Violent Crime Spike Raises Complicated Questions

A rash of violent crime in Manatee County, including the high-profile Labor Day slaying of two young brothers working in their father’s convenience store, has a shaken community asking what can be done to increase public safety. Unfortunately, that’s a complicated question with few easy answers.

Khasem and Faares Yousef were working at Snappy's, a store their family owns in Palmetto, on Monday afternoon when investigators say an ex-con named Devon Chandler walked into the store and shot both of them in the head before taking the cash in the register and some cigarettes.

The Yousefs are a respected family known for their involvement with their church and local charities. The boys–23 and 17 years old, respectively–usually didn’t work at their father’s store, but were pitching in to give employees off for the holiday. By all accounts, they were good kids who would have been productive members of our community. Instead, they are gone from this world and their family will never be the same.

Chandler was released from prison in September of 2011 after serving less than two years of a three-year sentence for attempting to rob a 7-11 in Bradenton. That attempt was foiled by an employee who came out of the back of the store and aided his coworker behind the counter while the robbery was in progress. The employees wrestled with Chandler until police arrived and arrested him. Perhaps that failure was what led him to execute the Yousef brothers rather than taking any chances sticking them up in a more traditional fashion.

Chandler was picked up by U.S. Marshals in Tampa on Tuesday and faces two counts of second-degree murder and one count of armed robbery with a firearm. He is being held without bail.

Two days earlier, there had been another afternoon shooting, this time in Bradenton, where police say 22 year-old Kelly McPherson shot and killed Keyvis McCullough in broad daylight while McCullough’s one year-old son stood by. McPherson is still at large. Like Chandler, he was on probation for a previous robbery when the crime occurred.

It was once the general consensus that violent crime in Manatee County was somewhat limited to certain troubled areas, and that if you were not buying or selling drugs your chances of becoming a victim were very small. In recent weeks, I’ve been hearing from more and more county residents who report that the recent rash of violent crime has them feeling increasingly uneasy that such is no longer the case.

When it comes to curbing violent crime, there is no easy answer. From the policing perspective, there is very little even the best resourced police force can do to prevent a violent crime someone is resigned to commit. For the most part, their job begins after the fact and the speedy apprehension of Mr. Chandler suggests a job well done.

From a crime prevention perspective, a greater police presence and an increased number of patrols usually has the best deterrent effect. Criminals are less likely to commit crimes in areas where police are seen or known to keep a concentrated presence, so obviously the more police that are on the street, the denser the patrols and the greater the deterrence. However, as Manatee County Sheriff Brad Steube noted while pleading with the county commission to increase funding to allow for more deputies, Manatee County has the worst law enforcement officer to citizen ratio in the area–with no plans by the county to invest in correcting it.

Other initiatives that can target high-crime areas also require the dedication of manpower, and if the number of officers do not increase in proportion to population growth and increased service areas caused by development sprawl, agencies are left struggling just to keep up with calls for service, never mind embarking on the sort of resource-intensive initiatives that might be more effective in deterring violent crime.

Then there’s the rest of the criminal justice system. Too often–including both of the cases mentioned–police officers do their job and get the violent criminal off of our streets, only to see them return in a very short period of time to commit more serious acts of violence. A criminal justice system that over-incentivizes plea bargains and other measures of streamlining an overburdened and underfunded process produce a pseudo efficiency at the expense of true efficacy.

Mandatory minimums have been largely lampooned as ineffective and expensive ways to overcrowd the prison system, while removing a judge’s ability to make common sense decisions when it comes to sentencing. But for every example of someone who’s been sent away for a very long time over what are sometimes petty and somewhat victimless crimes, there’s another story of a judge or prosecutor who goes easy on a violent criminal only to enable them to get back on the streets where they quickly commit a more egregious offense, often at the expense of someone else’s life.

Two aggravating factors in the quagmire seem to be the political nature of the system in which many judges and prosecutors are elected officials and therefore subject to all of the chicanery that goes along with getting and staying in office, along with a lack of financial resources committed to the solutions that experts suggest would be most effective.

I’m not sure how we would go about the daunting process of depoliticizing the criminal justice system, but when it comes to money, the first thing that always strikes me is the huge amount of resources spent on arresting, prosecuting and jailing non-violent, petty drug offenders. Of course the move toward prison privatization has created a monolithic special interest that is not inclined to support measures that shift the paradigm away from detention and toward treatment.

However, it would seem to me that most Americans would agree that if we only have enough money to focus serious resources on one or the other, an earnest emphasis on violent crime would trump non-violent drug offenders any day of the week.

Finally, there’s the community aspect of prevention, and I’m not just talking about a neighborhood watch. If citizens took a more active role in following the prosecution and parole/probation process of violent criminals, it would put more pressure on prosecutors and judges to ensure that such offenders are prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law and given the harshest sentences possible. There is a difference between a petty thief or drug user and someone who sticks a gun in the face of a fellow citizen and threatens their life in exchange for a small score, and the latter is whom we should be dedicated to protecting our law-abiding citizens from.