Pullman Not Exempt From Youth Crime Community Calls For Increased Vigilance Against Violence

It can happen here.

Rattled by an Oregon school shooting and a campus riot of their own, Pullman community members called for increased vigilance against juvenile crime Wednesday at a youth violence summit.

During the three-hour evening meeting, 60 civic leaders discussed increasing juvenile crime in Whitman County and traded hopes and fears about combating it.

The consequences of community action or inaction are debatable.

But everyone agreed on one point: This pastoral, progressive university town is not exempt from a disturbing national trend of escalating youth crime.

“There’s areas in this county that deputies have gone where angels would fear to tread,” Whitman County Sheriff Steve Tomson said.

Tomson said Whitman County is beginning to see an organized crime presence with the arrival of the “Mexican mafia,” and young skinheads. There are hate crimes and increasing methamphetamine problems.

WSU Public Safety Director Bill Mercier recalled two heroin overdoses at Washington State University last year and warned of increasing drug trafficking from the Spokane area.

“There are serious drugs and serious gangs in Spokane and this is a ripe market for those folks. It’s close and it’s a natural market with 17,500 potential customers.”

Pullman high school student Josh Dyer told the group how he was harassed and threatened after announcing to his classmates that he was gay.

“Pullman High School is a powder keg and denial is rampant here,” said Dyer’s mother, Julie Nielsen.

Gus Kravas, WSU vice provost for student affairs, explained how the university is stepping up efforts to change an alcohol culture that contributes to violence on campus.

“It’s not easily done top down,” Kravas said. “Our challenge is to get students to admit and own the fact that there is a problem on our campus.”

Split into small groups, Pullman residents discussed best- and worst-case scenarios of fighting violence or doing nothing.

Communities that tackle violence head on risk youth retaliation, loss of certain liberties, and unfair negative stigmatization of certain community groups.

But doing nothing inevitably will result in more violence and a different kind of lost freedom that comes with living in fear, group members said.

Comments and suggestions from the summit will be combined with those from other community meetings throughout Washington for a statewide summit in August.

Spearheaded by Gov. Gary Locke, the meetings are part of a community-based effort to improve student safety and prevent violence in the state.

“If we need to pass laws in Olympia we will do that,” Rep. Larry Sheahan, R-Spokane, said. “But I think we can do a lot right here in our own communities.”

ANOTHER SUMMIT A second Whitman County summit is scheduled for today at the Steptoe Grange Hall from 6-9 p.m.