Residents of the Meadowview community turned out for Selbyville’s Oct. 6 council meeting with one thing on their mind: more police help with juvenile crime plaguing their neighborhood in recent weeks. It was the latest in ongoing complaints about the problem from residents throughout the town, as police struggle to keep up with a booming population of teenagers and apparent inability of some parents to keep their kids out of trouble.
Sparking this week’s complaints was the theft of a car from one Meadowview resident. It was not the first this year, nor likely to be the last. But residents said even their ongoing efforts to secure their properties had left them wanting more help from police.
“We’d like the police to patrol more,” one resident asked on Monday, “especially at night.”
“I know we need to be prudent about locking our cars,” she added – reiterating a recent refrain from Selbyville Police Chief W. Scott Collins, who has repeatedly pointed out that the thefts of vehicles and property from vehicles in the town have taken place when vehicles have been left unlocked and/or with the keys left inside, even running.
“But in the last month or so, our neighborhood has been plagued with problems,” she added, noting a recent incident in which several boys had rung her doorbell late at night and apparently repeatedly slammed their bodies up against the door, as if trying to break in.
Collins acknowledged that his officers may not be patrolling Meadowview as often as other parts of the community, owing to its dead-end design that means patrol cars generally cruise through less often than in other neighborhoods.
“We target the areas with problems,” he said, noting four particular areas of concern and adding a statement that would be repeated throughout the discussion of the problem this week: “If we chase them out of one spot, they just move to another.”
While acknowledging that his six full-time and three or four part-time officers have been struggling to keep up with the incidents, Collins also laid on residents a measure of responsibility for their own safety and security.
With two car thefts in the area in a 24-hour period last week — one in the evening and the other the following morning — Collins said no one had called in to report any suspicious activity to the police.
He said the problems in Meadowview of late have often involved juveniles cutting through the woods around the community from the neighboring Shady Grove community. Such was the case on the night of the car thefts, he said, with residents agreeing that they knew the juveniles had been in the woods that night and had previously complained to some of them about the noise they were making so late at night.
“They were seen by a neighbor,” Collins said of the suspects in the car thefts. “But no one ever called to report it. They were seen in the woods for more than an hour that evening.”
Other residents noted recent incidents in which their lights had been smashed, homes and properties toilet-papered and cars vandalized.
“We’re starting to feel unsafe,” another resident said.
“We never had a problem before, and now we do,” added a third.
Parental attitudes, justice system exacerbating problem
Mayor Clifton Murray expressed concern about the problem on Monday but said he felt the town’s police force has been doing their utmost to put a stop to it. The real issue, he said, is two-fold.
“Our officers have a handle on what’s going on and who it is,” he said. “But they’re juveniles, and when they’re picked up, they’re back home before our officers get back to the station.”
“We have a group of parents who don’t care,” he added, noting, as Collins has reported, that many of the juveniles the town’s police officers have picked up for criminal activity and curfew violations are repeat offenders.
While the afterschool hours are also a peak time for criminal activity according to Collins, Selbyville has a curfew for those 16 and younger. They’re supposed to be home by 11 p.m. Parents who don’t keep their children younger than 17 home after that hour are subject to a $25 fine.
But even that has made little difference in the ongoing problems with juvenile crime in the town.
“The parents couldn’t care less,” Collins said. “We get calls from them, complaining that we’re harassing the kids, because the kids don’t have anything to do.”
Arrests of juveniles are even more complicated than those of adults, Collins said, since officers have to try to track down their parents and “babysit” them until the parents arrive. When parents can’t be located, officers have to wait with the juveniles until a representative of the state’s youth services division arrives to take charge of them.
“In many cases, there’s a lack of a parent or guardian at all,” he said. “They have free rein until somebody else comes home.”
On top of that, Collins reiterated Murray’s statement about how quickly juveniles are released when they’re picked up by police.
“Juveniles are not incarcerated when they’re arrested,” he said. “We had one who had more than 100 arrests, and where is he now? He’s walking around.”
Collins said his officers often don’t even take juvenile offenders into custody on Saturday nights, “because they know it will take hours,” and with bars in the area closing at 1 a.m., officers know they will be needed to deal with bar patrons who may have had too much to drink and are either planning to drive while intoxicated or are ready for a fight. Between them and juveniles up to no good, Collins said 75 percent of the town’s criminal complaints happen between 5 p.m. and 5 a.m.
Councilman and Police Commissioner Jay Murray said Monday that he, too, had received complaints from parents that police are harassing juveniles. But he appeared as skeptical of those complaints as Collins and the mayor.
“The root of the problem is the parents,” emphasized Mayor Murray.
That left concerned residents wondering whether the town needs to approach state legislators for some help with the problem.
“These guys need something to make them pay attention,” Jay Murray said of the ability of police to get juveniles and their parents to take the issue seriously.
Mayor Murray noted that many of those who are a problem on the streets of Selbyville are also a problem in school. That’s another complicating issue for police, Collins said.
“Expelled students become a problem,” he emphasized. “We’d prefer they kept them in school.”
