hope that these two selfless people come first to mind.

9. Crime & COVID. Now that I’ve built you up, let me bring you back down. Like in many U.S. cities, Harrisburg experienced a surge of gang activity, which, inevitably, led to turf battles, disputes and violence, especially in certain city neighborhoods. The pandemic seemed to play a big role, with jobs lost, schools closed and youth idle. The city and county responded by gearing up its anti-gang task force, but not before numerous young people took a wrong turn or even lost their lives.

8. Vote, Somehow. In my annual list, I typically keep to stories exclusive to the Harrisburg area. The presidential election was not that, but the changes to our long-established ways of voting affected people in this political town tremendously. In Dauphin County, cautious voters cast more than one-third of their votes through the mail, while many others anxiously masked up and headed to their polling places. Kudos to our election officials for pivoting quickly to what amounted to an entirely new way of holding an election, doing so with speed and accuracy. In just months, they built a hybrid voting system, a legacy that is certain to stay with us, changing our voting habits, perhaps permanently.

7. Off the Cliff. A late-year story squeezed into my Top 10 this year—the state legislature’s rather surprising decision in November to let Harrisburg retain its elevated earned income and local services tax rates. The average city resident may give this a shrug, as their tax bill will not change at all. But it’s a huge relief for city officials who feared falling off the “fiscal cliff” in a few years, when their extra taxing authority would have expired, forcing them to somehow make up $12.4 million in annual revenue. With this matter settled, the city now feels it can move beyond its decade-long fiscal nightmare, finally putting the profligate Reed years and resulting financial crisis behind it.

6. Major Developments? The announcements began early in the year at the former Bishop McDevitt building, headed down to South Allison Hill, took a turn onto N. 6th Street and then bolted over to the red-hot Reily Street corridor. Italian Lake, downtown and the Shipoke area even got caught up in the frenzy. I’m referring to major building proposals in the city. From pro athletes to ambitious developers to several nonprofits, everyone, it seemed, wanted to build something—often something very large—in Harrisburg. While there was no lack of plans, there was a definite lack of hammers, nails, bricks and mortar. Will 2021 see anything more, um, concrete? I’ve been around this town long enough simply to wish everyone the best and then sit back and see what, if anything, develops.

5. Home Work. The Harrisburg School District has been through the ringer in recent years: a discredited administration, a bitter school board race, state receivership and a whole new leadership team. Just as the dust began to settle, the pandemic hit, sending kids packing for home instruction. Nearly a year later, they still haven’t returned to the classroom. Credit the administration for quickly cobbling together a virtual program and the teachers for implementing it. However, all-Zoom, all the time has been a poor substitute for classroom learning, so much that even the kids yearn to return to school. If you look up the term “no-win situation,” you just might find a picture of the district’s stressed teachers, students and parents.

4. Committee Compromise. Every year, Harrisburg has at least one policy issue that makes it onto my annual list. For 2020, that initiative was the Citizen’s Law Enforcement Advisory Committee. The city first proposed the legislation in June after weeks of Black Lives Matter protests, though the ordinance didn’t pass until November, following several public meetings, hundreds of public comments and numerous changes. For some residents, the legislation went too far; for others, it didn’t go far enough. We’ll now see how this compromise plays out as the committee is populated and begins its work in 2021.

3. Year of Protest. I’ve long considered Harrisburg to be a sleepy capital city. Each morning, state workers zip in and, each evening, they zip right back out. Most of the time, that’s about the extent of the state’s impact on the city. Not in 2020, when Harrisburg became a magnet for protests. The year of outrage began in April, with noisy anti-lockdown protesters gridlocking city streets, then continued in May and June with demonstrations and marches in support of Black Lives Matter, before wrapping up in November with election-related protests and counter-protests. Along the way, there were some tense moments, especially in the neighborhoods near the Capitol. However, as they say, all’s well that ends well. Violent incidents were remarkably few given the thousands of people who participated in dozens of protest actions, even if police sometimes literally had to stand between opposing sides to keep the peace.

2. Small Business Battered. The pandemic has wrought tremendous collateral damage (see several items above), but the impact on the small business community has been especially profound. Harrisburg is a unique place. Snubbed by major chains, local people have stepped in to fill the gap, with each restaurant, bar and shop its own individual, often quirky, creation. As of this writing, most have survived, though some have not, and many are teetering still. As I have before, I renew a call to support our wonderful small businesses and arts groups, which add so much life and character to this weird little city on the Susquehanna River.

1. COVID Is Everything. In my three decades in journalism, I have never before seen a single story so dominate the news cycle and our lives, affecting everything from our health to our economy to our schools to our social lives to our housing. In fact, you can overlay the pandemic atop of each of the prior nine stories on this list. Since March, it’s been the stormy sea we’ve all been forced to swim in, and, here at TheBurg, we’ve slapped on our masks and tried to cover it from every possible angle. I hope we’ve been of service to our community during this time of trial, though I pray we’ll never have to endure anything like it again.

There’s an old saying that there are few guarantees in life. Heck, 2020 serves as a perfect example. As the strawberry descended in Market Square on last New Year’s Eve, who could have imagined the difficult year ahead? Having said that, I can practically guarantee that, a year from now, my 2021 reflections will be more positive, the news less doom and more bloom.

After all, the coming year has to be better. Right?

Yes, right.

Lawrance Binda is co-publisher/editor-in-chief of TheBurg.

Illustrations by Rich Hauck.

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South Allison Hill Safety Project to engage community on addressing blight, crime

A view of Hummel Street in Allison Hill

It was back in June when staff at Tri County Community Action started noticing an uptick in crime in their Allison Hill neighborhood in Harrisburg.

