Casting Crowns Coming To Greensboro
Casting Crowns is coming to the Greensboro Coliseum on Saturday, Nov. 17th, with John Waller and Leeland. (You can hear a clip from John Waller’s song, “The Blessing” in this NightWatch video.) Tickets go on sale Friday, Sept. 14th.
Related posts: “I’m With You,”, Under The Shadow Of Our Steeple
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Under The Shadow Of Our Steeple?
This song really hits me hard. I see the faces of so many people I know who are running…
It’s a wake-up call for the Church. And for me.
LORD, have mercy. Give me eyes to see and ears to hear. Give me a heart like Yours. May it be so, LORD.
Lyrics below.
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Transform Your Day
I’ve found a great (and easy) way to transform my day. The first thing I do before my hit the floor is reach for the TV remote and press the “on” switch. My TV is set to turn on to channel 287. On Time Warner cable in Greensboro, that’s the Contemporary Christian channel on Music Choice.
I leave it on all day long, whether I’m working, doing housework, whatever. I even leave it playing when I go out, and the music greets me when I walk back in the door. And the last thing I do at night before I go to sleep is hit the “off” button. Listening to praise music transforms my day. My heart. My life.
“And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind…” — Romans 12:2
Praise and worship music comes from Scripture, and it changes my attitude. It changes the words that come out of my mouth. It changes the thoughts that come out of my head and heart. It even changes the choices I make.
Try it. Listen to praise music today. On your TV. Or in your car. Or on your computer. (KLOVE is on the radio nationally and on the internet.) Try it. Transform your day. 
Related: My pastor, Bill Goans, took the “praise challenge” this spring and asked us to join him. Listen as he talks about it:
[Bill’s full sermon is available here. The date is May 27, 2007.]
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The Cost of A Gang Unit
Greensboro’s police chief says that his department needs a dedicated gang unit to address the city’s increasing problems with gang activity and violence, including a recent string of homicides.
Chief Bellamy tells me that it would cost about $314,000 annually to fund a gang unit. That would pay for a supervisor, a corporal and five detectives.
The News & Record had a front-page story, written by Joe Killian, in Sunday’s paper on the need for a gang unit:
“I would say gangs are now the number one public safety problem in Greensboro….From the perspective of danger to people — robberies, drugs, assaults — gangs are the largest single problem… We definitely need more resources to deal with that.”
– Sgt. Mike Richey, GPD Criminal Intelligence Division
What does a gang unit do?
Gang units in nearby cities gather gang intelligence, but they also do outreach programs and community policing, and they build relationships with people whose neighborhoods are overrun with gangs. Units also help provide gang-resistance education in schools.
Both Bellamy and Richey say Greensboro police have been trying for years to work with Guilford County Schools, but the Board of Education has resisted such programs.
School board members and Superintendent Terry Grier did not return calls requesting comment Thursday and Friday.
Greensboro’s City Council is also aware of the need for a gang unit:
The council’s reaction to the gang violence: Ask the city manager to re-examine the idea of a gang unit — a proposal that didn’t even make it to the table in the last budget cycle.
But the council doesn’t want to spend money for more police officers.
“They’ve asked us to reallocate existing resources to see if a gang unit could be put together,” Assistant City Manager Bob Morgan said. “We’re not talking about extra positions being created, but putting more emphasis on gangs with what we have.”
But GPD’s “existing resources” are currently stretched thin.
“You never have enough police officers,” Holliday said. “We added 37 full-time police positions in the last budget. Could we use 100? Of course.”
I spoke to GPD’s Lt. Cheek about police staffing. In the 2006-2007 budget process, Council added 32 new officer positions. Those officers are in academy now and will graduate in October. Then they’ll have four months of field training and hit the street in January 2008 — a year and a half after their positions were approved in the budget. (And we could still use about 100 more officers.) GPD also loses an average of two officers per month to attrition — that’s about 24 officers per year. The department is not fully staffed.
City Council member Sandy Carmany discussed the gang funding issue on her blog:
“An inaccurate media reported that the city council had denied the police chief’s request for funding for a gang unit in the 2007-08 budget — that item was deleted from the proposed budget before it ever reached the city council in an effort to reduce the potential four-cent property tax increase that was looming on the horizon at the time. We council members directed the city manager and the police chief to get back to us within the next 30 days with a proposal to reallocate money and/or manpower to address this issue.”
I’m wondering just how far the City Council will ask Chief B to stretch his budget and his officers? And what the consequences might be…
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Gangs Targeting Greensboro’s Homeless?
Via email, and by permission, from a homeless friend and reader. Email subject is “Gang Experiences:” Email has been edited slightly to maintain anonymity:
I have had no real run-ins with a gang unless you want to count that shooting episode from Friday night! [Editor’s note: Several young men in a car drove by and shot at him with what he assumes was a BB gun as he was standing on a sidewalk near downtown. One pellet hit his lower leg but he was wearing work boots and was uninjured.]
But, [another homeless friend] has begun to carry a disassembled pool cue as a walking stick/defensive weapon lately. I remember just before he started carrying around that pool cue, that he told me of an encounter he had down S. Elm-Eugene St., presumably between Center of Hope and GUM. His story is that three young teen males tried to stop him and demand money, and so he picked up a stick and beat them away.
Another story comes from a creepy man I had an encounter with at 2:15 AM this morning [where he was sleeping.] He woke me up to “talk” to me and wound up asking me for cigarettes, money, and even my water bottle, which I gladly gave up to him in the hopes he would leave me alone. He claimed to be homeless-working because his female companion left him. He stated that he is new to Greensboro and was walking along Benbow Rd. and was robbed at gunpoint of $400 cash by some teen gang members. He kept turning his conversation back to money so I gave up after 20 minutes and left [the area] out of concern for my own safety. I hardly spoke to him, and he had so much to say that I was not about to remain there alone with him. Somehow all the other homeless had left [the area] and it appeared we were the only ones there.
Update: I mentioned this email to a cop friend. His take: “I wouldn’t assume it’s all gang-related, but it’s still young people.” True. Young people — in a gang or not — shooting BB guns at homeless people, attacking homeless people, robbing homeless people = not good news.
And p.s., that’s why I ended the title of the post with a question mark. Some of this is probably gang-related, some of it may not be. The email writer was clear in a conversation with me that he doesn’t know if the young men who shot at him were part of a gang or just kids goofing off. Either way, it’s disturbing.
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NightWatch: The Video
This video shows the NightWatch team on the streets of Greensboro. Created with Ron Londen’s photos (and a few of mine) and a clip from John Waller’s “The Blessing.”
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Effective Discharge Planning?
Look who’s been visiting this page of my web site, from a Google search of “Greensboro NC homeless shelters.”
I guess that’s one way to do discharge planning.
[Sigh.]
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