LETTERS: TURN WEED AND SEED OVER TO A CHARITY

To the editor:

I read with great interest your opinion on the future of Weed and Seed. As usual, you got it all wrong again. The last thing the Department of Justice is going to do is give the Weed and Seed money to police departments, especially the police departments currently involved with Southeast Missouri Weed and Seed Inc.

The board of directors, who are the ones really in charge, includes one mayor, two city managers, two educators, three police chiefs and a Ph.

D. from Southeast Missouri State University. Of course, they now have two or three token minorities on this board who were seated after the suspension of funding. Considering the makeup of the board, I do not think Washington would entertain allowing the individual police departments to operate the program for one second.

Though on the surface Weed and Seed appears to be a crime-fighting program, Weed and Seed is actually a neighborhood improvement program that addresses the issue of crime and crime prevention. The program is Weed (police) and Seed (social change), and the parts are equally important initially. The only people who have benefited from Weed and Seed are the city police departments that have received thousands of dollars in equipment and supplies that are completely free. The weeding should be a means of cleaning up the area so that the residents can take back neighborhoods. However, the seeding component is what makes the long-term differences in improving the quality of life in the target communities. The one of many things missing from this Operation Weed and Seed is the community involvement. By community I mean businesses, social agencies, civic groups and target area residents. When all of these people come together, Weed and Seed operations work. The community has a vested interest in making the community better because they live and work in the target areas.

The community should rally together and demand that the program be turned over to a well-established community charity, one that has experience in administering government funds and has earned the trust of the citizens.

SOPHIA M. MATTHEWS

Cape Girardeau