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Volunteers say mayor should name crime-prevention officer to improve communications.
WILKES-BARRE – Crime watchers have one question: Why don’t they have a crime prevention officer?
It is the one question that irks Charlotte Raup, longtime head of Wilkes-Barre’s Crime Watch Coalition, who says she is fed up with the lack of police presence at watch meetings.
“We want to keep our neighborhoods safe,” said Raup, who spoke about the issue with other neighborhood crime watchers Tuesday night.
About 50 crime watchers and a few members of the city’s Guardian Angels attended the meeting at Holy Rosary Church in the Iron Triangle section.
For nearly three decades a crime prevention officer attended each of the group’s meetings, but that practice changed nearly a year ago, Raup said.
In January, Mayor Tom Leighton said it would cost the city too much money to have a crime prevention officer attend every meeting and he eliminated that position.
The city receives more that $200,000 each year from federal Housing and Urban Development community policing and crime prevention grants, Raup said.
It wasn’t until March when Leighton offered to send a patrol officer to five of the 14 crime watch meetings per month. Raup said the officers were instructed to take reports instead of exchange ideas with crime watch members.
Even though members have expressed a need for a full-time crime prevention officer, Leighton said he is upset that Raup offered to work part-time to do the position.
“In correspondence with myself and other city officials, Ms. Raup has indicated that she’d be willing to do the position part-time if I hired her,” Leighton said. “Charlotte wants to be out there patrolling the streets.”
Leighton said it’s impossible to attend 14 crime watch meetings in one month.
Raup said that would only take 14 hours a month, which is not a full-time job.
“If they hired me, I would take the job,” Raup said. “We have to get one person to go to all of the crime watch meetings consistently.”
But Leighton said his priority is fighting crime.
“I’ve hired 21 new police officers and another eight were replaced. I have made this my number one commitment to reduce crime in the city,” he said.
But Raup said her group is “upset that we’re having a hard time getting a crime prevention officer. You can’t prevent crime if you don’t know what’s happening.”
Raup said not having a prevention officer does more harm than good.
“Each meeting our residents meet with different police officers,” Raup said. “There was a lack of continuity and accountability which a single crime prevention officer had always provided.”
One volunteer said a police officer who attended an East End meeting stood in the back and couldn’t provide concerned residents with answers.
Raup said the group can’t combine the city’s 14 crime watches because there are problems in each of those neighborhoods.
Wilkes-Barre’s Crime Watch, a nonprofit organization, has helped set up similar operations in surrounding communities like Plains Township, Old Forge and Duryea.
Raup said the group recently traveled with a state police trooper to Bradford County to help start an organization there.
After Labor Day, members plan to circulate petitions demanding the city hire a prevention officer to act as a liaison with volunteers, Raup said.
Still, as violent crime continues to rise in Wilkes-Barre, volunteers like Sally Healey, who attended the meeting, expressed their frustrations about the administration.
Healey, a member of the East End Crime Watch, said communication is the key and City Hall should be in a partnership with the network of volunteers.
“We’re the ones that know the neighborhoods and understand the neighborhoods and the problems that are in the neighborhoods,” she said.
“Police are doing a wonderful job, but we feel that the administration should be aware of our complaints, our suggestions and lead us in the right path,” said Healey, an English instructor at Luzerne County Community College. “We should all be working together.”