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Hot line tackles Albany crimes

• Anonymous phone tipsters are helping investigators solve crime from within the community.

J.D. Sumner

ALBANY — The board members and law enforcement officers who run an anonymous tip line are encouraged by what some are calling a revival of a program that has helped clean the streets of crime in Albany over the last 20 years.

Albany Crimestoppers is a volunteer run branch of Crimestoppers International, a program designed to give the community a voice in stomping out crime while helping investigators close cases.

Michelle Oaks, the current chairperson of the crimestoppers board, said the program is still going strong after at least 20 years in the Albany area, and is hoping to expand the program to other agencies in the Metro Albany area.

“I think it’s a great program,” Oaks said. “Time after time we see that investigators are able to get leads in cases that they may not have otherwise received had an anonymous tip line not been there.”

Typically, Oaks and the board give out reward money to the successful tipsters who accurately give police information that leads to an arrest or conviction.

But lately, Oaks says that the program has been inundated by callers who have actually declined rewards, opting instead to just be good stewards of their neighborhoods.

“It’s a little unique in my experience,” Oaks said. “Recently we’ve had people who have just wanted to give information and have declined the money.”

The good Samaritans ease the burden on the Crimestoppers board, who has to raise funds each year in order to provide reward money.

Lt. James Williams, who oversees the operation of the police side of the Crimestopper’s program, said that the tips that come through that line are often vital to investigations for the department.

“Every tip that comes in isn’t a viable tip,” Williams said. “But many times there is good information that comes through that line.”

According to Williams, the process is simple.

When a person chooses to call the tip line, 436-TIPS (8477), it rings to a dedicated phone line set up in the investigative division at the Albany Police Department.

During the day from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m., a trained person will answer the phone, assign the caller an identification number and log the call into a book. The tipster is given their number and asked to call back within a certain number days to follow up on the tip. The tip is then forwarded to Williams who assigns it to an investigator who may be working that particular case.

If the tip proves to be good information and an arrest is made, Williams will then notify the crimestoppers board who will decide how much money to divvy out.

When the tipster calls back, they’re given instructions on when and how to receive their money.

Both Williams and Oaks say that the system is completely anonymous and that no personal information is used when collecting the tip.

Williams said that if a tip comes in after 5 p.m., its routed to an automatic voicemail system, that has instructions for the caller. That system is checked everyday.

Although the Albany Crimestoppers Program is currently limited for use solely by the Albany Police Department, Williams said that they’ve received tips from all over the country through the phone line.

“You’d be amazed at places we receive tips from,” Williams said. “We got a call yesterday from someone in Mississippi.”

Most recently, Williams received a tip from the crimestoppers line about a bank robbery that happened Thursday on Gillionville Road. And while the information from that particular call didn’t pan out, Williams said that it shows a willingness from the community to get involved in cleaning up the crime in Albany.

“It’s encouraging to see more people calling in when they think they may have information about a crime,” Williams said.

Oaks said that there are many reasons why someone with information about a crime would want to keep their personal details a secret, and that call-takers make no effort to obtain any clues to their identity. “If we can help cut crime by keeping people’s information a secret, then that’s what we’ll do,” Oaks said.

Williams said that in his experience, witnesses to crimes may decide not to come forward if the think they may have to testify in court or go on the record with their statements. Crimestoppers allows people to still give credible information that is verified by police, without having to make a trip to court.

“I’ve never seen a suspect target a witness, but that’s a concern for some people too,” Williams said. “For some crimes, some people may think that they could get hurt if they come forward publicly. This lets them give the information without fear of retribution.”

Organizers hope that more people will come forward when crimes happen and report their information, hopefully closing more cases.

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Young: You can do it

• A former ambassador and civil rights leader urges graduates at Albany State University to embrace cultural differences.

J.D. Sumner

ALBANY — Andrew Young has some unique ties to Albany.

The former congressman, mayor of Atlanta and U.S. ambassador to the United Nations once marched with the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., down the streets of the Good Life City when, frankly, life wasn’t so good for blacks.

Saturday morning, 46 years after coming to Albany as a civil rights activist, Young returned to Albany on a mission to once-again change the world, but this time it was more academic.