Nationally, they saw a similar issue arise as the COVID-19 pandemic continued, leaving people unemployed, completing school virtually and with more time on their hands.

This is what spurred Tri County and six other organizations to create a plan to increase safety and quality of life for Allison Hill residents.

“In any community, these are natural needs and desires for the place that you live in,” said Veronica Kelly, neighborhood revitalization coordinator at Tri County. “We just want to make that very clear that we value that alongside of all these partners.”

The “South Allison Hill Safety Project” was passed as part of the city’s 2021 budget. Harrisburg gave $103,345 towards the first year of the three-year project.

The project aims to improve lighting, address vacant lots and homes and upgrade security, all while fostering community engagement, said both Kelly and Julie Walter, neighborhood revitalization manager.

A civic engagement organization, Power to the Hill, will lead efforts in trimming overgrown trees that cover light posts and exchanging out old bulbs. They also hope to distribute new LED light bulbs for residents’ front porches.

Tri County will also cut back overgrowth on vacant lots to increase visibility, Walter said.

“We are addressing the physical environment and how that plays into criminal activity being looked at as OK to be done in those locations,” she said.

Over the next three years, Tri County officials said they hope to repurpose two vacant lots, with one due to become a volleyball court with seating. The community organizations will also board up 10 vacant homes each year and cover the boards with murals, Kelly said.

Working with Brethren Housing Association, Tri County officials said they will increase surveillance on Hummel Street. Eventually, they will distribute 50 Ring Video Doorbell security systems for residents in Allison Hill.

Wildheart Ministries will work on creating a virtual neighborhood watch app for the community, as well.

“We want to make sure we are following the trends in the community,” Walter said. “We want to take the interventions to where the data and the community take us.”

The organizations may work with a new crime analyst that will be hired into the Police Bureau in the coming year, she added. This would help them determine what the needs are in the community.

Tri County expressed their desire to work with community members on the Safety Plan throughout the process. They plan to appoint “street captains” who can serve as communication agents for residents on their block in Allison Hill.

Other organizations collaborating on this plan are Tri-County HDC, Harrisburg Housing Authority and the Latino Hispanic American Community Center.

“We are hoping this project can serve as a model for other neighborhood organizations,” Mayor Eric Papenfuse said at his budget presentation on Nov. 25.

Ultimately, Walter sees the project improving the quality of life for residents in the neighborhood.

“Residents and organizations are all in to do what they can to improve the community,” she said. “That’s one of the greatest strengths of our neighborhood.”

For more information on Tri County Action Community Action, visit their website.

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Harrisburg police appeal for community help as bureau works to solve homicides, shootings

Harrisburg police Sgt. Kyle Gautsch spoke to the press this morning, as Commissioner Thomas Carter looked on.

Harrisburg police are asking for the community’s help as detectives try to solve several homicides over the past few days.

In a press conference this morning, Sgt. Kyle Gautsch, the bureau’s public information officer, urged city residents to offer information on three seemingly unrelated homicides and several other shootings.

“If you see something or know something, please call us and let us know,” he said. “We need the community’s involvement. The community is a crucial part of these investigations.”

The homicide victims over the past week are:

  • Alrahman Williams, 34, of York, who was shot on the 600-block of Benton Street on Jan. 25.
  • Tonya Dorsey, 28, of Harrisburg, who was found dead from blunt-force trauma following a fire call at Hoverter Homes on the 1200-block of Oyler Street on Jan. 25.
  • Jason Hill Jr., 22, of Harrisburg, who was shot on the 500-block of Curtin Street on Jan. 28.

No arrests have been made in these homicides, and all remain under investigation, Gautsch said.

“We do have details on all of these, but I’m not going to pronounce what we have,” he said. “I can’t go into the details of the investigations.”

In addition, there were three shootings yesterday:

  • a 21-year-old man on the 400-block of S. 14th Street
  • a 17-year-old man at 13th and Shrub streets
  • a 38-year-old man on the 2000-block of Penn Street, shot during the “sale or transaction of some merchandise”

Gautsch said all three shooting victims are expected to survive.

“As you can tell, it’s been a busy week here in the city, an unfortunate week in the city,” he said. “We do believe that these incidents, with the exception of [two of] the potential incidents yesterday, that they’re all isolated. We don’t have reason to believe they’re connected.”

Gautsch said that it’s unusual to have several homicides in such a short time period, but that crime clusters do occur. He declined to speculate on a motive for any of the shootings, including the one on Penn Street, though several sources have told TheBurg that some appear to be drug-related.

In response, Gautsch said that the police plan to undertake “saturation patrols” in select areas and do whatever they can to solve these crimes.

“The Harrisburg police are not going to stop,” he said. “The detectives will continue these investigations, and the patrol officers, the officers patrolling the streets, are not going to stop.”

To report an anonymous tip, call the bureau at 717-558-6900 or the Dauphin County dispatch or visit the Crimewatch website.

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Harrisburg police tout progress in removing illegal weapons from city streets

Flanked by seized firearms, Harrisburg police Commissioner Thomas Carter today explained his bureau’s progress in taking illegal weapons off the streets.

Harrisburg police have seized hundreds of firearms over the past few years, following a department-wide push to take illegal guns off of city streets, officials announced today.

At a press conference, police lined three long tables with handguns, rifles and shotguns, which they said was a small sample of the 646 illegal weapons confiscated from 2016-18.

Capt. Gabriel Olivera said that, in 2016, city police Commissioner Thomas Carter instructed officers to focus on the epidemic of illegal weapons in the city.

