Treebox V is a bit late to this story, but I feel it’s important to reexamine here. Washington City Paper reported that Merrit Drucker, director of Community Relations and Services for D.C., resigned in a dispute with Mayor Fenty over the application of Operation Fight Back in the city.
I'll share my quick education on the subject here as well. As I needed to get up to speed on all the moving elements.
Operation Fight Back is, according to the City Paper.
multi-agency compliance sweeps targeting specific blocks and designed to ensure that District businesses, housing, and neighborhoods are in line with city codes. The idea is to focus the full force of the city’s regulatory and crime fighting authorities on a single geographic area.
And here's the info from DC.gov: (link)
“Operation Fight Back” is a concentrated, multiagency strategy designed to tackle stubborn crime and disorder problems in specific neighborhoods throughout DC. The strategy involves a number of different approaches, including serving arrest warrants, conducting safety checkpoints, carrying out building and business inspections, towing abandoned vehicles, cleaning up trash and reaching out to residents in the community.
And according to the City Paper, Drucker resigned out of dispute with Mayor Fenty for not backing the Fight Back initiative.
“He sent me a short e-mail letting me know that the administration would no longer be using Fight Backs,” says the 55-year-old Drucker, who never had a face-to-face meeting with the mayor on the matter. Fenty, he said, decided to step up the use of the gentler “Fix-it” program, which focuses on clean-up, maintenance, and educating business and apartment owners about city codes.
Why is Fenty being lax on this initiative and why would he let someone like Drucker resign? There must be something deeper to that story. Looking at the post here on the City Desk Blog, Merrit Drucker has been an aggressive proponent of cleaning up the city and has accomplished many victories in this area. Also, Fenty moved Ducker’s staff to his bullpen instead of the field where they would be more effective
“It signifies a shift to a more reactive model,” says Drucker, “and away from proactively searching the ward before the problems are reported.” The attention of his old staff will be focused on those residents “who are the most active and interested,” not necessarily on constituents most in need of help. “You can’t lead from behind a desk,” he says. “You need to spend a lot of time in alleys and in stairwells.”
In my opinion, Operation Fight Back seems like a well intentioned program and rationally seems like a solid tactic for this city to deploy to fight urban decay. However, I don’t understand why the city really needs a separate initiative that advertises itself as a “multiagency strategy designed to tackle stubborn crime and disorder problems in specific neighborhoods throughout DC.” I’m not apologizing for Fenty here, in quite the opposite direction, shouldn’t the government agencies always work within a multiagency strategy to tackle crime and disorder. I believe this should be a hallmark strategy of the DC government agencies as a whole from the police department to the community relations offices.
Seriously, one of the items in the strategy is “carrying out building and business inspections”, why is that something special for our government? What are we paying for?
This why I think Fenty’s lack of a reaction to Drucker’s resignation is significant. The signal he sends is that a reactionary approach is okay for our government and that strategically working together won’t be rewarded. And, I think it tells places like Shiloh, not to worry. That the “Fix-It” program won’t really penalize them for not cleaning up their vacant properties.
