Miami Herald Article - Crime Increase

Violent crimes in Palm Beach County reminiscent of old Miami
A spike in Palm Beach County's violent crime rate recalls, to some, the Miami of late last century.
BY KIMBERLY MILLER

Palm Beach Post

Nearly 30 years ago, the Cocaine Cowboys with their ''go fast'' drug boats and MAC-10 submachine guns roiled Miami.

Today, Palm Beach County Sheriff Ric Bradshaw says the county is on the cusp of becoming another Miami. The gang names have changed -- the Top 6, MS-13, San Castle Soldiers -- and their guns are better at killing.

But, on a smaller scale, the terror is the same: 101 murders last year with gangs related to 55 percent to 75 percent of all violent crimes in the county, according to a county-wide violent crimes task force.

And maybe the scariest thing is that it's not just gangs.
Brazen random acts of violence -- daylight carjackings, unprovoked beatings, cat-calls that turn into kidnappings and rapes -- leave law officials, criminologists and sociologists speechless, beyond the same old excuses to explain what's happening.

'In some cases, crime is linked to simply being able to say, `I can get away with it,' '' said Richard Mangan, a Florida Atlantic University criminology professor who spent 25 years as a special agent with the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration. ``We say we only solve between 12 to 13 percent of burglaries. Can you steal things from people's homes and not get caught? Well, yeah.''
Yet despite the 26 percent increase in murders last year and pleas since at least 2004 from black communities to stop the violence, some residents and public officials have been slow to acknowledge a problem.

In October, Bradshaw said, ``This isn't people walking down the street being randomly killed. This is bad people hurting bad people.'' Two months before he made that statement, an assault rifle killed a blameless landscaper in a Boynton Beach drive-by.
West Palm Beach Mayor Lois Frankel was equally dismissive of crimes in 2005, after a spate of shootings that killed three young men in a month.

''These are not random attacks on innocent bystanders,'' she said.

Six months later, a hooded man shot and killed 24-year-old city worker Courtney Lewis as he bent over to repair a weed cutter at Coleman Park in West Palm Beach.
Extreme violence has become so common that murders no longer are guaranteed front-page news.

Some Christmas Eve shoppers at the Boynton mall continued standing in checkout lines having their purchases rung up even as shots rang out and police chased down a killer in their midst.
'We say, `Oh yes, it's there, but it's not us, it's them,' '' said FAU sociologist Tom Wilson, who teaches a class on social control and deviance. ``It's just that we don't know what to do. The police are in the unenviable position of being asked to account for this behavior. If you asked me to account for it, I can't. If I were the sheriff, I couldn't be that frank.''

The Boynton Beach Mall shooting was shocking but not unexpected, said sheriff's Capt. Jack Strenges, who commands the violent crimes division. ''We eventually expected something like this to occur in an area with a lot of people,'' Strenges said.