“All these guns were seized mostly without officers engaging these individuals with gunfire,” Olivera said. “Our officers have shown great restraint.”

According to Olivera, 196 guns were seized in 2016, 252 in 2017, and 198 in 2018. The far majority of these weapons have been handguns.

Carter said that, even before 2016, his officers routinely seized illegal firearms. But he wanted them to be more mindful of illegally owned guns, most of which have been stolen, as they patrolled and made arrests.

“I work with these amazing men and women on a day-in and day-out basis, and I know their capabilities,” he said, referring to his officers. “It’s something the entire agency bought into.”

Olivera mentioned that, for 2018, Harrisburg had about a 10-percent drop in “Part 1” offenses, which include the most serious crimes like murder, robbery and aggravated assault, compared to 2017. He also cited a 5- to 6-percent reduction in “Part 2” crimes, such as simple assault, disorderly conduct and most drug possession offenses, which are generally considered to be less serious. Detailed crime data for Harrisburg should be publicly available next month, he said.

“I can’t tell you that the number of guns have reduced the homicide rate,” Carter said. “But I can tell you that it has reduced violent crime.”

Olivera said that, after police seize a stolen gun, officers try to determine the rightful owner, so it can be returned. If no owner is identified, the gun eventually is destroyed, he said.

While Carter praised the work of his department, he admitted that the three-year seizure tally represented only a fraction of the illegal weapons in the city.

“This doesn’t even shake the basket of what’s out there,” he said. “We’re just going to do everything we need to do to be able to make sure elderly people and young people can walk down the street without fear of being mugged or robbed or something like that.”

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Harrisburg Police offer new timeline for body camera deployment.

Cpl. Josh Hammer demonstrates body camera equipment at a Sept. 2017 press conference. Police officials say that body cameras won’t hit the streets in Harrisburg until 2019.

The Harrisburg Police Bureau is eyeing a late spring launch for its department-wide body camera program, according to city hall documents released this week.

The police bureau issued a Request for Proposals (RFP) to potential vendors on Wednesday, inviting them to submit cost estimates and specifications for 100 body-worn police cameras and a video storage system.

Bidders must provide detailed descriptions of their camera equipment and IT services, as well as a budget narrative that includes a unit price for cameras and accessories, a price for cloud-based video storage, and a fixed yearly rate for maintenance and support.

The RFP does not state a budget for the new program. The bureau was given $150,000 in Harrisburg’s 2019 budget to purchase body camera equipment, a figure that included $80,000 in unspent funds from 2018.

City officials announced in September 2017 that they would equip the city’s uniformed patrol officers with body cameras the following year.

The program was delayed, however, as police officials tried to determine which specifications they needed in recording and video storage equipment.

Eight officers spent two months in 2017 and 2018 testing prototype equipment in a short-term pilot phase. Police Capt. Gabriel Olivera said in September that no single model suited all the department’s needs.

As a result, Olivera said, it took longer than anticipated to draft an RFP describing equipment specifications.

The resulting RFP outlines dozens of technical characteristics the police will use to evaluate potential equipment—from camera size, weight and portability to options for storage and video playback.

According to the bidding documents, city officials are seeking a storage system that will index footage by officer name, date and time of recording, and type of crime. The cameras must also have built-in audio and video redaction capabilities.

The RFP has already been shared on the city website and be posted in the legal notice section of local newspapers next week, mayor Eric Papenfuse said. Bids are due on Feb. 8.

Proposals will be evaluated by a panel of city representatives, who will select a “short list” of qualified vendors to be invited to city hall for an in-person interview and equipment demonstration.

The panel will evaluate equipment based on ease of use, cost and the vendor’s ability to provide training and technical support.

Vendors that meet the evaluation criteria will be invited to participate in a 30-day testing period starting on Feb. 18.

The city intends to approve a final vendor on March 22 and award a full contract by May 10.

Most public contracts are guaranteed to the lowest responsible bidder, or the reliable vendor who can perform the service on the lowest budget. That won’t be the case for this contract, Papenfuse said.

Legal language in the RFP will allow the city to award contract to the firm of their choice, regardless of cost.

Before the city can deploy the equipment, however, it must hammer out a deal with the Fraternal Order of Police (FOP) that codifies its standards for using cameras and releasing footage.

Papenfuse said that Harrisburg has not formally entered negotiations with FOP but has engaged the union in informal conversations. Those talks will continue as the city develops a new five-year financial plan with its Intergovernmental Cooperation Authority, a five-member oversight board that will be populated this year.

Any agreement with FOP must comply with Act 22, a statute passed by the state legislature in 2017 dictating the times when officers must activate and deactivate their cameras.

Act 22 allows police to record conversations in private residences – something civilians can’t do under the state wiretap law. However, footage recorded under Act 22 is not subject to Right to Know laws.

Police departments have final say over what camera footage will be made public.

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The New Urban Guardians: How ordinary people played a role in the great crime decline.

The Bethesda Mission Youth center has provided after school tutoring and other enrichment activities for children and teens since 1990. They’ll soon expand to another building to double their 75-student enrollment capacity.

On Dec. 28, 1990, in the final days of one of the most violent years in the 20th century, the Harrisburg Patriot-News ran an editorial mourning the American city. “Urban life in America is in the throes of a social meltdown,” it read. “The symptoms of decay are everywhere. Violence has become an epidemic, and many major cities will set record rates of homicides this year.”

The image of an urban dystopia proliferated in the 1980s and 1990s, as American cities—abandoned by manufacturers, forgotten by policymakers and besieged by poverty—battled unprecedented levels of violent crime.

