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Editorial: Neighbors proven to be community’s best assets

Fri., Dec. 4, 2009

Community activist Cheryl Steele figures half the people who now live in Spokane’s West Central neighborhood would not recognize the names Rebecca West and Nicki Wood.

There’s been that much turnover in the residential area since 1991, when the whole city knew about the two girls, ages 12 and 11, who never returned from their candy-buying trip to the store. Nicki’s body was found under a pile of burning pine needles near Riverside State Park. Rebecca has never been found.

The tragedy galvanized the neighborhood, which already battled a reputation for crime and disorder. There were door-to-door surveys, cleanup drives, public meetings. Steele and others established Spokane’s first C.O.P.S. shop in a building donated by a West Central business owner. Overall, the response was so transforming that the community was invited less than five years later to send a delegation to Australia and tell the story to the international Community Development Society.

It was an inspiring success, but West Central has never fully shed its pejorative nickname – Felony Flats.

Last month, a West Central resident appealed to the Spokane City Council after a mail carrier was assaulted in broad daylight. Last Sunday evening, a 60-year-old man was severely beaten in an alley near Bridge and Nettleton. Theft, especially auto theft, is said to be prevalent.

If there’s a crime uptick, the troubled economy no doubt bears part of the blame. And some residents say having the Spokane city-county jail in their midst breeds criminal behavior. Others finger certain retail practices – specifically, selling beer by the can – for promoting disorder.

Whatever the causes, the question facing the West Central community is the same as it would be in any neighborhood: What’s the response?

Formal law enforcement attention is important, of course, but police can’t do it alone, especially when the municipal budget is as strained as it is. It will take the same resource it took 18 years ago: dedicated citizen engagement.

That includes everything from stepping out on the porch to remind foul-mouthed loiterers that there are children present to taking down license numbers of suspicious vehicles to volunteering in the neighborhood C.O.P.S. shop. C.O.P.S. Director Christy Hamilton says volunteers are desperately needed in the West Central substation. (Information is available at www.spokanecops.org or 509-835-4591.)

The notion that “getting involved” is a meaningful reaction to a problem as serious as violent crime is not as naïve is it sounds. West Central proved it following an earlier calamity. It can do so again.