Syracuse police have announced another round of gang-related arrests. After multiple people were shot and two people were killed over the Fourth of July weekend, one of those homicides kicked an anti-crime program into action.
The Truce program in in the city of Syracuse is a community law enforcement collaboration meant to reduce gun violence. It’s triggered, or pushed into action, when gang members, responsible for much of the crime in the city, are involved in a homicide.
Syracuse Police Chief Frank Fowler says it was the investigation of a shooting death at Thorndon Park on July 4th that triggered the latest Truce initiative.
"We discovered that the suspect in the case, Shaquez Collins, was a member of the LAMA/Uptown gang, and the victim, Azhwan Harvey, was a member of the Bricktown gang. That fit the criteria for a TRUCE trigger.”
So for the next month, in some neighborhoods on Syracuse’s East Side, police and other agencies cracked down, conducting street level enforcement, probation and parole home visits and advanced prosecution of gang related activities as well as community outreach. The result: 64 charges against gang members in this area ranging from Warrant arrests to drug charges, and the percentage of crimes connected to gangs dropped from 83 percent before the crackdown to 33 percent afterwards.
Fowler says this kind of selective enforcement policing works to reduce crime.
“That’s the way of law enforcement nowadays, because law enforcement resources are shrinking because of the economic downturn in a lot of cities in our country.We don’t have a lot of resources to waste, or a lot of time to do things the old fashioned way,” said the police chief.
But Fowler says these Truce initiatives also work on a number of levels. Part of it is just telling other gang members out there what happens if when gang members are involved in these kinds of shootings.
“Here are the arrest results. We hold them up as tangible examples of what we’re planning to do,” said Fowler. “That it all serves as a deterrent and also an alternative to violence.”
The police chief adds that the neighborhood will not be ignored now that the truce initiative is over.
"We come in with our problem-oriented policing personnel, and they will take over after this, and do an assessment of the neighborhood, and to bring in those resources to perhaps have certain neighborhoods turned into neighborhood watch groups We’ve found our neighborhood watch groups have been extremely effective in the reduction of crime.”
This is the seventh Truce Initiative since the program started two years ago.
