A drop in filed felony criminal cases in 2009 doesn’t tell the whole story about the crime rate or crime trends in Washington County, authorities say.
Most of the crimes in the county are committed by people who live outside the county, Washington County Sheriff J.W. Jankowski said.
“We are in a prime area between Austin and Houston,” Jankowski said. “In 2008, we picked up a guy involved with a lot of burglaries. He would come through Washington County, case the area, commit his crime and go back to Houston.
“We are just vulnerable with easy access.”
The best way to fight this is to be more aware of surroundings and don’t hesitate to call 911 if you see any thing suspicious, Jankowski said.
“We are starting a lot of neighborhood watches and anyone can contact Damon Wegner at the sheriff’s office for information on starting a program,” Jankowski said.
The caseload for the sheriff’s office went up to 962 cases for 2009 from 873 cases in 2008. These include felony and misdemeanor crimes. District courts handle the felony cases.
“A lot of this has to do with the economy,” Jankowski said. “People are struggling to make ends meet, and the drug pushers are making easy money and using juveniles to push their stuff.”
District Attorney William Parham agreed with Jankowski. He thinks the economy plays a big role in crime rates.
“The economy of the county and the country certainly does affect the crime rate,” Parham said. “But crime is also cyclical. Family violence goes up around January and February when the Christmas bills are due.”
Weather has a lot to do with rising or falling seasonal crime, Parham said.
If a holiday is over a long, hot weekend then more people will be pulled over for a DWI, he said.
“Right now, the economy is the big thing,” Parham said. “People losing jobs will do things they normally wouldn’t do.”
But over the past 10 years the trend shows felony crimes has increased, except for a few odd years.
The total number of crimes went up for 2001-03, 2005 and 2007-08. Parham said these upward trends have something to do with the economy, but also the district attorney’s office would process any case that came through the door.
“Sometimes cases are filed that shouldn’t be filed, or they were filed as felonies and not misdemeanors,” Parham said. “The District Attorney’s job is to look at every case individually to see if there is an offensive.
“We don’t charge high in hopes for pleading low. We charge for the crimes committed, not the ones that we have to reach for.”
Parham took office as district attorney of Washington and Burleson counties in January 2009. He was also the assistant district attorney for Washington County from 2000-04.
Washington County doesn’t have many violent offenders, Parham said. It does have its share, but the county isn’t overburdened with an exhorbitant violent crime rate, he said.
“The law enforcement we have here, like the Brenham Police Department and the sheriff’s department, is proactive and that helps us,” Parham said. “There are a lot of criminal cases made on basic traffic stops.”
Routine checks during traffic stops often find subject wanted on warrants, including in other counties.
“They are wisely proactive,” Parham said. “The officers are not out there writing a bunch of tickets.”
Probation rates may be another cause in crime rising, Parham said. When people are handed probation they are less afraid about going to prison, he said.
“This is sending the wrong message,” Parham said. “Why are we wasting time with people who won’t make probation? I don’t try to bargain with probation and if the crime is serious enough, I don’t offer it.
“They will have to get it from a judge or a jury because they are not getting it from me.”
But putting more people in prison is not going to bring down the crime rate, Parham said, if the district attorney’s office doesn’t go after the professional criminals who escape the system and continue to commit crimes.
He said helping parolees to go straight after they have served their time has a big impact on the overall crime rate.
“There are individual successes with adjusting back into society,” Parham said. “It can be done but it depends on the person.”
There are programs that help parolees, Jankowski said. The Texas Workforce Commission and temporary agencies try to find them a job, and the parole officers have the information the parolee needs to restart his life.
“But that means they have to get away from what sent them to prison in the first place,” Parham said. “They have very little chance of changing anything if they remain in the same place doing the same thing.
“If they get a soft sentence then they don’t get the message, but if they get a tougher sentence based on the crime then we are sending the message that if they commit a crime they will go to jail.”
Parham said he doesn’t mind sending criminals to jail, but he wants to make sure that he has the elements of the offense to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the person deserves prison time.
“The last thing I want to do is put an innocent person in prison,”
Source
Sunday, February 28, 2010
Monday, February 15, 2010
Excerpts from recent Illinois editorials
You may soon be hearing a lot more from your favorite drugmaker or bank about which political candidates it favors and why.
