
                         THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
                 Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: TUESDAY, June 21, 1994                    TAG: 9406210006 
SECTION: FRONT                     PAGE: A10    EDITION: FINAL  
SOURCE: Medium 
DATELINE: 940621                                 LENGTH:

POLICE CAN`T DO IT ALONE\

{LEAD} Norfolk police Chief Melvin C. High last week pleaded - at times emotionally - with 160 civic and religious leaders for their help in the struggle for a safer city. His cry from the heart has to be taken seriously if crime is to be controlled in Norfolk.

Speaking at Norfolk Scope, the chief said - as he had said earlier this month to state legislators considering more state aid to local police: ``We are stretched to the limit.''

{REST} Chief High was asking for broader and deeper church and civic-league involvement in combating crime. Thanks to Norfolk's Police Assisted Community Enforcement (PACE) program, grass-roots participation in the campaign against drug trafficking and other crimes ranging from vandalism to homicide is significantly more broad-based than it was at the beginning of the '90s.

The PACE-developed links between neighborhood residents and the police seemingly explain in part a gratifying decline in Norfolk crime rates in most categories, including homicide.

But the decline could be deceptive. Another wave of crime makers is coming on in the '90s. Demographers report that the ranks of youths prone to criminality are swelling. Juvenile crime appears to be on the rise.

That underscores the urgency of Chief High's prayer to the public-spirited men and women gathered at Scope.

With tears in his eyes, the chief said: ``I go out and see all of the young men who are being slaughtered and the young women who are prostituting themselves. As chief I can't sit idly by, but I can't do it alone.''

Of course. The police have never been able to maintain law and order alone. Webs of social controls, now greatly weakened in the United States, distinguish livable places from unlivable ones, as does general obedience to legal codes.

Constructive attitudes and concern for others by the mass of citizens create the defenses that keep barbarism at bay. More people in Norfolk - and in any other cities blighted by lawlessness - who cherish decency must pitch in to strengthen civilization's defenses.

by CNB