At the turn of the 21st century, though, almost as quickly as crime rose, it began to fall. Violent crime has plummeted in almost every American city since 1990, with some cities, including Harrisburg, cutting their violent crime rates almost in half. Harrisburg recorded a violent crime rate of 2,191 incidences per 100,000 people in 1990; in 2014, it had fallen to 1,113. With the exception of homicides, almost every category of violent crime—robbery, burglary, assault, property crimes and motor vehicle thefts—has fallen by a similar magnitude.

But why? Mayors, police chiefs and other students of crime data can say with certainty that cities have gotten safer since the great crime wave of the 1980s and 1990s. How it happened is a subject of more intense debate. Increased policing, prosecution and incarceration have contributed at least partially to the decline in crime. Researchers have pointed to other, non-intuitive societal shifts that could have curbed violent behavior, including increased access to abortion and decreased exposure to lead, and changes in the economy.

Patrick Sharkey, a sociologist and crime researcher at New York University, acknowledges these influences but also offers a more encouraging, hopeful thesis for why urban spaces have gotten safer. As the criminal justice system expanded and became more punitive, Sharkey says, another force began to coalesce in America’s parks, streets and neighborhood centers. The people responsible weren’t police officers or prosecutors, but ordinary residents.

In his latest book, “Uneasy Peace,” Sharkey calls these people the “new urban guardians.” He says that local nonprofit groups successfully fought crime by building playgrounds, opening youth centers, organizing neighborhood watch groups and picking up trash. As they slowly reclaimed their neighborhoods, working long hours with little to no pay or recognition, these citizens made a crucial, but often overlooked, contribution to safety in American cities.

“The changes that took place weren’t just about the expansion of the prison system and the increasing aggressiveness of police,” Sharkey said during a recent conversation at Midtown Scholar Bookstore, where reporters interviewed him about his research. “It was also a mobilization among the residents and organizations in the communities hit hardest by violence. That has been completely left out of discussions about why violence fell, but I think it’s a crucial part that deserves much greater credit.”

Sharkey explained that, since the 1990s, the nonprofit sector exploded as residents in neighborhoods mobilized against violence. New groups focusing on youth mentorship and neighborhood enrichment proliferated. This trend was partly a direct response to rising crime rates, but was also enabled by a separate expansion in private, philanthropic wealth, possibly due to strong gains in the national economy in the 1980s.

With the help of a research assistant, Sharkey tried to quantify the effects of neighborhood nonprofits on crime reduction. Drawing on data from the National Center for Charitable Statistics, the pair determined that, in a given city with 100,000 people, every new organization formed to confront violence or build stronger neighborhoods led to about a 1-percent drop in violent crime.

“These organizations were designed to take back city streets, not through law enforcement but by building stronger communities, and they were extremely effective,” Sharkey said.

Someone to Trust
As Emily Badger writes in the New York Times, Sharkey’s findings validate what community leaders across the country know to be true about the relationship between neighborhood development and violent crime. While many of the active nonprofit organizations in Harrisburg aren’t explicitly involved in violence prevention, their leaders recognize that, by providing essential services to their community—including mentorship, education and beautification—they’ve become participants in the fight against crime.

“Nurturing relationships and building community is an absolute prerequisite to keep violence from occurring,” said Scott Dunwoody, executive director of Bethesda Mission. “We’re reaching out into the community one man, woman and child at a time.”

Founded in 1914 as a men’s ministry and homeless shelter, Bethesda Mission began to expand its programs in Harrisburg at the same time as crime rates climbed. In 1983, it opened a women and children’s shelter on S. 18th Street; in 1990, it started a youth center in an old fire station on Herr Street. Whereas its shelters offer residential programs, Bethesda Mission’s youth center bleeds into the community surrounding it. Today, more than 75 kids from the 1st through 12th grades attend programs there after school, on weekends and throughout the summer. Volunteers help students with homework, teach cooking classes and supervise sessions in the gym or computer lab. These services are so in demand that Bethesda Mission has made plans to expand its youth center into an adjacent building next year, which will allow it to double its programming capacity.

Both Dunwoody and Serina Brown, director of the Youth Center, say they’re in the business of building relationships and strengthening families, not policing the behavior of kids and their parents. But Brown said she wasn’t surprised to hear about the causal relationship between community nonprofits and violent crime rates. While tutoring sessions and leadership classes may not look like violence prevention techniques, they do offer kids attractive alternatives to criminal activity.

“When you’re with someone through the good and the bad in life, it would make sense that it would prevent crimes because you have someone to trust,” Brown said. “Imagine if every family in the city had that.”

When asked how the center measures its efficacy, Dunwoody cites a fact about graduation rates. Over the course of five years, 86 percent of the students who participated in Bethesda Mission’s youth programs graduated from high school—much higher than the city’s district-wide rate of 55 percent. He also points to the North Allison Hill neighborhood where the center is located. Quiet, leafy and well maintained, North Allison Hill has less visible blight and fewer incidences of violent crime than the South Allison Hill neighborhood close by.

“We don’t want to brag and say we’re the reason why this neighborhood is stable, but we are a big part of it,” Dunwoody said. “Centers like this can have an immense role in giving life to a community. It’s the heartbeat.”

Common Sense

Some neighborhoods have anchoring institutions and physical spaces like the Bethesda Mission Youth Center where residents can meet and build relationships. Others have anchoring organizations for citizens to address their shared challenges. These groups, many of which rely on volunteers, are responsible for countless cosmetic and institutional enhancements across Harrisburg.