Speaking to Albany State University’s Spring 2007 graduating class, Young spoke of challenges and accomplishments; adversity and achievement; determination and success all through the lens of a life spent molding and shaping a hostile world.

A graduate of Howard University, Young opened his commencement address by telling the student body, which was composed of more than 250 jittery graduates, that in all of his life, the time when he was most scared, happened on his graduation day more than 50 years ago.

“When I was sitting where you now sit, I was more frightened than I ever was staring down the KKK,” Young said. “It scared the daylights out of me because I thought that I wasn’t prepared to face the world and the challenges in it.”

Young distinguished between an education and knowledge, and a lifetime spent dedicated to the latter, by telling the group that despite the accomplishment of the degrees the graduates attained Saturday, the true challenge lies in transferring the education learned at ASU into knowledge gained out in the world.

“You didn’t come here to learn everything,” Young said. “You came here to learn how to learn the things you need to know to start your life’s journey.”

Born in a small town in Alabama, Young encouraged the class to not get discouraged by what he called humble beginnings, instead, he asked them to embrace their cultural differences.

“Look at Jimmy Carter,” Young said. “He was born and raised in Plains, Ga. You can’t get any more country than that. Bill Clinton was born with humble beginnings in Hope, Ark. The political and corporate worlds are filled with leaders who started out in small towns who took that education they learned at home and used it to change the world. You can do the same thing.”

Young, who was speaking on the eve of his 75 birthday, also spoke of the new challenges facing the graduates after they leave ASU, including increased environmental issues and life- changing diseases and conditions associated with obesity and sedentary lifestyles.

Capping Young’s role in the ceremony was a presentation by ASU President Everette Freeman, who conferred the university’s first ever International Citizen of the Year Award to Young for his accomplishments throughout the world.

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Graduation is coach's goal

• Graduation coaches make strides in reaching the students who, academically, used to fall through the cracks.

Barbara Rivera Holmes

ALBANY — Although sophomore Shaire Johnson had considered dropping out of high school, it wasn’t because she couldn’t be bothered to keep up with her academics.

It was much simpler than that: Somewhere along the way, the 17-year-old had gotten behind, and, she said, just didn’t know how to get back on track.

“I failed fifth grade and started school late,” Shaire, a student at Westover Comprehensive High School, said Thursday. The teenage “drama” she faced at school didn’t help her situation.

“It got to the point where I couldn’t have a good day,” she said.

A special guidance program implemented last fall in Dougherty County’s four high schools has helped students such as Shaire turn their lives around.

“I was thinking about dropping out, but Mrs. (Cindy) Neal ended up helping out,” she said of her graduation coach at Westover.

GRADUATION COACHES

Neal, an exuberant woman whose sole mission for the academic year has been to get her students on the path to graduation, works in a crowded little room with a desktop cluttered high with papers.

That means everything from listening to students’ personal problems, acting as a surrogate mother, helping them with the graduation test, pointing them toward academic resources they didn’t know existed.

With Neal, “they know somebody cares about them,” she said.

“The graduation coaches give us another resource,” said Dianne Daniels, executive director of curriculum and instruction for the Dougherty County School System.

Under President Bush’s No Child Left Behind law, the second indicator of adequate yearly progress (AYP) for high schools is that graduation rates gradually increase.

“But it was a challenge all across Georgia,” Daniels said.

The Dougherty County School System’s 2005-06 graduation rate was 57.5 percent, according to data from the DCSS and Georgia Department of Education. Figures for previous years are similar: 2004-05, 57.6 percent; 2003-04, 58 percent; 2002-03, 54 percent.

As defined by the federal and state governments, graduates are students who complete graduation requirements in four years (including summer) and receive regular-education diplomas. Drop-outs include students who take more than four years to complete high school.

The coaches, Daniels said, “focus on students at-promise so that (they) have someone they can go to.”

Whereas school guidance counselors deal with 800-1,000 students, graduation coaches concentrate on 1 percent of the student population.

To graduate, students must have earned all their credits and passed the graduation test, the latter of which has proved to be an obstacle for some.

