Offenders called in for GPAC warning
By John Joyce
Published in News on August 26, 2015 1:46 PM
Schools in Wayne County opened for the 2015-16 school year Monday.
By Tuesday, 12 students identified as facing felony charges were transferred to alternative schools, Wayne County Public Schools hearing officer Allison Pridgen said.
"Half of them are middle school students," she said.
Last school year, 391 students were sent to alternative schools with criminal charges pending against them. Three of the children who faced felony charges were elementary school students.
Mrs. Pridgen spoke during the community presentation portion of Tuesday's Goldsboro Partners Against Crime offender call-in held at 6 p.m. at historic city hall.
The law enforcement and community initiative to reduce violent crime brings in a dozen or more probationary offenders once a quarter and warns them to end their violent and illegal activities or face harsher sentences -- possibly in federal prison -- on their next arrest. Community programs such as housing, transportation, education, health and child care assistance are then offered to those who want to change their lives for the better.
Tuesday's call-in was the 10th of its kind since the program began back in 2012.
Mrs. Pridgen told the offenders assembled Tuesday that the next generation is looking to them as role models.
A second community member, Francine Smith of Rebuilding Broken Places, told the offenders her adult son -- an engineer who lives and works near Washington, D.C. -- recently came to speak to the students in her class. She said several of the children, fourth- and fifth-graders mostly, show promise in the fields of engineering and science.
Her son told her later, however, that he was concerned about some of the children, she said.
When he went around and asked each of the children what they want to be when they grow up, two of the them -- both in first grade -- said they want to be robbers.
"I can't imagine a child in first grade saying that," she told the offenders. "They said that because they are watching you. You make it look easy, you make it look good. But it's not good."
Capt. Theresa Chiero of the Goldsboro Police Department heads up the GPAC program and is a member of the state's Violent Crimes Task Force.
She explained that once notified at a call-in, the offenders' names are put into a database that tracks any future interaction those individuals have with law enforcement anywhere in the country, be it Goldsboro, Winston-Salem, New York or New Jersey, or anywhere else, she said.
"Right now I monitor over 3,000 people," she said. Not all of the names in her database are offenders who have been notified at call-ins such as the one held Tuesday. Others are notified upon arrest or in one-on-one sessions at the police department. Others still have never been notified,
"Some of them are violent offenders or they have weapons arrests or drug arrests," she said. "Some are sex offenders."
The goal of GPAC remains a simple one, to deter and to reduce violent crime in the community by taking the worst offenders off the streets and by giving those who want a second chance the help they need to make successful life changes, organizers said.
Law enforcement officers from the Mount Olive Police Department, the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco Firearms and Explosives (ATF), the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA), N.C. Department of Probation and Parole, the district attorney's office, the U.S. Attorney's Office and the Wayne County Sheriff's Office joined Goldsboro's Interim Police Chief Mike West in delivering the offenders their final warning.
"The people of Goldsboro have spoken. They're tired of it," West said.