“There’s nothing that does so much harm as good intentions.” – Milton Friedman
RIO GRANDE – The recent spike in violent crime, including the tragic murder of a 15-year-old girl, have brought into stark focus the multi-layered societal ills that have come to plague the Rio Grande area of Middle Township.
We have worked hard in Rio Grande for the past four years. We have strengthened the hotel/motel ordinance and the property maintenance code, grown the size of our police department, and passed laws to curtail panhandling and speed the demolition of derelict properties.
The level of many crimes has actually dropped in Rio Grande. But, it’s time for us to admit that despite the best efforts of the Middle Township Police Department, we are losing ground in our battle to improve the quality of life for our law-abiding residents and hard-working, responsible business owners in and around the Route 47 and Route 9 corridor.
Sadly, much of the trouble has been brought down on us by misguided, if well-intentioned, government programs and policies. This is not an indictment of the good people in bad circumstances who need a hand from the safety net that government can and should provide in their time of need. There but for the grace of God, go I.
But, policies and regulations from the federal level on down have created a sorry social incubator that breeds a dangerous brew of illegal drug use, increasingly violent crime, homelessness and a downward spiral for our neighborhoods.
We aren’t going to solve all the social problems that trouble communities across America here in Middle Township. But, we must rally all the agencies involved to come together, because our approach needs to change. We must think differently. We must do better.
The root cause of our problems is the dangerous and misguided policy used to release convicted offenders who have served their time back into our communities.
At the heart of this toxic breeding ground are the so-called “voucher motels.”
What is happening here is that newly-released prisoners from around the state are be dumped in Rio Grande, handed a three-week motel voucher and left to their own devices.
Middle Township has no budget or framework for providing the type of support and social services required for most of these men and women to have any real shot at making a law-abiding reentry into civil society.
Most have no real ties to the community or family support. They are only returned here because they were sentenced at our county courthouse for a previous crime. If they have no home to go to upon release, most of them are sent back to the town where they were convicted.
Even worse, we are now hearing that newly-released prisoners, with no connection to this area, are asking to come to Rio Grande. Bottom line, most aren’t from Middle. Middle didn’t try and convict them. We had no say in where they ended up. Yet, our residents and businesses pay the price for this broken system, a price that grows more dear with each passing day.
This voucher program for ex-convicts in Middle Township must end.
We have met with these hotel owners on several occasions. Many are honest businessmen and women, trying to run a clean place and cooperating with police. But we simply can no longer accept a business model based on profiting from the misery of others, with government funding.
The net result is hotel owners using our tax dollars to attract and house a large group of ex-offenders in a concentrated area, in the heart of our town.
While Middle Township did not create this mess, we must build on the work already done to combat these social ills and protect our residents, businesses and property values.
Let me publicly put these hotel owners on notice. We don’t want these hotels here.
Unless they immediately take aggressive steps to clean up their act and move away from enabling this culture of crime, drugs and voucher dependency, we will find a way to shut them down.
1. We will take all legal steps within our means (and revise current ordinances, if necessary) to clean the criminal element out of these properties.
2. With our increased Code Enforcement staff, we will perform weekly inspections for fire, health, occupancy and property maintenance code violations and seek the highest fines and penalties permitted under law.
3. We will aggressively increase our police posture and presence. We are in the process of revising our ordinance so that we can increase the number of police officers on our streets. We have increased the size of our force over the last two years and are finally getting to the level where we can once again become a proactive, instead of reactive, law enforcement agency.
4. We will reconstitute the MTPD Street Crimes Unit that was so effective previously, but was forced to disband several years ago due to budget cuts.
5. With the help of Rio Grande residents, we will stand up Neighborhood Watch Groups to assist in a community-based effort to take back our neighborhoods.
But for all our good intentions, we cannot solve these problems without addressing the root causes. The drugs, homelessness and crime that threaten to infest our community are not just a “Middle” problem and they demand a regional approach to seek real and lasting solutions.
We will call a summit, for early January of 2016, of state, federal, county and non-governmental agencies, not to place blame, but to better coordinate our efforts to eradicate these problems from our streets.
There has to be a better way and we owe it the people of Middle Township to find it.
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