In 2008, residents in Camp Curtin formed Camp Curtin Neighbors United to address problems of blight and trash, crime and economic development in their Uptown neighborhood. The all-volunteer organization held beautification days, mapped blighted buildings and drafted a strategic plan to outline short-term and long-term neighborhood objectives. They opened a tool co-op on the grounds of Wesley Union AME Zion Church and later started a grant-funded pre-school in the church’s basement. It currently employs two teachers who care for 15 children five days a week.

Jean Cutler, a founding member and former president of CCNU, said that the neighborhood organization has become an organized, effective forum for citizens to voice their needs and find recourse. By investing in education and beautifying the neighborhood through tree plantings and trash cleanups, Cutler and the other members of CCNU hope that Camp Curtin will shed its reputation as one of Harrisburg’s most distressed, crime-ridden neighborhoods.

“Making the environment around you better is a huge part of trying to stop the crime,” Cutler said. “People will be more respectful of the neighborhood, and we will have lower tolerance for outliers. I’m not a criminologist, but most of this is common sense.”

According to Sharkey, that’s sound logic. He explained that having more eyes and ears in public spaces reduces the opportunities for criminal activity and signals to would-be criminals that a neighborhood isn’t theirs for the taking. Essentially, residents must respond to crime the same way they might regard at an unsightly building project or waste site: by saying, “Not in my back yard.”

“Violence doesn’t come out of nowhere; it comes when a place is abandoned,” Sharkey said. “It comes when a place empties out, when there are not strong institutions, when the community isn’t organized, and it’s left on its own.”

Just ask Jeannine and Jeremy Domenico, who literally have eyes on the street from their residence in South Allison Hill. The Domenicos moved into their rowhome on South Summit Street, a narrow one-way that connects the busy thoroughfares of Derry and Mulberry streets, just before Christmas 2013. When they first bought their home, Jeremy (who goes by Jay) wouldn’t let the couple sit in the living room that looks out onto the street. They watched TV and took visitors in another room on the first floor, which was set back from the main entranceway, closer to the backyard. That way, Jay said, any stray bullets would travel farther to hit them.

“There were gunshots every night,” he said. “Our main concern was drive-bys, and we figured, if we were in the back room, there would be four walls for bullets to go through.”

The Domenicos may not have landed in a neighborhood of choice in 2013, but the neighborhood was theirs—and they wanted people to know they were there to stay. By their account, they spent the better part of the next year trying to build a community. They hosted their first block party, which is now an annual event. They led trash cleanups and gained local fame for the elaborate decorations they put on their doors for every holiday – as well as for the four security cameras that keep watch over the front of the street and the alley behind their home.

Over time, they say, the space around them transformed. They no longer had to lead trash pickups—neighbors were doing it themselves. Gunshots sounded less frequently, and drug dealing no longer took place on their street. Cars still speed down the street the wrong way, but the activity that drove them inside their homes has dramatically fallen.

“It’s easy to go inside and shut your door when you see bad behavior,” Jay said. “It seems like, if you live in a bad area, you get terrorized into staying in your house. But, when we’re outside working, we messed up people’s game plans.”

Repaying a Debt

The idea that social cohesion can inoculate neighborhoods against crime isn’t lost on law enforcement officials.

Capt. Gabriel Olivera, chief information officer for the Harrisburg Police Bureau, said that line of thinking is “absolutely” consistent with trends he’s seen in the city over the past two decades. He pointed to Harrisburg’s Midtown neighborhood as one example. In the 1990s and early 2000s, he said, the intersection of Green and Muench streets was known among police officers as “Green and Murder.” Over time, as residents bought homes, beautified streets and formed a neighborhood watch association, the police bureau received fewer calls to the area.

The progress that’s been made against urban crime has relied, in part, on vast amounts of unpaid labor by volunteer residents. If crime across the country is going to continue its downward trajectory, Sharkey said, the people who fight it at every level ought to be compensated.

“The people who volunteer time to make communities safe are doing work on behalf of their city,” Sharkey said. “When they’re given respect and that role is valued, it makes a huge difference.”

Mayor Eric Papenfuse said that he finds that argument compelling, and paying the work of community organizers is something that the city can consider in the future.

“It’s an intriguing concept, and one that warrants thoughtful consideration,” he said. “There are some serious questions surrounding implementation, but I’m willing to explore them and possibly put forth some funding in next year’s budget.”

But not all of Harrisburg’s urban guardians agree that they should be paid for their work.

Claude Phipps, a community organizer who lives in Bellevue Park, has seen local institutions wax and wane in Harrisburg his whole life. Growing up at 6th and Peffer streets, he watched the city reel from the devastation of Hurricane Agnes in 1972 and from financial hardship that followed. He reckons that the city hit “rock bottom” in the early 2000s and made a turn for the better in 2010.

Today, Phipps said he’s happy to volunteer his time as a neighborhood watch coordinator and conflict mediator. He sees it as “repaying a debt” to the long-ago neighbors who guarded over him as a child.

Cutler, the Camp Curtin advocate, said that citizens ought to have “sweat equity” in their neighborhoods.

“When you fund salaries, there’s no money left for projects,” she said. “There needs to be some volunteerism, because, bottom line, you’ll need money to do these projects.”

I posed the question of pay to a coalition of faith-based community leaders, who were meeting in the chilly basement of Derry Street United Methodist Church to plan a summer camp for children. They stressed that the diminishing funds in a crowded nonprofit sector made it hard to ensure programming year to year.