At Albany High School, Tyshiba Maxie said she’s helping her students “catch the vision.”

“As graduation coaches, we’re kind of like the enforcers and the support staff,” said Cynthia Levette, graduation coach at Dougherty Comprehensive High School.

Gloria King is the graduation coach at Monroe Comprehensive High School.

Some students in need are easy to find. Others, the coaches said, fall through the cracks.

“Now we can pull the research and the data and find those students,” said Levette of things including attendance records, failure reports and test scores. “From that we get kind of a total picture (about a student) and the warning bells go off.”

Many of their students, the coaches said, welcome help. They want to graduate.

“It’s not that they lack motivation,” said Levette, dismissing the perception some have of at-risk students. “It’s that they don’t know how. A lot of them feel like they’ve already failed and they don’t know how to get out.”

PATH TO HIGHER GROUND

On Thursday morning, Shaire burst into Neal’s office to tell her she’d passed the test needed to enroll at the Performance Learning Center, a branch of the South Georgia Regional Achievement Center, where students can earn four more credits per year than are available at the high schools.

By taking classes there, and if she keeps up with her studies, Shaire will be able to graduate with her class in May 2008.

“She’d tell me I needed to stay focused,” Shaire said of Neal. “She knew that I could do it.”

Before, Shaire said she was “hesitant about the future.” Now the gleam in her brown eyes reveals a palpable faith in everything that is before her, be that college or the military, she said.

E’Laina Pettigrew’s predicament was similar to Shaire’s. E’Laina couldn’t see beyond the “now,” beyond her slipping grades and lack of credits.

“I thought I’d just drop out and get my GED (General Education Development certificate),” said E’Laina, whose older brother dropped out of high school. “I just thought that I couldn’t do it (graduate), and I was behind a grade.”

Much to her surprise, she said, the credit recovery opportunities and academic resources available to her “are working out better than I thought.”

Now she gets extra help from her teachers and takes an after-school class. She’ll also take classes in summer school.

“I think that I can do it,” she said of completing high school. “I can excel to the next level of my life and grow and be successful.”

She said her foster mother is proud of her accomplishments and supportive of initiatives that will get her to graduation.

And now, E’Laina said, she feels she can be a positive role model for her 15-year-old sister. Had she given up, E’Laina said her sister may have done the same thing.

But dropping out of school wasn’t an option for Dougherty High seniors Rico Wilson, Alysse Covin, LaToya Reddick and Kiiursti Brown. Their struggles were with the graduation test, they said.

“I wouldn’t (have been) able to walk if I didn’t pass,” said Wilson, 18, who passed the test on his final try. “My grades are really on track.”

Wilson wants to be a veterinarian, and this fall, he said, he’s off to Abraham Baldwin College in Tifton.

Reddick, also 18, was getting extra help at school and at church, she said. But it was a test-prep course she took that helped her “remember everything (the teacher) taught.”

“LaToya studied more individually than any other student I helped,” said Levette.

“When we got those results, we danced and celebrated and shouted,” said the proud coach.

Brown, however, didn’t pass, and so she won’t partake in the commencement exercise with her peers in May.

Still, she’s not giving up. This summer she’ll take a tutorial before giving the test another shot. She expects to walk during summer graduation, she said.

“All we can do is keep trying,” said Brown, an 18-year- old senior with maturity and a calm, positive disposition.

“Some students left after they found out they wouldn’t walk on time,” she said. “But it’s been a long journey. I’ve worked too hard to get where I am. (To drop out) would be a waste of time.”

The Dougherty High students not only received support from their teachers and counselors — the catchy “do your best on the test” cheer is a favorite at DCHS — but from their classmates as well.

“It’s a hurting feeling to find out you’re not graduating (in May),” Brown said. “I came back to school and all the seniors were in the gym and gave me a hug. ... All of them came together, and it made you realize that your fellow seniors are behind you.”

Though their administrators are often criticized for this and that — the drop-out rate is too high or the graduation rate is too low — the students said the school system has their backs.

“Students don’t always get along with teachers, but they (teachers) are doing the best they can,” Brown said.

“Dr. (Sally) Whatley, everybody, they all work as a team,” she said of the superintendent and her staff.

