Northeast News
January 27, 2016

Dear editor:

I read your editorial on the NE CAN Center [published on Jan. 20, 2016] with great interest! It hit the nail on the head and drove it home. I was privileged to serve on the city-wide Community Policing Committee for 15 years. Much of that time, we focused on the then six CAN Centers located throughout the city. Northeast’s CAN Center was among the most effective.

Dennis Carroll, working closely with KCPD CAN officers, was a driving force, and Old Northeast Community Development Corporation (ONE) director Nancy Kwilas relied heavily on the Center to support and supplement ONE’s housing programs. I would venture to say that reviving the CAN Center would be an important supplement to the Independence Avenue CID’s very worthwhile security program and would, of course, include areas of the Historic Northeast not covered by the CID. CAN Centers target the underlying causes of disorder rather than the symptoms. That is the only way we will ever get a handle on crime. Although I have great respect for KCPD, nearly all their resources are devoted to responding to 911 calls. By definition, the 911 system responds to crimes after they have been committed. We will always need the 911 system, but good community policing could reduce the large and expensive volume of 911 calls and begin to find cures for the terrible disease of crime and violence.

People tend to forget just how good the NE CAN Center was, as they also forget that Old Northeast was one of the city’s best community development organizations until its unfortunate demise during then City Manager Wayne Cauthen’s counter-productive war on the City’s Housing Department.

Jim Rice,

Consultant and Admirer of the Historic Northeast