Quincy mayor announces crime commission

QUINCY - Mayor Jim Hemberry announced starting a commission on how to deal with crime issues in the city.

The commission was one of the suggestions the mayor brought up as ways the city's elected officials could deal with the city's problems with crime. The suggestions came after Quincy resident Tom Parrish questioned what actions the city was going to take.

Hemberry's first suggestion was to lobby the state Legislature to change guidelines for sentencing. People convicted of crimes are presently sentenced using guidelines set out in the state's Sentencing Reform Act. The law uses the type of crime and past criminal history to set a sentencing range.

"There's been some criticism of the judges in Grant County and I spoke with one of the judges and I think we're kind of giving them a little bit too much of the blame," Hemberry said. "There are a lot of state statutes that limit the kind of sentences that they can hand out."

Hemberry pointed out even if the judges could sentence criminals longer, the jail is overcrowded. He said the overcrowding causes the prosecutor's office to try to get a plea agreement or release them.

"What happens is they come back to Quincy, they didn't get in trouble the first time, so what are they going to do? They're going to reoffend," he said. "They're going to keep reoffending until they become one of the people who commit the violent crimes and do jail time. We need to stop that cycle."

To deal with the issue, Hemberry suggested the council's legislative committee becomes active and start speaking with the representatives about changing the laws.

"Obviously, just as the City of Quincy, we're not going to have a lot of impact on the Legislature in Olympia, but if we start out and we start looking at what we can do and we start networking with other cities in the county and in the state ... like I said, that we can do."

He also suggested holding an event where people can learn about how to be safe in their homes, inviting vendors of home security systems to come in and display their systems.

"We're not going to do away with crime. You might as well do whatever you can to protect yourself safely," Hemberry said. "So I think it would be worthwhile to look at that again."

He finished by announcing he would start a Mayor's Commission on Crime. The commission would include members from the police department, the fire district, the city council, the hospital district and the school district.

"Those are the entities that are affected the most. The schools, obviously, see the youth in our community the most," he said. "The fire district is certainly impacted by fires that are started with malicious intent and the hospital district is affected by the violence issues here in our city."

He also wants people from the business community, Hemberry said; adding it would be nice if they also were part of other organizations, such as the chamber, the Rotary Club and Kiwanis. 

"Then, what I would like to do is draw lines and section the city out into eight equal neighborhoods, if you will, and have one representative from each one of those neighborhoods," he said.

Hemberry wants the neighborhood representatives to be in charge of forming block watches in their areas. They would meet regularly with the block watch commanders.

"That way, if you look at this whole thing, then the block watch commanders meet with the people in their blocks that their responsible for," he said. "If you look at this plan, it involves every single person in the City of Quincy, which is what has to happen for anything to take place."

The structure allows information to flow from the commission to the residents and from the residents back to the commission, Hemberry said.

"It's going to take a while to get this all implemented, but I really think this what we need to do," he said.

Once the commission and block watches are in place, the city officials need to get other Grant County cities to form similar commissions, Hemberry said. The plan culminates in having a county-wide commission to deal with crime.

"If we do everything we can to try and reduce the crime in Quincy, that's nice, but we're not going to solve the problem if we just move it to Ephrata, or we move it to Moses Lake," he said. "It's still going to affect us."

Councilmember Scott Lybbert suggested one of the commission members be from a religious organization.

Hemberry said it was a good idea.