HOUSE APPROVES CONTINUED FUNDING
FOR ANTI-GANG TASK FORCES OPERATING IN REGION

Washington, D.C. – Rep. Frank Wolf (R-10th) today announced that the annual appropriations bill that funds the Justice Department will continue to pay for the two anti-gang task forces operating across the northern part of the state.

Wolf said that the FY 2010 Commerce-Justice-Science Appropriations bill approved by the House on June 18 sets aside $3 million for the Northern Virginia Regional Gang Task Force and $1 million for the Northwest Regional Drug Task Force. Wolf, the top Republican on the committee, was instrumental in the creation the task forces and specifically requested the continued funding. The Senate has yet to take up its version of the annual spending bill.

“The task forces operating in our region have become a model for others around the country,” Wolf said. “The three-pronged strategy of suppression, education and prevention is proving to be successful, but now is not the time to let up on the gas.

“The coordination between local, state and federal law enforcement officials has been unprecedented as has the coordination between localities,” Wolf continued. “We must continue to press the issue. No one should live in fear of gangs.”

The Northern Virginia Regional Gang Task Force is made up of law enforcement officials from Fairfax, Loudoun, Prince William and Arlington counties, the cities of Alexandria, Manassas and Manassas Park and the towns of Leesburg and Herndon. The task force operating in the Valley is made up of law enforcement officials from Clarke, Frederick, Page, Shenandaoh and Warren counties and the city of Winchester. The State Police, FBI, ATF, DEA and U.S. Marshals Service are involved in both task forces.

I admit it has been a few months since I have been there, but I did take a tour this afternoon (July 7).
What I found was that the city’s aggressive pro-active enforcement of zoning laws and its pro-active encouragement of residents has been remarkably successful in eliminating to what Mr./Ms. Anonymous described.

I did find one significant instance of gang graffiti on Kirby Drive. Other than that one regrettable exception, the townhouse areas north of Liberia all the way from Portner to Sumner Lakes were free of graffiti, free of destroyed fences, free of trash in front yards, free of unkempt lawns. Many thanks to Kisha Sugonro (Neighborhood Services Coordinator) , the homeowners associations and the neighborhood watch groups and the individual citizens for taking pride in their neighborhood..

I don’t know what the future will bring, but at least things are a lot better now than they were in the past.

To some extent, and the degree to which this has happened isn’t entirely clear at this point, the changes also made it possible for the Chief of Police to discourage officers from using their discretion under 8 USC 1373 and questioning suspected illegal aliens about their legal status. While officers have the authority to question anyone about this whenever they feel it is warranted, the changes eliminated the mandatory provision that officers do so when probable cause exists. The statistics seem to indicate a reduction in the number of officers who did so, which suggests that departmental guidance was given to discourage officers from exercising their legal authority.

At the same time, a number of other factors came into play. It finally became clear that the hysterical rantings by Mexicans Without Borders about the county turning to race-based policing were entirely false, the economy tanked, and a significant number of illegal aliens self-deported. Those factors helped to decrease the number of illegal aliens who could have been caught, and made those who were here more accurately understand that this was a modest first step and not the insane unlawful enforcement measure that it was made out to be in the beginning by our opponents.

All of that resulted in a significant ratcheting-down of the excessive rhetoric, a leveling off of the number of illegal aliens caught, and to some extent a lessening of the impression that Prince William County was going to round up every illegal alien by any means possible in short order.

My belief is that most of all, once the overly emotional reaction the illegal alien lobby promoted was shown to be inaccurate, some illegals felt this wasn’t quite as dangerous a place as they had been lead to believe, and we’re getting more of them now than we did a year ago. We still have better enforcement than many neighboring jurisdictions, but any opportunity for illegal aliens to unlawfully reside here is going to be taken advantage of.

Also, with a better Chief of Police who would be interested in keeping the pressure up using their currently existing legal authority, this “it’s not as bad as we thought” garbage would disappear. Sheriff Joe doesn’t need legislation to do the right thing, and Chief Charlie Deane shouldn’t require this cattle-prodding to get his job done either. If he just used his existing authority as a law enforcement officer rather than play amateur diplomat, he could do more to discourage illegal immigration in the county than anyone else.

When you have a chief law enforcement officer trying to undermine the elected officials he answers to, no matter how hard you work it’s going to be tough.

The only way this entirely gets fixed is when the Federal Government starts getting serious about enforcing their laws. In the meantime, we applied a pretty effective band-aid. Not one that solved everything, but it really helped a lot.

Just two years ago, five of the nine murders in the county were at the hands of an illegal alien. So far in 2009, zero. For more, see http://vimeo.com/4499217

I have noticed the latino “good humor” carts are coming out - though driving by, I did not see any sort of license on the peddlers or the carts. Mostly Georgetown South.

I think that those carts are traveling the roads selling weapons, drugs, cans of spray paint and of course “meester you wanna meet my seester”.

What tools are you speaking of to assist zoning? Only tool I know is Chavez.