“I appreciate everybody that has had an effect on me being in high school.”

Though data to gauge the success of the coaches won’t be available until the end of the school year, Levette knows she and her graduation colleagues have made a difference.

“The program is effective,” she said, “when we reach the kids that would normally be unreachable.”

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GOP to prioritize 2008 tax reform

• Georgia Republicans are gearing up for 2008 with a framework for state tax reforms.

Dave Williams

ATLANTA – After several years of talking but not acting on tax reform, legislative Republicans are promising to make overhauling Georgia's complex tax code their priority.

Last month, on the next-to-last day of this year's General Assembly session, House GOP leaders rolled out a massive reform measure for the chamber's tax-writing committee to review this summer and fall.

"We wanted to have a least a framework for the Ways and Means Committee to work on," said House Majority Leader Jerry Keen, R-St. Simons Island.

But putting pen to paper eight months before the start of the 2008 session also gives opponents a target on which to focus their aim and plenty of time to muster their forces.

Judging from reactions to the proposal last week, critics are likely to focus on a provision doing away with property taxes.

That alone promises to have city, county and local school officials lining up to fight the legislation.

"Property taxes are the No.-1 local revenue source," said Burt Waisanen, a fiscal analyst with the National Conference of State Legislatures.

"It's hard to knock it out."

Besides eliminating state and local property taxes, the measure would do away with Georgia's tax on motor fuels, estates, stock transfers and insurance premiums.

Businesses no longer would have to pay unemployment or workers' compensation taxes.

Instead, Georgians would pay a flat income tax and a "business value-added" – or sales tax – of 5.75 percent each.

Keen said the legislation, which is in the form of constitutional amendment subject to voter approval, meets the basic criteria for tax reform that Republicans have been considering since the GOP captured complete control of the legislature in 2004.

"It's fair, flat and easy to understand," he said. "Our existing tax code is not."

Former legislative budget analyst Allan Essig, who has been a frequent critic of Republican-backed tax proposals, gives House GOP leaders credit this time for taking a bold, innovative approach.

For one thing, Georgia would become the first state in the nation to do away with property taxes if the legislation becomes law.

"I'm not sure if it's good, bad or indifferent at this point," said Essig, executive director of the Georgia Budget and policy Institute. "(But) it is definitely thinking outside the box."

While Essig hasn't reached any firm conclusions on the proposal at this early juncture, he said doing away with property taxes would contradict generally accepted tax policy.

"Most economists and bonding agencies consider an ideal tax system has three legs, property, sales and income," he said. "When you start to take away one leg, it has problems."

The provision eliminating property taxes also has caught the attention of advocates for local governments and school systems.

Don Rooks, legislative director the for the Georgia School Boards Association, said losing their taxing authority would leave school systems totally dependent on the state for money.

"We would be way down the food chain us waiting for what the state deigns to provide us," he said. "You could forget any innovative programs local systems wanted to implement."

Amy Henderson, spokeswoman for the Georgia Municipal Association, said losing the ability to raise revenue locally would hurt especially during economic slowdowns.

"When the state gets in tough financial times, it pays its bills, but the local governments get their hands tied," she said.

But Keen said the legislation would leave school systems with some ability to raise tax money. It would allow local elected officials to approve taxes in addition to their allocation from the state, subject to a voter referendum in their communities, he said.

"There is nothing in (the legislation) or in our intent to harm or reduce the funding for schools or local governments," Keen said. "Let's put away the scare tactics and come up with a tax code that's predictable, sustainable and more fair than what we have now."

Democrats say it's no coincidence that Republicans are planning a push to eliminate property taxes during an election year.

"Property taxes are probably the most unpopular tax in Georgia," said Rep. Jeannette Jamieson, D-Toccoa, an accountant and member of the House Ways and Means Committee. "Once people get their children an grandchildren out of school, they don't see any reason why they should continue to pay school taxes."

But Keen said Republican leaders decided to hold off on tax reform until next year to give the Ways and Means panel enough time for a thorough review of the measure.

"It's a major piece of legislation," he said. "We believe they'll vet out the various aspects and improve it where it needs improving."

