Public Safety

This week, Crawford: 20/20 Vision is focusing on public safety – including drug related issues. Throughout the course of our eight general community meetings, we surveyed and listened to the thoughts and opinions of community members concerning the state of Crawford County’s public safety.

Here’s a sample of what they had to say:

-“I can hardly find anyone to pass a drug test”

-“No one wants to talk about the excessive heroin use”

-“Heroin use is underreported”

-“Law enforcement needs more funding”

-“There’s a culture of drugs, we need increased money for patrolling”

-“We need Crime Watch”

-“Drugs are related to bad economic times”

-“There’s a lot of theft due to drug use”

-“We have a lot of agencies ready, willing, and able to help”

-“We need more drug awareness education”

Key themes during the community meetings reflected the emotions and perspectives listed above.

Themes included: issues with employee drug use (citing specifically second and third shift), drug use in schools, the connection between drugs, crime and the economy, county budget impacting criminal justice services, hard drug usage and high mortality rates, duplication of services, a need for better support from the judicial system, and a general consensus of the issue of drug and alcohol abuse in the county.

Although many comments during our first eight meetings focused on problem identification, a number of community members voiced that they feel safe in Crawford County and that they appreciate the relatively low crime rates.

As part of Crawford: 20/20 Vision’s “Public Safety Week,” we’ve developed a short online survey to allow as many community members as possible to give input and offer their own perspective (take the survey here).

The challenges are clear. Our focus has shifted from problem identification to solution building. We must now look to the future and collaboratively form a plan to combat drug use, crime and other issues in the county.

One anonymous survey responder said: “We can't bury our heads in the sand and ignore this topic. The drug use issue is part of the downward cycle. When quality jobs are available, families become important, good schooling is important, drug use should decline. We have to start some place.”