State Attorney Angela Corey has a point. Some of the offenders who were recommended for post-conviction drug court might have been more likely to use their freedom to wreak mayhem than seriously work on curing their drug habit. She's also right about it being the state's duty to protect the public. Yet, it's disturbing that politics and personalities reverberating between Corey, Court Administrator Joe Stelma and Chief Circuit Judge Donald Moran may have conspired to deny drug offenders a chance to clean up their act through a post-conviction drug court - a dispute that led to it being shut down after court officials lost a $1.4 million grant to fund it. [continues 528 words]
It's easy to be inspired by Communities in Schools. For the past two decades, this organization has spearheaded initiatives to stop youths from being so weighed down by the baggage in their lives until they see school as part of that burden, instead of as an opportunity. It tries to do that through initiatives such as Team Up, which provides enrichment activities for students after school; Achievers for Life, which lends academic help to struggling sixth-graders; and Take Stock in Children, which provides scholarships and mentors to high school students. [continues 546 words]
A few weeks ago, a reader e-mailed me after reading a column I wrote about troubled youths. She told me that she was struggling to find a man to mentor her only child, a 16-year-old son. She said his father was more into drugs than his son, and that most of the agencies she had contacted could only offer him a place on their waiting lists. "I am a single parent and my son is spiraling down a dark tunnel," she wrote. "Do you have any suggestions of where I might be able to find a male mentor for my son?" [continues 665 words]
Time was, Leslie Wingard didn't watch the evening news. It was too depressing, she said. But Wingard, who teaches reading at Grand Park Alternative School - a center for students who have run afoul of school rules and society's laws - watches it now. And prays that no one on it looks familiar. "I've lost two students [to homicide] this year," said Wingard. "I asked myself: 'What could I have said? What could I have done?' "I used to never, ever watch the news. I felt it was incredibly morbid. But now, I watch it to make sure that none of my students are on it." [continues 595 words]
Ruth Davis says she isn't on drugs. But she was desperate. She's also a cautionary tale. According to a recent McClatchy News Service story, the Miami grandmother is sitting in a North Carolina jail. She's been there since December. That was when a state trooper nabbed her as she was transporting 33 pounds of marijuana to New York. He stopped Davis for speeding, but then noticed a strong odor as she rolled down her car window. Her answers to the trooper's questions about her travel plans didn't jibe. [continues 674 words]
Let me just say this up front: A lot of parents out there are messing up. There's no other conclusion to reach when you see kids like the ones who keep filling places like Mattie V. Rutherford Alternative Education Center. Last week the Times-Union featured a profile of Mattie V, one of three last-chance schools in Duval County for students who have busted the limits of incorrigibility. They've either been fighting in their home schools, disrespecting their teachers or breaking laws. [continues 657 words]
During a Jacksonville Journey session last week to weigh strategies for stemming the tide of juveniles flowing into the criminal justice system, one word kept coming up. That word was hopelessness. First it came from a minister, who talked about how he thought that his church's effort to get ex-offenders involved in construction work would become a model for showing youths how to use their skills to build gainful careers. Many young people in troubled communities, he said, don't see much hope for their lives beyond the realm of fast-food joints and incarceration. [continues 455 words]
Well, that didn't take long. Six months after being freed from prison, former drug kingpin Henry Manns is headed back to the big house. Seems he violated his probation by, among other things, taking a road trip to Texas without permission from his probation officer and associating with a convicted felon. He was also driving a car rented by a convicted drug dealer - which happened to have $118,000 inside. But long before Manns skirted the terms of his probation, I knew my chances of writing a different column about him - as Manns the redeemed vs. Manns the recidivist -were thread-thin. The last life he knew, after all, was one that revolved around his criminality and his drug-dealing; around his ability to make millions by making a mockery of a drug war that continues to rack up more casualties than victories. [continues 710 words]
It was a scene that has, sadly enough, been tolerated for too long by too many people. The other day, while I was sitting on my porch in Springfield chatting with a friend, two young black men strolled by, dragging saggy pants and sullenness. The fact that they were strapping and healthy, that it was the late morning, and that they obviously weren't dressed to go on somebody's job didn't faze me. I see it all the time. [continues 659 words]
One of the most enduring photos from the drug wars of the late 1980s was that of Henry Manns. Smiling, weighed down with gold chains and wads of cash, he looked like a guy who was pleased with himself; a black man who had grown obscenely rich by defying an economic system that many believe offer few legitimate channels for men like him to show off their acumen. But when it came to defying the justice system, Manns wasn't quite as lucky. [continues 661 words]