If you see one of these, keep a close eye on the residence for evidence of overcrowding and notify your local zoning enforcement officials. Soon there will be additional tools available to them that will make it easier for them to investigate and resolve residential overcrowding problems, and building up cases now will assist them once those tools become available.

I know this thread is a bit old, so I’m not expecting a response.

The only two flophouses completely cleaned up were the two across the street from me that went into foreclosure. The reason they went into foreclosure - their owners paid $350K for one and $365K for the other, and I doubt they could afford that. Unfortunately the one next to me was bought for much less than that, so it isn’t in as much danger of going into foreclosure.

I still say, Point of Woods as well as the city property along Stonewall Road down to Stonewall Park is a disgrace. You can find broken beer bottles, other trash, graffiti on the sidewalk, and so on if you walk down to the park from Point of Woods. There was plenty of graffiti around that stayed around for long periods of time. It’s nice to see Wellington gets cleaned up very fast though. My take on Point of Woods, it is going the way of Georgetown South unfortunately. Too bad, it used to be a nice neighborhood before it got trashed by boarding houses and people who just don’t seem to care about anyone else than themselves.

As for comments made about Point Of Woods HOA. I am sure the board cares about the flop houses, they live in the community just as you did. I bet that the flop houses received violation letters - they just don’t comply because they are not vested in the community and don’t care. You can’t force a “resident” to fix their property HOA’s can only fine them if they don’t.

Complaints to Point of Woods HOA were useless. Like someone in Wellington mentioned, they are more apt to go after someone for a minor defect on their house, but have no interest in flophouses. They rant about garbage being put out on non-garbage days, but my flophouse neighbors always had garbage out every day of the week. When you have 10+ people in a townhouse, I suppose there isn’t much room to store trash. Their garbage usually overflowed onto my property too by the time trash collection day came around.

Used to call city police to complain about the 24×7 noise from it, but after a few times I decided it wasn’t worth wasting the police time - as within hours of them leaving the noise (loud stereos at all hours of the day and night, people coming and going and arguing in the middle of the night, etc.) would just pick right back up again.

In any event, I hope the city is doing a better job at clearing up the flophouse problem, but I doubt it, based on my own experience of living next to one that was on and off occupied as one for more than 3 years.

Anyway, Mr. Way needs to take a walk through Point of Woods sometime. Then again I haven’t been there for awhile so maybe the situation has improved, but I doubt it. Also the sidewalk down to Stonewall Park used to be a disgrace - graffiti sprayed on it, garbage, broken glass, etc.

I hope Mr. Way is right about the graffiti being removed quicker. However, I have my doubts, but can’t verify since I moved out of Point of Woods in disgust over the situation there.

Emma,

Don’t fool yourself into “thinking” HOA’s can do a thing about flop houses. I live in Wellington and had a flop house behind me for years and still have two on my street.”

I wonder if you live on Strawflower, Anon? That’s the street I try to avoid because of the couple of homes which consistently have issues that have yet to be addressed/resolved by our apathetic HOA. Within the past week alone there were 17 people (some were kids) all clustered on the lawn. I will say, however, that it appears the broken windows have finally been replaced and there may now be actual drapes versus bed sheets hanging in the windows.

Prince William County is no better. The flop houses are without doubt returning. Noise has been a big problem; in particular loud car stereos at all times of the day and night. PWCPD (i.e., Chief Deane) has a policy of coming to the same location three times in the same day before they will do anything other than just speak to the offender. It’s nauseating to see the quality of life in my community deteriorate so badly as officers stop, approach these offenders, catch them in the act of violating County law, and do nothing.

In Fairfax, if noise can be heard outside your residence you are violating the law. Moreover, the police keep records of their visits. First visit – a warning. Second visit (regardless of whether it’s the same day or later) – a citation. Third visit (again regardless of whether it’s the same day or later) – arrested!

I posted in this thread last week asking that Wally Covington, the Supervisor who represents the PWC part of Wellington, and Chief Deane post here telling us what they plan to do. I see that Jonathan Way of the Manassas City Council has posted and Chief Skinner has spoken with Greg about this matter. Why are Wally and Charlie not to be heard from here? I guess the residents of Wellington are not big developers so Wally doesn’t care about us. How about a little concern from Charlie for the law-abiding citizens rather than worrying so much that the denizens of the flop houses might get upset if they are told they must obey the law also, or suffer real consequences if they don’t?

Manassas tries to take care of their citizens as does Fairfax County. Prince William does nothing. As evidenced by recent news items about OIT scandals, sexual harassment scandals, the Planning Office rolling out a red carpet for big developers, and all the rest of the crap going on here, we have an incredibly corrupt County government that has no interest in the quality of life of the citizens who work hard, pay their bills, contribute to the community and obey the law.

In its last election, Herndon threw out virtually every member of its Town Council because they were seen as unresponsive to the citizens. I hope the Prince William County Board of Supervisors sees Gerhart’s departure as an opportunity to clean house completely and implement a massive change in the way PWC does business, including cracking down on flop houses and illegal behavior. 2011 and a Prince William County Board of County Supervisors election is not that far away.

Many of them don’t pay their HOA dues either.