Bill Jamison, a leader of the Allison Hill Ministry, which provides after-school mentoring, outdoor education and field trips for students, said that he earns $17,000 a year while working 60 hours a week. Some years, his program receives more funding; other years, it gets less. He wouldn’t object to more funding for his volunteers, but he also knows his work is too essential to cease over money disputes.

“If we take these services away, that’s where crime comes from,” Jamison said.

But Nashon Walker, CEO of Hoodrise Global, a mentorship program that works in Harrisburg city schools, thinks that community leaders and mentors should demand more pay for their work.

“Inner-city outreach has been underfunded and undervalued,” Walker said. “I don’t have a poverty mentality.”

Walker also pointed to an irony that has led politicians and researchers across the political spectrum to call for criminal justice reform. America’s incarceration spree, effective though it may have been in curbing criminal activity, has borne immense social and economic costs.

“This country pays billions to incarcerate,” Walker said. “Why can’t we pay now to set people free?”

When presenting his research, Sharkey is careful to note that America’s progress against crime is tenuous. Many cities across the country are seeing upticks in violent crime after years of decline. This crossroads, he said, should force American lawmakers to trade in the country’s punitive criminal justice policies for programs that focus on reinvestment and economic development in cities. The good news is that these programs could look a lot like what is already in place in cities like Harrisburg, where neighborhoods self-police by tending to their public spaces, their children and their shared social bonds.

“This is how violence is confronted in a sustainable way without the collateral costs of locking up half the community’s population,” Sharkey said. “It’s an alternative model, and it should be the model.”

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The People in My Neighborhood: Harrisburg finally gets some decent housing—and quickly turns it into a problem.

Recently, early one morning, bright flashes lit up my bedroom, the light filtering through the curtains into my downtown Harrisburg house from the street below.

At first, I figured it was just the usual car headlight, maybe someone stopped at the intersection. But, it persisted, so I got up to see what the problem was.

From my window, I witnessed a raid on the rundown building across the street. U.S. marshals and city police simultaneously smashed through two windows and a door to a first-floor apartment, put someone in cuffs and hauled him away.

Four days later, I attended, as I regularly do, a meeting of the Harrisburg City Council.

At that meeting, council considered its own downtown issue.

A developer was seeking approval for two projects: construction of a small office building on one site and, on another, the renovation of a long-vacant office building into 12 higher-end apartments.

So, now, a quiz.

Which of these two is a bigger problem?

1. Downtown Harrisburg, despite progress over the past decade, remains saddled with numerous dilapidated buildings, which attract drugs and crime.

2. A developer wishes to spend nearly $9 million on projects that will bring new office and residential tenants into downtown Harrisburg.

There’s an old saying about finding only thorns in a bushel of roses, and that’s how I felt after I heard council President Wanda Williams deliver a tongue-lashing to city developers. Before voting “yes” on the projects at issue, she read a lengthy statement warning developers, going forward, to include more affordable housing in their downtown projects.

“I certainly will be watching,” she told them.

Like Williams, I would love to see more quality affordable housing in Harrisburg. However, as a downtown resident, I can say, with great confidence, that the problem in the neighborhood is not that a few developers have built a smattering of higher-end units over the past few years. It’s that downtown remains plagued with shabby housing, owned by negligent landlords, which adversely affects the quality of life for those who of us live and work there.

The real problem, in other words, is not too much investment, but a lack of investment, especially in the existing housing stock.

Let’s examine some data.

According to the city, Harrisburg has about 13,500 total rental units, which constitute around two-thirds of the city’s housing stock. Of these units, about 2,300 are located downtown.

The downtown apartments are a mix. Two 1960s-era high rises contribute a few hundred market-rate units. Several hundred more apartments are in high rises for low-income seniors and the disabled.

Much of the rest are scattered in small apartment buildings, in row houses carved up into apartments and in units over commercial buildings. Much of that housing is in terrible shape and, thus, rented relatively cheaply. Some buildings are little more than rooming houses, and several are notorious for drug activity.

Against that unpromising backdrop, a few developers, over the past few years, have taken huge risks to try to create a class of multi-family housing that practically didn’t exist before in downtown Harrisburg—I’ll call it “professional-grade.”

Harristown, WCI and Vartan all have acquired empty or nearly empty structures, mostly rundown, historic office buildings, and invested millions to bring them back to life as residences. The projects have been small—from three to a few dozen units each.

Most (though not all) have higher-quality finishes, such as granite countertops and stainless steel appliances. Some are small in size; others are spacious. They rent in the range of about $850 to $1,300 a month depending on size, quality, location and number of bedrooms and baths.

The idea is to appeal to the small army of professionals who go to work each day in and around the Capitol complex but who otherwise would commute in. If we offer them decent housing, the theory goes, maybe some will stay, frequenting downtown businesses and restaurants instead dashing out of town as quickly as possible and spending all their money—earned in Harrisburg—in the suburbs. Their tax dollars would stay here, too.

And if you’re looking for a solution to the problem of high parking rates that keep away suburban customers—this is a good one.

Now, I might be less sanguine if people were being displaced en masse, as has occurred in some other cities. But, in downtown Harrisburg, that’s not happening. In total, the three developers have added about 100 units to the downtown, about 4 percent of downtown’s total apartment stock and far less than 1 percent of the city’s. And, again, these are additions to the housing stock, not replacements, since nearly all of these buildings previously were low-end office space or just empty.

As I walk around my downtown neighborhood, I see some wonderful historic buildings and caring people. But I also see far too much blight, neglect and trash. I see dozens of rundown buildings owned by exploitative landlords who don’t care a damn about the neighborhood or even their own tenants and who refuse to put a penny into their derelict properties.

That’s the real problem in downtown Harrisburg. When will that be addressed?