Collins said Monday that gang-related activity does not appear to be a significant problem in the town. While a few members of the Latin Kings gang do appear to reside in and near the town, he said, and some others claim to be members of the Bloods gang, the town has not seen the presence of the increasingly notorious MS-13.
Beyond the thefts and vandalism reported that appear to primarily be related to juvenile activity, Collins said the town has been looking at many incidents of “tagging” by youths associated specifically with skateboard culture, including a recent incident behind the downtown Dollar General Store.
Collins said most of the town’s private property owners have banned skateboarding on their properties due to past damage from the activity. It is also banned on town streets and sidewalks. But he noted that police had taken to searching the online video Web site YouTube for video evidence of incidents involving local youth, since they sometimes post their exploits on the site.
Police overtaxed in growing town
Collins also acknowledged Monday a simple reality of policing the town in 2008 – it has increased in size in recent years from 1.5 miles of incorporated area, primarily along Route 113, to more than 10 square miles as the town has continued to annex surrounding properties.
“Selbyville’s a lot bigger than it used to be,” he emphasized.
“If you call in, we’re going to come,” he assured residents. “But are we going to get there as fast as we used to? No.”
Related demands on officers’ time are also compounding the problem, Collins said.
“If we make an arrest, the officers are tied up for hours,” he noted, saying officers consider it a good day when they can make an arrest and have completed the associated paperwork, court time and travel in less than two hours. Their goal for arrests, under such a heavy demand for their time, he said, is “turn and burn.”
That time pressure sometimes means that those making criminal complaints aren’t contacted afterward by officers, who instead are pursuing suspects and conducting activities related to arrests. Sometimes, Collins said, officers responding aren’t even given the name of the person making the complaint — just the complaint information itself.
Despite how his police force has struggled with the problem of juvenile crime, Collins said it hadn’t come as a surprise.
“We knew two years ago it was coming,” he said, based on the state’s population curve.
“All of us grew up here,” Mayor Murray said of himself and his fellow council members. “We’ve seen the kids on the streets. That’s what’s changed.”
“Their job is changing,” said Jay Murray of his police officers. “They have to adapt. We’re trying to increase the number of police, but when they make an arrest the paperwork takes the rest of the night.”
Selbyville spends about $67,000 to hire a police recruit, with pay and benefits, and get him through training and on the streets as a patrol officer — a process that takes six to nine months. The town’s latest recruits might be patrolling on their own in June or July of 2009, Collins said.
Turnover in the department isn’t at an abnormally high rate, Collins noted, with four of six full-time officers having been there for at least 10 years. But those other two are recent replacements, and another officer is out until at least mid-November after being injured recently.
The department has made more than 400 criminal arrests so far this year.
Collins also noted the addition of Intoxilizer and videophone equipment at the Selbyville police station – an addition he said was specifically designed to draw Delaware State Police troopers to the town, since they can use the equipment to process the suspects they arrest without having to go back to DSP barracks.
The hope, Collins said, is that the few state police officers who routinely patrol in that area of the county will spend more of their time in Selbyville — making their presence known and adding to the number of law enforcement officers keeping an eye on the town.
Citizens urged to stay aware
As his officers struggle to keep up with juvenile crime in Selbyville, Collins continues to ask citizens to be proactive.
“Of 120 cars that have been stolen or had things stolen from inside them this year, not one vehicle was broken into,” he emphasized, saying that issue is “not a rash of violent crime.”
Collins said that many of the homes in the town — particularly in the troubled areas — have no exterior lighting kept on at night. Garage doors are left wide open he said.
“If I was a thief, driving by at night, I could have myself a bunch of nice power tools right now,” he said with a note of wry humor.
Homes with no curtains on windows also offer temptation for would-be thieves, he noted, as does the common local practice of leaving cars and outbuildings unlocked.
“If people made a little investment in their own security,” he said, “it would make a big difference.”
Collins recommended home owners purchase exterior lights with motion detectors as an inexpensive way to help prevent the kinds of crime that residents have complained about in recent months.
The police chief also noted that he has been trying to get a police volunteer program and a neighborhood watch program organized in the town – with little response from residents thus far.
In nearby Ocean View, the Citizens Auxiliary Patrol uses a marked volunteer police vehicle to patrol areas of the town to augment regular police patrols. Volunteers, Collins said, can’t make formal arrests but serve more as extra eyes for police and a reminder to would-be criminals of all ages that people are watching.
Neighborhood watch information is currently available at town hall, Collins noted.
Residents asked Monday if they can detain suspected criminals themselves until police arrived. Collins told them they can do so, but he warned that they cannot hurt anyone in the process of detaining them or in order to keep them until police arrive.
Jay Murray’s advice to residents this week was simple.
“Lock your cars, and get on the phone if you see anything suspicious,” he said.
In addition to the 911 emergency number, Selbyville residents can call the department directly at 436-5085, where they’ll hear an automated prompt to differentiate between emergency and non-emergency calls. If no officer is at the police station when an emergency call comes in to that number, the call is automatically routed to the county’s emergency dispatch center, so police officers out on patrol can be notified.