THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, March 20, 1996 TAG: 9603200001
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A14 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Editorial
LENGTH: Long : 109 lines
Perhaps the level of violence will drop dramatically in Portsmouth following the conviction of five young men charged with conspiracy to distribute crack cocaine and other offenses, including, in the case of two defendants, murder.
At least peace seems destined to fall upon the River Edge Apartments section of the city, a no man's land of neglected and boarded-up housing where the drug gang rode high: River Edge will be bulldozed to make way for middle-income and upper-middle-income housing around a man-made, city-owned lake.
That idyllic prospect contrasts sharply with the outdoor-drug-bazaar described by witnesses in the eight-day U.S. District Court trial in Norfolk of Robert Lee Winfield Jr., John Lee Cobbs, Lorenzo Lee Winfield, Taubari Olanyan Latson and Demetrius Marcus Williams.
In stomach-turning detail, witnesses related the terrifying particulars of callous shootings, beatings and witness intimidation. A quartet of witnesses attested to having been intimidated. Three spectators were banished from the federal court house for gestures considered menacing to witnesses and police.
One of the witnesses survived six bullet wounds. One of the defendants had shot him, in an attempt to kill him, after he had identified another defendant as the murderer of another young man. The FBI special agent in charge of the Norfolk office said the intimidation of witnesses was the worst he had seen in his 27 years in the agency. The situation - drug selling, witness intimidation - was so out of control that Portsmouth's police and courts could not cope with it; the feds took up the problem, to the relief of many.
We Americans are all too well-acquainted with stories of violence linked to drug trafficking - especially in connection with crack cocaine - from the coca fields and cocaine laboratories of Latin America to the mean streets of U.S. cities. No Hampton Roads city is untouched by drug-peddling devastation, but tiny, financially strapped Portsmouth appears to have suffered disproportionately.
May its most gruesome afflictions be behind it. Portsmouth residents in gratifying number are striving to make their city safer. Grass-roots cooperation with law enforcement and demolition of vacant housing and other buildings has put drug traffickers and other outlaws on the defensive in some crime-infested neighborhoods.
Neighbors united against crime and cooperating with police and prosecutors can tilt the odds against criminals and elevate their own and others' security. Gangsters cannot long operate open-air drug markets, such as the one that prospered in River Edge, when the law-abiding many conspire to defeat the lawless few.
Fortunately, such cooperation is spreading, in Hampton Roads and elsewhere in the United States, thanks primarily to community-based policing - a partnership between citizens and city halls. Lamentably, River Edge was a basket case beyond salvation. A leading objective of all municipal governments should be to mobilize civic resources to prevent any section of a city from becoming a haven for thugs. For any neighborhood victimized by thugs tarnishes the entire city. And no city needs that.
Perhaps the level of violence will drop dramatically in Portsmouth following the conviction of five young men charged with conspiracy to distribute crack cocaine and other offenses, including, in the case of two defendants, murder.
At least peace seems destined to fall upon the River Edge section of the city, a no man's land of neglected and boarded-up housing where the drug gang rode high: River Edge will be bulldozed to make way for middle-income and upper-middle-income housing around a man-made, city-owned lake.
That idyllic prospect contrasts sharply with the ugly outdoor drug bazaar described by witnesses in the eight-day U.S. District Court trial in Norfolk of Robert Lee Winfield Jr., John Lee Cobbs, Lorenzo Lee Winfield, Taubari Olanyan Latson and Demetrius Marcus Williams.
In stomach-turning testimony, witnesses related the terrifying particulars of callous shootings, beatings and witness intimidation. A quartet of witnesses attested to having been intimidated. Three spectators were banished from the federal court house for gestures considered menacing to witnesses and police.
One of the witnesses survived six bullet wounds. One of the defendants had shot him, in an attempt to kill him, after he had identified another defendant as the murderer of a third young man. The FBI special agent in charge of the Norfolk office said the intimidation of witnesses was the worst he had seen in his 27 years in the agency. The situation - drug selling, witness intimidation - was so out of control that Portsmouth's police and courts could not cope with it; the feds took up the problem, to the relief of many.
We Americans are all too well-acquainted with stories of violence linked to drug trafficking - especially in connection with crack cocaine - from the coca fields and cocaine laboratories of Latin America to the mean streets of U.S. cities. No Hampton Roads city is untouched by drug-peddling horrors, but financially strapped Portsmouth appears to have suffered disproportionately.
May its most gruesome afflictions be behind it. Portsmouth residents in gratifying number are striving to make their city safer. Grass-roots cooperation with law enforcement and demolition of vacant buildings put drug traffickers and other outlaws on the defensive in some crime-contaminated neighborhoods.
Neighbors united against crime and working with police and prosecutors can tilt the odds against criminals and elevate their own and others' security. Gangsters cannot long operate open-air drug markets, such as the one that prospered in River Edge, when the law-abiding many conspire to defeat the lawless few.
Fortunately, such cooperation is spreading, in Hampton Roads and elsewhere in the United States, thanks primarily to community-based policing - a partnership between citizens and city halls. Lamentably, River Edge was a basket case beyond salvation. A leading objective of all municipal governments should be to mobilize civic resources to prevent any portion of a city from becoming a haven for thugs. For a neighborhood in which criminality thrives tarnishes the entire city. And no city needs that. by CNB