Lawrance Binda is editor in chief of TheBurg.

Disclosure: Alex Hartzler, TheBurg’s publisher, is a principal with WCI Partners.

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Harrisburg police pilot body camera program

Capt. Deric Moody demonstrates use of a magnetically mounted body camera on Cpl. Josh Hammer in City Hall on Friday.

Police body cameras have hit the streets of Harrisburg, signaling the Police Bureau’s first steps toward developing a city-wide body-camera program.

Eight officers from the bureau will test cameras from four vendors over the next two months. At the end of the pilot program, the city and the bureau will begin drafting plans for a comprehensive program, with the goal of equipping all 75 uniformed patrol officers with cameras.

At a press conference on Friday, however, city and police officials were hesitant to say exactly when that deployment will start.

“There’s a lot of legwork that goes into developing this program, and it’s not ready for full rollout,” said police Capt. Deric Moody.

The process for starting a comprehensive program — which includes negotiations with the Fraternal Order of Police and a public bidding process among vendors – likely won’t wrap up until 2018.

Before then, the police force must decide which camera specifications will best serve their officers. The city has already deployed two camera models for testing, which they will swap out for two other models after 30 days.

The eight officers in the pilot program will complete surveys for each model they audition, Moody said. The bureau will use that survey data to determine which features they want in their cameras.

The camera that officials showcased on Friday attached magnetically to the front of an officer’s uniform, but other models might use clips or straps. Officers will also have to consider the weight and battery life of the cameras.

Officers using the equipment report that it’s relatively unobtrusive.

“They said they haven’t noticed it’s been on them, and it hasn’t interfered with their work,” said Cpl. Josh Hammer, who supervises some of the officers in the pilot program.

One quality all of the cameras share is a manual on-off switch.

“We looked at cameras with continuous recording, but most people understand that there’s a point when you have to turn it off,” Moody said. For example, he said, officers would disable recording any time they enter a bathroom.

Beyond the physical features of the camera, one of the major considerations for the bureau is storage, Moody said. Each vendor offers different software to retain, redact and store footage.

Some systems run automated, cloud-based backups, while others may require officers to manually upload footage to servers. Storage plans range from flat-rate unlimited packages to those that charge per minute or megabyte of footage.

Once the footage is stored, the remaining question is under what conditions it will be released to the public.

Moody said the police force is conducting its pilot program in compliance with Act 22, a statute passed by the state legislature in 2017. Act 22 dictates the times when officers must activate and deactivate their cameras. It also allows police to record conversations in private residences – something civilians can’t do under the state wiretap law.

However, any footage recorded under Act 22 is not subject to Right to Know laws. Police departments have final say over what footage will be made public.

The deal that the bureau ultimately strikes with the FOP will determine, among other concerns, their standards for deploying cameras and releasing footage.

The operating budget for the first year of the program is $70,000 for the first year, but Mayor Eric Papenfuse said that his administration and City Council are willing to spend “whatever it takes” to implement the body camera program city-wide. The final cost will depend on what equipment and storage features the department wants in its cameras.

The bureau will specify those features in its request for public bids. Moody said that any vendor will be able to submit a bid for the project, regardless of whether or not they participated in the pilot program.

Moody and Papenfuse emphasized the importance of public opinion in their planning process and encouraged Harrisburg residents to call the 311 city line with feedback or questions about the body camera program. The city will also host community meetings to solicit input and share information about the camera program.

Ultimately, both parties hope that the cameras will increase the public’s perception of transparency in the police department.

“I believe body cameras will make things safer and go a long way in healing the divide between the police and the public,” Papenfuse said.

Author: Lizzy Hardison

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Untruth and Consequences: The news may be fake, but the costs are real.

Illustration by Rich Hauck

In the city, life is complicated.

Events happen, and, often, their interpretation has more to do with rumor, preconceived notions and faulty facts than with verifiable truths. And media, distant and distracted, often don’t do their job of helping people tie together the strands.

A perfect example occurred this past April 21.

On that day, a shooting occurred in Midtown Harrisburg, near a food truck festival that was part of the city’s monthly “3rd in the Burg” arts and culture event. That much we know for sure.

The emerging narrative went something like this:

  • The shooting was the result of the usual urban criminal activity around some downscale rowhouses on N. 3rd
  • The shooting led to such a drop in business for the food trucks that, three months later, they decamped for the safer suburbs.
  • The shooting and the loss of the food trucks mean that 3rd in the Burg is unsafe or in jeopardy or both.

But what if none of this is true? What if these commonly held beliefs are wrong?

Let’s start with the shooting itself.

At 5:11 p.m., two shots rang out on the 1600-block of N. 3rd Street. As reported by most media, the shooting was down the street from 3rd in the Burg’s food truck festival, which was setting up (it hadn’t actually begun).

At the time, information was sketchy. TV news reporters rushed in, using the food festival as a camera backdrop, as a prop, implying peril. Similarly, a print reporter repeatedly commingled the shooting and the festival. Later pictures showed a young black man, identified as 22-year-old Saivon Waller, sitting on the stoop of the house where the shooting occurred, behind yellow caution tape, being questioned, then arrested, by police.

The public takeaway: another shooting, another crime, a dangerous city. Three days later, Harrisburg police released their official version, unraveling the first string in that narrative. A young woman, they said, was shot in the leg because, as she rushed into Waller’s apartment quickly and unexpectedly, Waller, an Army reservist, said he thought she was an intruder. Waller’s defense claims it was a terrible accident—he and the woman knew each other well, but he did not immediately recognize her as she barged in. For its part, the prosecution does not buy the “all-an-accident” defense, contending that Waller, even if he didn’t mean to shoot this specific person, still intentionally aimed and shot the gun.