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Gas boycott not a real fix

• An Albany economist says a short-term gas boycott could temporarily raise gas prices instead of lowering them.

Joshua Brown

ALBANY — An e-mail calling for a gas boycott to supposedly lower gas prices is making its rounds again as gas prices near the $3 mark.

But an Albany economist says that, if anything, such a boycott would actually have the opposite effect, probably raising prices at least temporarily.

“First of all, simply, it’s just not a good idea,” said Amit Singh, an economics professor at Darton College. “If I know I cannot buy gas tomorrow what am I going to do? I’m going to fill up today.

“In the short-term, prices would go up because demand is rising.”

The version of the e-mail received by an Albany Herald reporter said, “There are 73,000,000-plus American members currently on the Internet network, and the average car takes about 30 to 50 dollars to fill up.

“If all users did not go to the pump on the 15th, it would take $2,292,000,000.00 (that’s almost 3 BILLION) out of the oil companys pockets for just one day, so please do not go to the gas station on May 15th and let’s try to put a dent in the Middle Eastern oil industry for at least one day.”

Details of the message vary slightly, depending on where an Internet user finds it. Numbers and predictions vary from message to message.

On the Internet networking site Facebook.com, users have started groups to encourage — and counter groups to discourage — participation in the May 15 gas boycott. Most of the messages say that there are 72-73 million users on either the Internet or MySpace.com, and encourages each of them to boycott gas purchases on the 15th.

But the only real way to affect gas prices permanently, Singh said, is to cut down permanently on gas consumption. By cutting down on the demand for gas, oil companies will have more supply than demand.

According to simple economic principles, that will cause prices to go back down, he said.

“As a consumer, we cannot control supply, we can only reduce demand,” Singh said. “If you really want to make a dent, you need to conserve more gasoline by driving a smaller car or not driving as much or carpooling.”

Several Southwest Georgia residents agreed with Singh Friday afternoon, saying such a boycott would be pretty useless.

“What purpose would it serve?” Camilla resident William King, 40, asked. “Somebody needs to come up with solutions. OK, so we’re going to boycott. So what?”

Albany resident Nick Ouellette said that he got a motorcycle because of its excellent gas mileage.

“It’s just ridiculous trying to boycott things,” he said. “People need to look around at gas prices. Stop driving so much, start walking. Get up off your (expletive).”

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Boston officer killed

• A shooting victim’s wife was working at 9-1-1 Friday when the call came in that her husband had been shot.

J.D. Sumner

BOSTON — The former chief of the Boston Police Department died Friday night after an apparent accidental shooting at the police department, officials said.

Officer Al Suarez was rushed to Archbold Memorial Hospital around 6:30 p.m. He was pronounced dead less than an hour later.

According to Thomas County Coroner Sam Brown, it appears that Suarez and two other Boston Police Officers were cleaning their duty weapons when another officer’s weapon went off, striking Suarez in the upper part of his chest.

Brown didn’t know the exact caliber of the bullet that struck Suarez.

“It’s under investigation by the Thomas County Sheriff’s Office and the GBI,” Brown said. “But right now it just looks like it was an accidental shooting.”

The name of the officer whose weapon discharged, hasn’t been released, although the City of Boston website lists only three additional officers other than Suarez employed by the Police department, Chief Chuck Weaver, Officer Joel Grimm and Officer Dennis Bradford.

Boston Mayor Dennis Groover said that the shooting had cast a dark shadow over the small community but that they’re trying to cope with the loss of a friend.

“I just left the family’s house,” Groover said. “I spoke with his wife and she said that she was just trying to be strong for their boys. This is tough for all of us that knew him, but especially his family.”

Groover said that the flag in Boston had been lowered but that it was too early to know any sort of arrangements.

Brown said that Suarez had been the chief in Boston before some medical issues prompted him to take a spot as a police officer within the department.

Groover said that the Suarez’ wife was working at 9-1-1 when the call came in that her husband had been shot.

Brown lauded Suarez’ dedication to his job and his family, and said that he would be a person that will be sorely missed in Thomas County.

“He was just a good man,” Brown said.

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