ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Monday, October 14, 1996 TAG: 9610140094
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: RICHARD FOSTER STAFF WRITER
JAMES CLEMONS' home was robbed. Statistics show crime is decreasing, but victims see it differently.
Most folk in James Clemons' Franklin County neighborhood know what it's like to be a crime victim - lousy.
Practically all of the homes in the rural neighborhood have been broken into and burglarized, most during the summer of 1995.
"You feel violated," Clemons said. "They trashed the house. What they didn't take, they destroyed or tried to. It took us six or eight months to get to the point that I felt comfortable leaving my wife here by herself. We put a security system in. That was the only way I felt comfortable even leaving the house at all."
One of Clemons' neighbors, who asked not to be identified, said: "The mental aspect is you come home every day, and you look at the door and the windows. It's been over a year, and I still come home and look at the door and the window. I know it's happened once, and that was the first thing that tipped me off - the door was unlocked. So now that's the first thing I look for."
Clemons was born in Roanoke and raised in Franklin County, but he lived for a long while in a suburban area of Henrico County outside Richmond before moving back to this area. He could have expected crime near Richmond, but in a country setting like he lives in now, it comes a shock to some people.
Many voters believe crime is increasing, though statistics tend to show otherwise: During the first six months of 1996, Virginia's crime index declined 2 percent compared with the same period of 1995.
However, the number of burglaries in Franklin County has almost doubled, increasing from 24 in 1994 to 45 last year, and that's the crime that hit home for Clemons.
He and some of his neighbors think urban crime may have spilled over into their rural community, another common fear among Virginia voters this year.
"The stuff that they stole, it was stuff that could be gotten rid of fairly quick," Clemons said. "It was all electronics, stuff that could be sold fairly quick. I would say it was sold for drugs, but that's strictly speculation on my part."
"Habits are different from different people," Clemons' neighbor said. "So you don't know if it's the need to steal, or drugs, or wanting money to buy something that they want. I'm sure they don't keep the things we had."
As in many homes in the community, some guns were stolen from the neighbor's house. He thinks they were sold somewhere outside Virginia where gun-registration laws are not so strict, and he wonders whether criminals would be discouraged from stealing guns to sell if all states had strict rules.
The police recovered only one or two of the items stolen in Clemons' neighborhood, and no arrests have been made. Clemons and his neighbor say they don't hear much to persuade them the thieves will ever be caught.
"It's no use getting mad at the police officers," the neighbor said. "They can only do so much. A big problem is the police department here in Franklin County is understaffed."
(However, the Franklin County Board of Supervisors voted 5-2 this summer to turn down federal funds to add two positions in the Sheriff's Office as part of President Clinton's program to put 100,000 additional police officers on the street. Sheriff W.Q. "Quint" Overton said at the time that the supervisors rejected the funds because they don't like him; the supervisors said they were concerned because the county would have had to pay for the positions when federal funds run out in three years.)
What do the 5th District candidates for Congress believe could be done to prevent crimes like those committed against Clemons and his neighbors?
Here's what they had to say:
* Democrat Virgil Goode, a state senator and lawyer from Rocky Mount, said he was "proud to be the first Senate co-patron of the legislation that abolished parole in Virginia. We are beginning to see results from the implementation of this legislation. At the national level, we need to refocus on the war on drugs, to increase efforts to stop the inflow of drugs and to crack down on the drug pushers in our country."
* Republican George Landrith, an Albemarle County lawyer, said the federal government needs to rededicate itself to fighting drugs, mostly because of poor messages coming out of the White House, such as President Clinton's joking suggestion that if he were to try marijuana again, he'd probably inhale.
"When a president of the United States does that, he implies you can do it, you can joke about it, and you could wish you could do it some more, and guess what? You can be commander in chief, too. That's the wrong message. It's a tragic message, and it's got to stop."
Landrith would support federal block grants for more local police, as long as the money didn't have too many strings attached. "They need to allow home-grown solutions to exist," he said. "You can't solve everything from Washington with one cookie-cutter, one-size-fits-all approach."
Landrith doesn't think tougher gun registration laws are going to help, because criminals don't buy or sell guns at law-abiding places. He would like to see criminal justice reforms so criminals are convicted faster and serve more time for serious crimes.
* Virginia Independent Party candidate George "Tex" Wood, a college instructor from Patrick County, thinks it's a fallacy to believe urban criminals broke into the houses in Clemons' neighborhood. He believes the burglars were probably local, and local police will catch them. "Urban crooks casing a rural area would stand out like Martians in a nudist colony," Wood said.
Like Landrith, Wood would like to see more police in 5th District localities, but unlike the Republican, he doesn't think the federal government has the money to pay for it. He thinks crime is a symptom of poor economic conditions caused by the growing trade deficit.
"The crooks that did it might not have been doing it if they still had a job at a factory somewhere or if they had a factory, period," Wood said. "The single greatest threat to our culture and our way of life is that continuing horrendous trade deficit."
As for gun-control laws, Wood thinks stricter gun registration requirements would only encourage criminals to steal more guns.
Clemons had this to say about the candidates' ideas: "The reason we were broken into was just because somebody wanted to steal, that's it. I don't know if it would have helped our situation, adding more police. That wouldn't have deterred what happened to us.
"I agree with them that gun control's regulated to death now. I do agree with stricter drug enforcement, which is going to take more money, but we waste a lot of money on a lot of things that could be spent on that, I think."
LENGTH: Long : 119 lines KEYWORDS: POLITICS CONGRESSby CNB