David L. Anderson represents the 4th District on Dover City Council.
I am extremely concerned about Dwayne Bensing’s candidacy for state attorney general. The Aug. 24 Daily State News article outlining the positions of the three candidates continued a pattern from his announcement. He never mentions public safety, crime or victims; instead, he touts his advocacy for criminals. He is running for the wrong office.
The state of Delaware needs to deal with quality-of-life crimes. There are homes for sale being taken over and used for drugs; trespassers setting up on private property and not being removed for five days; people literally dying from overdoses because we won’t pursue mandatory commitment of people who literally had to be revived from near-death; and loitering and aggressive panhandling. Violent crime is down from three years ago because more of a focus has been put on it, but even that progress is at risk. The streets are being overrun, and crimes are dismissed by the hundreds in Kent County. We need more resources to prosecute. For 20 years, New York City proved that, if you want to have a safe and livable city, you do not tolerate either violence or quality-of-life crimes. Crime begets crime. The people who commit violent crimes regularly have no regard for lesser laws. If you clean up the neighborhoods, you catch the violent criminals and send a message that, if you commit crimes, you will be caught. In a recent quality-of-life report, 88% of “lower-level” charges were just dropped. It was not because of lack of evidence, but it was a lack of interest from the Department of Justice. We don’t have the staff to pursue them, they claimed. We offered to support two new prosecutors for Kent, which Sen. Trey Paradee, D-Dover, was also championing. I asked if they would then pursue some of these crimes; the answer was probably not. That is a policy problem.
I do not want to go from bad to terrifyingly worse. Mr. Bensing wants to divert resources from keeping us safe to fight corporate greed. It is not corporations flooding our streets with fentanyl and killing hundreds of Delawareans a year. It is not corporations shooting our youth. It is not corporations defecating in our yards and in front of our businesses. It is not corporations threatening jobs by shoplifting at a level that leads to places closing. Prosecute corporate criminals but prosecute the guy robbing Grandmom, too.
We need a five-prong approach to crime. First is accountability. We need to enforce the laws in a fashion that demands accountable behavior and retrains and rehabilitates first-time offenders and ex-offenders. If you keep people from being repeat offenders, you lower crime. If people refuse to take opportunities to have a second chance, they need to be removed from our streets. Second, we need to support technology with proper rules and to multiply the efforts of our police. We need to be more supportive of law enforcement in general and stop making the job next to impossible. The faster crimes are cleared, the fewer crimes are committed by the same people in the interim. Third, we need to strengthen the community. Strong families, mentorships, workforce development and economic opportunity are vital. Simple truth: People doing good things are not doing bad things. Fourth, we need justice to be expeditious and certain. When people can break laws without consequences, people break laws. The certainty of enforcement is even more important than the severity of the penalty. That is basic psychology. Finally, we need to deal with mental health and substance abuse. We need to stop acting as if it is a legitimate choice to destroy families, communities and lives. Eighty percent of our crimes have some nexus in these issues. Enabling them by giving away drug paraphernalia; allowing organized collection stations at every major corner, prostitution all over our streets and aggressive panhandling at every busy business; and not prosecuting car break-ins, shoplifting and break-ins of unoccupied buildings just makes it worse. We should be expanding drug courts, having more mental health evaluations of justice-involved people and getting them the help they need, and requiring people incarcerated to deal with underlying issues, while retraining them for the job market.
That is what I would like to hear from the next attorney general. The last thing I want to hear is that he or she will empty the prisons and make our lives miserable. If you are voting in the Democratic primary Sept. 15, I beg you, for the sake of all of us, choose one of the two candidates who actually believe crime is bad and hurts people.
Reader reactions, pro or con, are welcomed at civiltalk@iniusa.org.