Regardless, there was no broader community concern: no drugs, no thugs and certainly no bullets flying around willy-nilly at the food truck fest. But who cared about the real story at that point? The initial, breathless reporting and stand-ups in front of food trucks already had a terrible impact, had been imprinted on people’s brains. From then on, they were likely only to retain the false memory that there was a shooting at 3rd in The Burg.

And, indeed, in July, the food truck festival announced that it was pulling out of 3rd in the Burg, blaming falling business on the April shooting.  So, they were taking their chicken sandwiches and beef burritos across the river, to the relative safety of a church parking lot in the suburbs, setting up a competing event outside Mechanicsburg.

But there was problem with that “news,” too. Back in 2013, when the food trucks first arrived, the lines were so long that it once took me an hour to get a taco. By last summer, long before the shooting, the lines were gone, and I could stroll right up to a truck to order. What had happened? It’s simple really. A few blocks south, the Broad Street Market had begun to open for 3rd in the Burg, and that’s where all the hungry people went.

The market had many advantages over food trucks huddled together in an out-of-the-way parking lot. In the warm weather, it offered music, pop-up vendors, outdoor seating and even free beer and spirits samples. In the cold weather, it had shelter and heat. It was also centrally located, a natural gathering spot with dozens of amazing food options.

But what was bad for the food truck festival was fantastic for 3rd in the Burg. The market’s participation gave the arts event something it had lacked—a central meeting point, a strong core, a heart, if you will. As a result, 3rd in the Burg became more popular (and more fun) than ever.

But, unless you were on the ground in Harrisburg, you didn’t know that. You missed this story and all its complexities. Instead, you probably followed the much simpler, yet untrue, story line: a young thug, a public danger, the loss of a beloved food festival.

Misperception, incomplete reporting, a failure to tie together the many strings of a story.

In the city, life is complicated.

Editor’s Note: In May, Saivon Waller had his bail reduced from $500,000 to $100,000. He was released on bond, and his next court appearance is scheduled for Oct. 5. 

Lawrance Binda is editor in chief of TheBurg.

Illustration by Rich Hauck.

 

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Safety Update: For the third year in a row, Harrisburg crime dropped in major categories.

Harrisburg isn’t commonly known as a low-crime city, but it may be trending that way as overall crime has dropped for a third straight year.

In a press conference today, Mayor Eric Papenfuse stated that total crime dropped 17.7 percent last year compared to 2015. Violent crime fell 3.9 percent while nonviolent crime decreased 31.4 percent versus 2015.

Papenfuse attributed these statistics to Chief Thomas Carter’s leadership, the implementation of a community policing strategy and recruiting talented new hires.

“I think he has set the tone for our Police Department and, as a result, his strategies are effectively trickling down to everyone and the department is working more effectively than ever before,” Papenfuse said.

In 2016, an 18.47 percent drop in robbery led the decrease in crime compared to 2015. The city’s murder rate also fell. In 2016, Harrisburg recorded 16 murders, compared to 19 in 2015.

For 2016, auto theft was one of the few types of crime to experience an increase. Olivera said the 27.43 percent increase in auto theft reflected the past year’s cold winter when thieves take advantage of motorists warming up cars unsupervised.

Over the past three years, violent crime has dropped 27.5 percent, while nonviolent crime has fallen 29.6 percent.

Leading the violent crime category’s three-year drop is a 50.82 percent decrease in robberies and a 36.59 percent decline in burglaries.

All categories of violent crime except for rape saw a double-digit decrease when looking at the past three years. Capt. Gabriel Olivera credited a change in state law that affected how the city reported rapes to jump in reported rapes last year. When combined with the sexual offenses category, as was the method before the law change, the numbers show a modest increase.

“The 2016 numbers [on rape] will provide a good baseline when moving forward,” Papenfuse said.

Papenfuse credits the community policing model with proactively affecting crime rates.

“Community policing means developing relationships with the community in such a way that proactively prevents crime from happening,” Papenfuse said.

Nonviolent crimes, also termed “quality of life” crimes, decreased 31 percent, showing double-digit drops in every category except arson compared to last year. Theft-related charges, criminal mischief and drug-related charges decreased each by at least 20 percent.

“We see more businesses come into the community because they feel comfortable and safe,” Capt. Olivera said. “That benefits all of us.”

Arson increased 29 percent from 21 arsons in 2015 to 29 arsons last year. Papenfuse linked this with the “raging opioid epidemic” in the region. Those addicted to drugs will squat in abandoned properties and start fires.

The child abuse category has seen a 23 percent increase since 2013 and a 17 percent decrease since last year. Officials credit mandatory reporting laws created in reaction to Jerry Sandusky’s child abuse scandal as the reason for the three-year increase.

Papenfuse called these numbers “impressive,” while adding that “no one is satisfied with the current crime rate.”

This summer, the Bureau of Police is expected to add at least eight new police officers in addition to 10 officers added in January, Papenfuse said. The department is actively looking for two information-support officers to assist communication and data analysis.

Papenfuse noted that the city is funneling more resources into the Allison Hill and Uptown neighborhoods. Construction on an Allison Hill safety sub-station will begin this year. After the that sub-station is functional, the city will install one in the Uptown neighborhood.

Chart of Harrisburg crime data

Data from the City of Harrisburg shows an overall decrease in crimes from the past year and the past three years.

Find the City of Harrisburg’s crime data, including the above chart, here. 

Author: Danielle Roth

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