CITY TO LAUNCH POLICING STRATEGY

Kiya Curry turns 21 today, but she feels there's little to celebrate.

She is unmarried, has three children -- ages 1, 2, and 3 -- and is without a job.

"I want to work, but I can't afford to," Curry said. "I hate being on welfare, but no one can pay me what I'm making by not working. Besides, no one will hire me. I don't have a (high school diploma).

"I don't want my children to grow up like I did," Curry added. "I want my kids to go to school and to graduate, if for no other reason than because their mama never did."

In the coming months, the Cape Girardeau Police Department hopes to help people like Curry and others in low-income areas of the city through a community policing project that begins today.

Officers Charlie Herbst and Ike Hammonds have been assigned the task of targeting the needs of the community, and then to draw up plans to combat the ills of Cape Girardeau neighborhoods.

The officers will work a flexible schedule and spend, "at least 40 hours a week in the service of the community," said Herbst.

"We want to tap into the community and what people are feeling," he said. "We want people to feel like they can turn to us with a problem and know that we will work to find a solution."

For the next couple of weeks, Herbst and Hammonds plan to meet with community and church leaders and public officials, and to go door to door to ask people what they expect of a community policing project.

A group of people in Indian Park Sunday afternoon, situated in east-central Cape Girardeau, were quick to identify what their community needs. Topping their agenda: Jobs, crime control, better housing and activities for their children other than walking the streets.

"We don't need to be sitting around the park like this," said Curry. "We need a place where we can go like a community center that has activities for all people, not just kids. We are sitting here in the park like this, and our kids are walking the streets, because we don't have anything better to do.

"It seems like every time we open something up down here, the police close it down," she added. "Maybe if they would be the ones to open it in the first place, they won't be so ready to close the doors."

Paulette Curry said that a lot of the children in lower-income sections of the community are talented, but lack opportunities to showcase their skills.

"If someone could open a community center down here -- not over in other sections of the city -- the kids could go somewhere and do things," she said. "There is so much talent in this community that is just being ignored. All they have left to do is to walk the streets."

Dartanyas Harris, 20, has a full-time job. He also is a member of a local musical group, which occupies much of his spare time.

"They need some sort of program where people can learn a skill or get their GED while someone watches their kids," he said. "If people are working, they are not out on the streets. They come home and they are tired and they eat, watch television and go to bed.

"Then the police won't be chasing people off the street in the middle of the night all the time," he said. "It's got to start with jobs."

But some area residents believe a police presence in the black community will solve nothing.

"Nobody trusts them (the police)," said a man who would identify himself only as Mr. X. "I go to work every day, and they treat me like I'm a drug dealer.

"We -- the police and us down here -- are from two different worlds," he said. "I know they are people too, and that they have a job to do, but there is a history of injustice that won't be healed with two cops coming down here to talk to us or to play ball with us."

Mr. X spoke of drug dealers on street corners, poor housing conditions, harassment and ethnic labeling of people in low income areas by police officers. And although Mr. X felt that he and people of his generation would not be swayed by a police presence, he had some hope for the children.

"Maybe the kids will end up making the difference," he said. "(The police) make a lot of us older folks nervous, but the young kids still respect them.

"If they can convince the kids to change things, then there's hope," he said. "Otherwise, they have no business being down here at all."

But Herbst believes that once a police presence is established in a non-threatening manner in the southeast sector of the city, the relationship that ensues will be mutually beneficial.

"A lot of people don't feel comfortable calling the police department," said Herbst. "If they knew an officer that they had seen on the streets, someone they felt they could talk to, then people might be more apt to tell us about a bunch of kids vandalizing cars, or a guy who is breaking into area houses.

"It goes both ways," he said. "We are there to help them, and, by residents helping us in turn, they are helping themselves."