About 75 Charleston residents, city officials and police officers attended a special town hall forum on Tuesday to discuss ways to enhance safety and a sense of community on the West Side.
The forum, hosted by the Charleston Police Department, Charleston Main Streets and City Council members at Stonewall Jackson Middle School, addressed questions and concerns from the public in light of three shooting homicides on the West Side between Dec. 27 and Jan. 1.
Charleston Main Streets is taking a proactive approach to build stronger neighborhoods on the West Side primarily through heightened communication.
Executive Director Ric Cavender said Charleston Main Streets is compiling an email list serve for West Side residents and business owners to share information about incidents in their neighborhoods. The East End has had its own list serve for years, Cavender said, which has "opened up lines of communication that maybe didn't exist before."
"It allows us to be aware if there's a break-in in the neighborhood," he said.
The organization is also working to develop a map of the West Side that divides it into micro-districts to better identify its neighborhoods. But that effort, Cavender said, must be led through recruiting "district captains" for different neighborhoods to help finalize such a map. The West Side's landmass makes up more than one-third of the city.
"How can we better identify different areas of the West Side to educate people and create a sense of communities throughout these neighborhoods?" Cavender said.
Charleston police Chief Brent Webster and chief of detectives Lt. Steve Cooper answered multiple questions posed by residents, such as the possibility of establishing an outpost on the West Side.
"Traditionally, outposts have failed," Webster said. "The officers working those areas of town are usually out on the street.
"Police have always been designed to be short-term solutions to long-term problems."
Some expressed frustration over a lack of police action toward drug dealers on their streets.
"When you see your street turning into an open-air drug market at 12 [o'clock] in the afternoon, you realize that stable street is about to become very unstable," one woman said, who has reported a suspected drug dealer on her block to the police multiple times to no avail.
Sometimes, Webster said, there's just not enough hard evidence to charge such suspects with a crime.
Sgt. Paul Perdue said several neighborhood watch groups have sprung up during the first two weeks of 2016. A year and a half ago, he said, there was only one such group on the West Side.
"Police can't start a neighborhood watch," Perdue said. "It has to start within a community; our role is as a liaison."
While unemployment and blighted buildings are often blamed for the higher crime rate on the West Side, some argued that it takes more than jobs and tearing down vacant buildings to heal a community.
"I come to these meetings and I'm hearing all about businesses, businesses, businesses," said Deanna McKinney, a West Side resident and the mother of 18-year-old Tymel McKinney, who was shot and killed in 2014 while sitting on his porch. "How will that help these kids? Their parents aren't parents to them, they have no one to guide them, so they turn to the streets."
All three victims of the recent shootings, she noted, were under 21.
Jeff Sikorovsky, marketing director at HospiceCare on the West Side, pleaded with City Council to focus on building more resources that benefit its residents directly.
"Someone said earlier that if we add jobs, people will live [on the West Side]," he said. "People don't want to live here; they want to live on the East End, where there's a ball park, the Clay Center, the Capitol, the Roosevelt Center and hospitals."
Reach Elaina Sauber at elaina.sauber@wvgazettemail.com, 304-348-3051 or follow @ElainaSauber on Twitter.