The Times' Karl Fischer with a pair of articles in today's edition...
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Latest killing adds to tension on streets
RICHMOND: Impromptu shrines dot the Iron Triangle area, which has seen four slayings in the past 12 daysBy Karl Fischer
CONTRA COSTA TIMES
Mylar balloons tug at their power-pole moorings, marking where empty Hennessy bottles and religious candles prop up dirt-caked teddy bears, photos and love notes.
Visitors might expect a block party. But they would leave disappointed.
These impromptu street shrines signal mourning in Richmond's Iron Triangle neighborhood. And with four young men shot dead here in the past 12 days, it's hard to walk a block without seeing shiny balloons waft in the breeze.
"We've lost a lot of people," resident Georgina Davis said, surveying a street shrine near the corner of Fourth Street and Macdonald Avenue on Thursday, "but we're all still in the game."
A city maintenance crew this week painted over the graffiti testimonials to 33-year-old Reginald "Kool" Collier and to many others from here who died over the years, but they returned within an hour.
Police see a community stretched tight by fear and anger.
"The number of people who have been getting killed has created a lot of tension on the street," said Lt. Mark Gagan, whose policing district includes the Iron Triangle. "We have been really encouraged by how many people are cooperating and talking to us about what's going on.
"But others are taking matters into their own hands."
About 2:45 a.m. Thursday, neighbors near the corner of Sixth Street and Chanslor Avenue called police about gunfire, leading officers to the body of 26-year-old Jonathan Armstrong across the street from Lincoln Elementary School.
Detectives pursued leads in that case Thursday. Police released few details of their investigation, but did say that familiar patterns are emerging from their investigations of several recent shootings in the greater Richmond area: rivalry between neighborhood-based factions and retaliatory attacks.
"I'm not sure if there is a normal to go back to here. I'm afraid this pattern of violence has become all too normal in some of our neighborhoods," Police Chief Chris Magnus said. "I don't think our goal should be to get back to usual, because this has to change."
It began with a shooting in unincorporated North Richmond on Sept. 10 that killed 16-year-old Sean Melson. Less than an hour later, drive-by killers struck the Iron Triangle at the corner of Seventh Street and Pennsylvania Avenue, gunning down 19-year-old Thomas James Jr.
The neighborhood's second recent killing came the following afternoon, when 25-year-old Sedrick Mills was shot dead on the front porch of a house on Fifth Street after an argument. Police this week arrested his cousin, 25-year-old Demetrius Moore, who was charged with murder this week in Contra Costa Superior Court.
Nobody knows why drive-by gunmen killed Collier on Sept. 14.
"He never raised his voice to nobody," said Henry Oden, Collier's father-in-law. "He went down to the store to go pay his wife's phone bill and buy some junk food, potato chips or cookies or something, and he was coming back home to look at the television."
Collier leaves behind his wife of one year and a 4-month-old son, Oden said, and 12- and 8-year-old daughters from a previous relationship. He worked as a forklift operator at a Home Depot store in San Rafael.
On Fourth Street, folks mainly remembered Collier as a man from the neighborhood, down to the white fire hydrant he habitually used as a stoop.
"He had to be the most cool dude out here," said Anita "Nisa" Paul, who stopped her car near Collier's shrine to talk Thursday. "We have no idea what happened. He was just in the wrong place at the wrong time."
Reach Karl Fischer at 510-262-2728 or kfischer@cctimes.com.
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Residents, police work together
RICHMOND: Once-beleaguered unit now solves most homicidesBy Karl Fischer
CONTRA COSTA TIMES
Nobody talks.
Richmond police used to repeat that complaint often whenever violent crime surged on city streets. Officers get no help from the community in catching killers, the story goes, so the killers go free and kill again.
Whether true or not, the near-absence of that complaint from the investigations bureau this summer speaks volumes about the department's recent structural reorganization.
"All it takes is one arrest," said Lt. Shawn Pickett, bureau supervisor. "If someone comes forward and tells us, 'Yeah, I saw him shoot the guy,' and we go arrest that person and get him charged, it gives the whole neighborhood more confidence in us. That is really significant. People are now taking us seriously."
Last year, when the city set decade-high milestones for homicides and firearms assaults, the detective bureau also struggled. Police cleared only five of 40 homicide investigations with arrests or by other means.
While investigators would not discuss details of many active homicide investigations, several agreed that their success rate has improved during the first nine months of 2006, particularly after a department reorganization shifted many managers to new positions in June.
"The realignment of the Police Department, the new structure they have in place with officers taking ownership of where they are working, that is starting to work," said the Rev. Andre Shumake, one of the city's most prominent anti-violence activists.
Shumake credited police Chief Chris Magnus and Pickett with forging more and better relationships between the department and Richmond's flatland neighborhoods.
Detectives either have arrested suspects or soon plan to arrest suspects in about two-thirds of the 14 homicides committed in Richmond since Pickett joined the bureau, he said this week.
"I think it's leadership, just having confidence in the officers and giving them the tools and support they need to conduct investigations. That makes a big difference," Pickett said. "We were kind of set up for failure (this year), with such terrible close-out rate last year."
Detectives also benefit from better communication with the Contra Costa District Attorney's Office, which police say has proved more flexible about filing charges this year, and from changes in the patrol division.
New emphasis on patrol officers working the same beats daily and making social connections in the neighborhoods makes the department more accessible and better at keeping the confidence of residents, Shumake said.
The early returns, Pickett said, show in several recent shooting cases, where neighborhood residents either directed officers to the gunmen from the crime scene or supplied solid tips that put detectives on the right track soon afterward.
"When there's a street shooting, everyone in the neighborhood typically knows who did it ... and chances are (the suspects) have been acting the fool down there all their lives," Pickett said.
But residents who face stressful choices about sharing information -- do the right thing, or do the safe thing? -- need assurance that police will keep them safe if they step forward, not moralistic arguments.
To that end, Pickett says the department also has done a better job this year of using budgets for temporarily relocating informants, helping witnesses move out of unsafe neighborhoods and generally finding ways to make working with the police more comfortable and survivable.
City crime statistics do not yet show major improvement over past years. The annual homicide total reached 31 this week when department statisticians recorded the April 1 discovery of Kimberly Millen's body in south Richmond.
Richmond police had argued that the death should count toward Oakland's homicide total because they say Millen and Sophia Sciutto-Crepps were both killed in an Oakland apartment before their bodies were dumped in Richmond and San Francisco, respectively.
Though 31 killings are two more than what police had investigated at this time last year, Shumake said flatland residents are beginning to notice the improved service from police.
Moreover, they are responding.
"I think we are seeing the outrage over 14-, 15-, 16-year-old kids getting murdered in the streets," Shumake said. "We should be outraged about that. And now that we are outraged, the community is saying that enough is enough. We want our children to live."
Reach Karl Fischer at 510-262-2728 or kfischer@cctimes.com.
