Example: a friend saw some people taking appliances out of the house they were squatting in. She called the police. N othing could be done because one of them had mail addressed to him at that house. The cops didn’t know who lived where and that the squatters had been evicted. They can’t take a citizens word for it.

When I saw a similar thing happen near me, I didn’t bother to call. I knew the drill. Truthfully, a small part of me felt it served the land lord right for renting to people that had caused the rest of us trouble.

Attack mode — on. I wonder what Corey did to you , you sound like jilted lovers – what is the real anger here?

That kind of reference is out of line. It is unacceptable and disrespectful to both Elena and me but also to Corey and Mrs. Stewart. Please stick to his political behaviors.

Our paper trail goes back to early 2008. Our grievances with Corey’s politics are clear.

Feel free to think what you want.

I disagree with those that say Corey is out of line. Look, he is an elected official doing what those who elected him want him to do – give us the tools to enforce existing law. As such, it is perfectly appropriate for him to expouse those views to State officials – who he should and does have better access to.

I am all for neighborhood watch and the way the program has been used and coordinated by the PWCPD – its good policing – but remember it also comes with risks of neighbors getting over on neighbors, and nosy neighbors. When appropriate, the police need specialized tools to do the things we are asking them /expecting them to do. Asking a drunk for a driver’s license is not inappropriate – finding that drunk to be here illegally should raise the stakes for that individual. Being called into a domestic disturbance – where all too often the officer is at risk, is no different.

That is a big part of the problem which we had in Eastern Loudoun and still have to some extent, although we are working on it. Except for the police in an emergency situation or under a Community Policing Program, government response was either not forthcoming or very slow and usually ineffective. That specifically is what caused the anger of the citizens to break out into the open. An immediate change in that situation was the primary demand of the angry citizens. Although anti-illegal immigrant sentiment was certainly present in the hearts of some, the debate did not center on a demand to remove the illegal immigrants from our midst by any means possible. Rather, the emphasis at that moment was to use the lawful power of local government to oblige these same immigrants to respect our laws and our community’s quality of life. In the end, local government did not respond to the immigration issue per se. It responded to citizen complaints about its own ineptitude and dereliction of duty.

What we have found personally in all of this is that, while some can be responsive to persuasion, there are many who respond not at all until the force and punishments of law, whether local law or HOA rules, are visited upon them. There have been many occasions when our only recourse for resolving a difficult situation was to call for help from an authority with greater power than our own. For instance, I as the Neighborhood Watch guy have absolutely no law enforcement or judicial power in any way shape or form. I can report and I can dissaude just through presence and , indeed, have done so many times. But, in the end, I need that concerned supervisor, that responding police officer, that honest and effective zoning inspector, and the power of the HOA under state law to levy fines for rules violations. Without that critical backup, I really do not have much of an arsenal. Which is exactly why I am curious about the concerned citizens of PWC. Do you have such an arsenal to back you up when you try to become directly involved?

Morris Davis :Citizen Tom said: “The voting patterns of poorly educated immigrants can easily alter our political system for the worse. Look at where most illegal immigrants come from. They moved here because they did not like it there. Unfortunately, these people did not know how to fix the political systems in their homeland, and nobody has taught them what they need to know here.” Huh?
Altering the political system for the worse? If not blindly adopting the right-wing nationalism ideology constitutes “for the worse” then I suppose that statement is true. It is an interesting argument that if they are unlikely to agree with Citizen Tom’s personal view of what’s “for the better” they automatically make things “for the worse.”
Don’t know how to fix the political systems in their homelands? Like we’ve cracked that nut here? We call ourselves a democracy yet in the 2000 presidential election almost 550,000 more Americans voted for Al Gore than voted for George Bush, but Bush was declared the winner because he got 1 more vote than Al Gore among the 9 votes cast at the Supreme Court. That was such a huge farce that even Fidel Castro offered to send observers in 2004 to ensure we had fair elections. And only 1 in 5 Americans give their Congress – their elected representatives – a favorable rating. We send troops to other countries and provide security for their citizens to walk miles and risk their lives to cast a vote (voter turnout in Iraq in 2010 was 62%), yet when it’s time to vote here we’ve done good if we can get half the eligible voters to do their civic duty and we rank near the bottom of voter participation of all countries in the world (the 2008 election was a banner year where 57% of those of voting age voted). Our political system is a dysfunctional mess, so to argue that immigrants aren’t welcome until they fix the political systems in their places of birth is hypocritical.

Moe, you ROCK!