That's the upshot of a U.S. Supreme Court decision on Thursday. The court in a 5-4 ruling overturned a century of law and said that corporations enjoy freedom of speech, including the right to bankroll political speech through paid advertising.We understand the deep concern about this ruling. Bank of America and Pfizer have a lot more money than you do, and that means they can speak more loudly than you can at campaign time. A corporation with the will and the deep pockets could overwhelm a candidate it doesn't like with negative ads.
The bottom line, though: We're not afraid of information. We trust voters to sift through political messages, consider the source, and vote their best judgment.
It's not as though corporations don't already influence politics. They bankroll campaigns through political action committees, those though do have spending limits.
So what now? Will you start to see candidate endorsements on the back of Wheaties boxes? Probably not. But you probably will see more efforts by companies large and small to get their views and their candidate preferences across to voters. (Direct donations by companies to candidates' campaigns are still barred.) If Motorola thinks Pat Quinn shouldn't be governor because of his stance on, say, texting while driving, then you may hear about that.
We suspect this means that candidates will have less control of the message in their campaigns. They're going to have new competition. Those with long memories will recall when then-Sen. Chuck Percy had to contend with a California businessman who bankrolled ubiquitous ads in 1984 that compared Percy to a chameleon.
We suspect this also means there will be pressure to raise the caps on how much candidates themselves can raise and spend. Those caps should be raised, or abolished.
Some analysts predict a flood of corporate political spending, with companies creating slick spots or hogging the air to make their case. But don't be so sure about that. If anything, corporate influence may become more transparent than it is now. A company that pours money into a campaign to back one candidate or slap another candidate, or that steps out in public to offer its views on an incendiary issue at campaign time, risks a backlash. It could lose a lot of customers who disagree with its views.
Take note: What the Supreme Court on Thursday allowed corporations to do in federal elections, they have always been able to do in Illinois elections. Yet we have not seen corporations mount their own campaigns for or against state candidates here.
In a dissent, Justice John Paul Stevens said the majority decision "threatens to undermine the integrity of elected institutions across the nation." We'd like to think democracy is stronger than that.
Source
That's the upshot of a U.S. Supreme Court decision on Thursday. The court in a 5-4 ruling overturned a century of law and said that corporations enjoy freedom of speech, including the right to bankroll political speech through paid advertising.We understand the deep concern about this ruling. Bank of America and Pfizer have a lot more money than you do, and that means they can speak more loudly than you can at campaign time. A corporation with the will and the deep pockets could overwhelm a candidate it doesn't like with negative ads.
The bottom line, though: We're not afraid of information. We trust voters to sift through political messages, consider the source, and vote their best judgment.
It's not as though corporations don't already influence politics. They bankroll campaigns through political action committees, those though do have spending limits.
So what now? Will you start to see candidate endorsements on the back of Wheaties boxes? Probably not. But you probably will see more efforts by companies large and small to get their views and their candidate preferences across to voters. (Direct donations by companies to candidates' campaigns are still barred.) If Motorola thinks Pat Quinn shouldn't be governor because of his stance on, say, texting while driving, then you may hear about that.
We suspect this means that candidates will have less control of the message in their campaigns. They're going to have new competition. Those with long memories will recall when then-Sen. Chuck Percy had to contend with a California businessman who bankrolled ubiquitous ads in 1984 that compared Percy to a chameleon.
We suspect this also means there will be pressure to raise the caps on how much candidates themselves can raise and spend. Those caps should be raised, or abolished.
Some analysts predict a flood of corporate political spending, with companies creating slick spots or hogging the air to make their case. But don't be so sure about that. If anything, corporate influence may become more transparent than it is now. A company that pours money into a campaign to back one candidate or slap another candidate, or that steps out in public to offer its views on an incendiary issue at campaign time, risks a backlash. It could lose a lot of customers who disagree with its views.
Take note: What the Supreme Court on Thursday allowed corporations to do in federal elections, they have always been able to do in Illinois elections. Yet we have not seen corporations mount their own campaigns for or against state candidates here.
In a dissent, Justice John Paul Stevens said the majority decision "threatens to undermine the integrity of elected institutions across the nation." We'd like to think democracy is stronger than that.
Source
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