12/21/06: Article 55, Responses to CNT

Last week we sent an email to get your opinion on the CNT and the majority of you agreed the Chief should be in charge. Here are a few of the respones:

. . .As a past foreman of our Grand Jury, I have had an opportunity to see, firsthand, the impact that this drug issue has on our community. I also had the opportunity to hear from Commander Williams, and a number of his people. It was my sense that his people would agree that there should not even be a discussion on this issue. Our CNT Commander must report directly to the Chief of Police. To continue to do otherwise politicizes this for NO good reason. Thanks for all you’re doing to keep progress in crime prevention alive.

. . .Martin, thanks for the continued good work. I live on E. Saint Julian and because the Mulberry has 24 hour surveillance on our square the crime rate in our area is one of the best in the City. Surveillance works.

. . .The CNT must work for the Police chief in my opinion. Drugs and Crime are just too directly related.

. . .Thanks for all your hard work! I think we need to go with our gut feeling. We need to do what we feel like works better for Savannah rather than what is always done or what is “politically correct”. Only the experts can tell us.

. . .I completely support the structure of having the CNT report to the new chief. They are a failure as now organized. I also believe our group should take a very strong stand, and be a very loud voice, in getting this accomplished! Otherwise, it will stay caught in the web of politics. It is time we make our voices united, loud and strong.

. . .From little I know your concept sounds most practical and efficient.

. . .I am in complete agreement with your comments of the CNT, but most of the officers I have met have terrible attitudes. Just this evening at Hall and Abercorn my wife and I witnessed what appeared to be drug activity with lookouts, runners, etc. moving back and forth from the shadows of Forsyth park to the corner (we observed this for over 30 minutes). We have called 911 to report suspicious activity in the past and after giving descriptions of the suspects were met with pure apathy by the dispatchers. This evening we thought we should take a different approach. I told the dispatcher of a man standing in the street (which he was) and that an officer should check him out before he got hit by a car. I never mentioned that I suspected him of illegal activity. Sixteen minutes after our call the dispatcher radioed for an officer to investigate…SIXTEEN MINUTES ( I have a police scanner in my vehicle). Six minutes later a patrol car drove up to the intersection and the runners took off with officers pursuing. Guess our instincts were right but I don’t believe anyone was caught. Very disheartening… apathy from dispatcher up. Keep up the good work,

. . .I tend to agree with the letter to the editor you included in your message. I don’t think the CNT is doing anything but costing us taxpayers more money by running their own separate operation. They need to be disbanded as a separate entity and incorporated into the current police force where they will at least have some accountability. Currently, they are slow, inefficient and arrogant.

. . .I can tell you from my personal experience that they are not performing up to standards when it comes to controlling the drug problem in this town. Until two years ago, my former next door neighbors were running a very active drug operation right out of their house. We (neighbors all along the block) turned them in numerous times over a period of about three years. Even after they had one of their children set fire to my house to frighten us out of the neighborhood, their drug trafficking continued for another six months. (This is not supposition. The child threw a molotov cocktail against the house and when it exploded, it singed all the hair, eyebrows, etc. off this child’s face. The police wouldn’t do anything about it because they said we couldn’t prove it since we hadn’t actually seen the child throw it.) My policeman neighbor was as frustrated as we were because all he could do was report what he saw. That doesn’t make any sense at all. From what we saw (and heard) the CNT didn’t even try to work with the police department on this case. They dragged it out as long as they could.

Thanks again for your responses. Enjoy the Holidays.

Martin