Comments of Councilman Mike Barber, Greensboro City Council meeting, June 16, 2009
Barber [reading from a piece of paper] : “I want to say this publicly. I had made one phone call. There is a home in Greensboro on Keeler Street behind Sedgefield Elementary school.”
Councilwoman Trudy Wade: “That’s my district.”
Barber: “Yes, it is. There is an 18-year-old and a 21-year-old that lives in this home, and they are members of the gang the Latin Kings. They have discharged a firearm in the neighborhood. They have been investigated by the sheriff’s department — Guilford County Sheriff’s Department — for internet prostitution, pornography and have committed other bad behavior in the community.
“These are the same organization, I’ll just mention, that Cardes Brown is defending currently. But I’m making a public comment because the folks in the community have called the police and they feel they are not getting a response. They had one police officer tell them, according to them: ‘We’re just having trouble dealing with it. We’re not sure what we’re going to do about it either.’
“This is a problem. And I’m saying it publicly so hopefully it will prompt the police officers to really sit on this house at the corner of Keeler and Frazier streets. Keeler and Frazier street. 2800 or 2900 block.”
Councilman Robbie Perkins: “Weren’t the police just being criticized earlier tonight for going after these gangs?”
Barber: “Oh, sure. I mean, we’ve got our three 18-carat gold ministers that are calling press conferences to defend these wonderful citizens of our community that are discharging weapons around children.”
Wade: “Mike, they were in touch with that neighborhood yesterday.”
Barber: “They’ve been in touch with them four or five times and have done nothing.”
I bet Jorge Cornell, leader of the Latin Kings, will have something to say about this at a press conference about "police harassment" that is scheduled at 12:45 p.m. tomorrow at Faith Community Church.
An "official media announcement" promises that Cornell "will describe incidents of intimidation, harrasment, economic hardship, and public criticism that he and members of his organization have experienced since calling for peace in June of 2008."
Some background here.
UPDATE: 8:29 p.m.: I'll be following up, obviously. In the meantime, I did speak with Col. Randy Powers, chief deputy of the Guilford County Sheriff's Office, who had this to say: “Apparently, he must have been talking about some other sheriff’s office it wasn’t ours. I don’t think we’ve got anything going, and we’ve checked pretty deep.”