On this Memorial Day, I'd like to pause a moment to remember those who have lost their lives - or much of what's left of them - in a different sort of war. It's a war that's fueled by a lust for a foreign product other than oil; a product whose distribution has become one of the only sources of commerce and power for people in poor, predominantly black communities. It's a war that has packed prisons and desolated neighborhoods. A war which, after raging for three decades, has done little to curb people's appetite for the product. [continues 696 words]
Too bad Cam'ron couldn't have started with the apology instead of the sensationalism. A few weeks ago, the rapper told CNN's Anderson Cooper in an interview for 60 Minutes that he would never cooperate with the police on catching a criminal. He didn't do it two years ago when he was shot in both arms in front of his entourage. He told Cooper he wouldn't talk to the police even if his next-door neighbor was a serial killer. Said he'd just move. [continues 642 words]
Perhaps Gov. Charlie Crist was thinking of Harry T. Moore when he forced Florida to shake off its Jim Crow past by automatically restoring civil rights to all but the most violent felons who have served their sentences. Moore, a teacher and field secretary for the Florida NAACP, and his wife Harriette were killed in their beds Christmas night in 1951. Their home in Mims near Titusville was bombed - apparently in retaliation for his relentlessness in registering black voters and fighting for an end to the all-white primary, as well as his push to stop lynchings and other horrors and indignities that held a ghastly grip on black people's lives. [continues 620 words]
The story of how a Jacksonville lawyer helped free a Dallas man who had been condemned to life in prison for what essentially amounted to smoking a joint isn't just a tale of justice. Strains of redemption run through it, as well. Charlie Douglas, a personal injury attorney with Harrell & Harrell in Jacksonville, gave more weight to his conscience than his wallet when he took on the case of Tyrone Brown, who spent 17 years in prison after a judge used a positive marijuana test to turn an armed robbery conviction that netted $2 and no injuries into an excuse to confine him for life. [continues 653 words]
Last month, Isaac Singletary became the Kathryn Johnson of Jacksonville. Like Johnson, Singletary was in his 80s. Like Johnson, he had armed himself to keep drug dealers and other assorted bad guys away. And like Johnson, he wound up being killed by the good guys. Johnson's slaying at the hands of Atlanta undercover police last November happened when three officers, who were acting on what turned out to be a bad tip from an informant who told them drugs were being sold out of the 88-year-old woman's home, kicked in the door without announcing themselves. Frightened out of her wits, Johnson fired at them - and they shot back and killed her. [continues 596 words]
Call it the rural cocaine. Georgia's prisons are overflowing. And the inmates fueling the boom aren't those who committed their crimes while heeding the call of crack cocaine, but those who were heeding the call of another seductive substance -crystal methamphetamine. Crank. According to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, the Georgia Department of Corrections learned that some 250 to 300 people were being incarcerated each month on crank-related charges. That's five to six times the number of people who were being imprisoned on such charges five years ago. [continues 630 words]
Back in 1990, Jerry Cameron was mighty pleased with himself. That February, the Fernandina Beach police chief and his officers snagged 14 crack dealers during "Operation Habitual Offender." This time, he thought, things would be different because the persistent ones faced being put away. "These guys were actually laughing about getting arrested on past occasions," Cameron told the Times-Union then. "We've even had them say they would not quit selling drugs. But some drug dealers were still laughing. Soon, Cameron would see that drug trade was bigger than a few hustlers. [continues 623 words]
DreShawna Davis was a trooper. A healthy child who hadn't lived long enough to believe she wasn't supposed to thrive amid such unhealthy circumstances. Her mother was serving time in prison on a kidnapping conviction. Her grandmother was struggling to rear her in a neighborhood where random gunfire often creates a macabre symphony that sends children her age scrambling beneath the bed. Yet the plucky 8-year-old became one of the top readers at Lola Culver Elementary School; she read enough books to win herself a bicycle. [continues 719 words]
It would be easy enough to forget about guys like Nathan Variance. Problem is, our pocketbooks won't let us. Variance was recently featured in a Times-Union story about the struggles of elderly, former prisoners trying to cope with life in the communities that had to be protected from them decades earlier. Now 64, the habitual drug offender has spent most of those years behind bars. Meaning that now, he has to try to find a job with nothing but a rap sheet and incarceration on his resume. Taxpayers will have to pay thousands a year to subsidize his apartment, as well as food and medical needs. [continues 582 words]
Battling a weight problem has given Minerva Bryant some poignant insight into what substance abusers need to beat their habit. Patience. "I'm a lifetime member of Weight Watchers," said Bryant, who is vice president of clinical operations for River Region Human Services. "Every time I pick up weight, they welcome me with open arms. ... They know that it's a constant battle." Bryant said that's the same way it is for people who are struggling with drug and alcohol abuse. The difference though, she said, is that society isn't as generous when it comes to giving second and third chances to them as it is with people who are dealing with obesity, diabetes and other problems that are either brought on or exacerbated by lifestyle choices. [continues 372 words]
