We have a crisis of crime

You are five times more likely to be murdered in Clarksdale than in Chicago — and twenty-five times more likely than in New York City. What is wrong with this picture? Even more outrageous, the Clarksdale Police are three times less likely to find the killers in our city than the police in New York will find theirs. Not because our police don’t want to find the killers — they are just too overwhelmed by the problems they face and the lack of resources our mayor has given them.

The Clarksdale Police have been stripped of their capacity to stop crime and find the criminals. Our police force is almost 60% smaller than it was just 8 years ago. Our police department’s narcotics unit was abolished. Now fentanyl and meth are flooding our neighborhoods.

We need to: 

• hire more police officers

• go after the drug dealers and gangs

• re-investigate old homicides

• reinstate community policing

• establish treatment programs for addicts and shelters and programs for the victims of domestic abuse

• install comprehensive street lighting so that criminals cannot hide