Shots were fired late Sunday night in Walla Walla.

A man called the Walla Walla police department at about midnight reporting that he had “heard two thumps against his vehicle, and upon inspection found bullet holes,” according to the Union Bulletin. Later that same night, a woman reported shots fired at her home –– an incident which resulted in the serious injury of a 15-year-old boy. The shooting took place on Eighth Avenue and Paine Street.

Shootings are not common in Walla Walla. In 2004, there were no reported murders in the city, and only 98 incidents of aggravated assault (which is proportionally better than the national average).

And, although police have said that the Washington Park Area is comparably moderate in criminal activity, community members have expressed concern that their neighborhood is a local epicenter for gang activity, drug use, theft and speeding.

It is this very neighborhood, incidentally, which has been at the forefront of Whitman sophomore Alex Kerr’s mind for the past two months.

In September, Kerr went to Chicago to attend a Core Organizer Training seminar. After learning some of the tools needed to mobilize a group of people into action, he returned to Walla Walla with the primary goal of finding a worthy, local cause.

“I came back from Chicago, and I just started door-knocking. I asked people what kinds of problems they saw in the neighborhood; what changes they wanted to see. At first there didn’t seem to be anything worth mobilizing around,” said Kerr. “Then I came to [Washington Park].”

At every house Kerr visited in the area, people talked about speeding cars, gang fights, drugs, or one of any number of other problems they’d noticed but often felt they hadn’t been able to do anything about. Kerr began to notice a pattern: The police weren’t there.

“Household after household told me that they didn’t feel like they were being watched out for by the police. Many people had given up calling the police after they were disappointed enough times by the response they got,” said Kerr.

Kerr, with the help of sophomores Lisa Curtis and Rachel Hahn, started organizing community members in the Washington Park area (between Fourth and 13th Avenues, and Rees and Rose Avenues) in an ultimate effort to convince Walla Walla Chief of Police Chuck Fulton that more attention needed to be paid to the neighborhood.

Sylvia Moya, a mother of three who recently moved back to the Walla Walla area from Chicago, stuck out as a member of the community who was particularly invested in the struggle. When Kerr first knocked on her door, she jumped at the chance to bring the problems in the neighborhood to the attention of police.

“Really, I just worry about my children. My daughter, she’s 13, and she’s been seeing these problems in the neighborhood. I want her to feel safe here,” said Moya.

Moya soon became the community leader for the mobilization effort –– dubbed Walla Walla Community Action –– and volunteered her living room as the home base for neighborhood meetings. Three dinner meetings were arranged to discuss the concerns community members felt were major problems in the neighborhood.

“There has been a lot of activity that should not be going on in this neighborhood,” said Jim Colbin, who has lived with his family in the area for 20 years. “I’ve seen people walking around here late at night, doing nothing in particular, looking suspicious. It’s not safe for my daughter’s kids to play in the street because the cars go so fast.”

Colbin isn’t alone. His neighbors agree that crime is commonplace in the poorly-lit alleys and back roads, and that cars speed along residential streets like they’re on the highway.

“There are 20 or 30 kids who get off the school bus at 3 in the afternoon and cars just whiz by going 50 miles per hour,” said Shirley Tait, who has children of her own. Tait said she writes down the license plate numbers of offending vehicles, but hasn’t seen any consequences for reckless driving in her neighborhood.

In their meetings, Walla Walla Community Action drafted a letter to send to Chief Fulton voicing their concerns and requesting to meet with him. Fulton agreed to meet on Friday, Nov. 9, at 7:30 p.m. Before the meeting, the group made up a list of requests they wanted to see implemented immediately.

“What’s brilliant about this method of action is that instead of just marching downtown and saying, ‘We want police presence’ –– where you wouldn’t be holding anyone accountable –– we’re confronting one person and telling him what we want and that we want it right now,” said Kerr.

The list of requests included that an officer drive by daily at school bus stops during key hours; officer presence in the neighborhood between 8 p.m. and 3 a.m.; the contact information of the police officer in the area; and new stop signs, yield signs, posted speed limits and repaired street lights.

“I think these demands are really good,” said Tommy Koll, who is particularly concerned about drug use in the area. “I think these are the kinds of things that the police officers really need to listen to.”

On Nov. 9, Chief Fulton arrived with Crime Prevention Officer Robert Reed, Officer Kevin Braman (who is responsible for the area), and Louis Gonzales, who is an organizer for the local action group Commitment to Community. At the start of the meeting, Moya read the officers a letter her daughter had written to the police department spelling out some of her key concerns.

“The letter says, ‘My brothers and I have seen a lot of things happen in our neighborhood. My brother said he didn’t like how we always had to come in early, even in the summer, because of all the people who speed and walk around drunk,'” said Moya. “I realized that if my daughter is seeing these things then there is a real problem here.”

Then Moya and her neighbors led the officers on a tour of their neighborhood, pointing out houses that had been broken into, places where they’d witnessed suspicious activity or drug use of some kind, areas where speeding is especially prevalent, and alleys too poorly lit to safely walk down at night.

When the tour concluded back at Moya’s house, the police officers recognized that the neighborhood deserved more attention, but ultimately said they didn’t have the resources to do everything Walla Walla Community Action had requested.

“It’s important that we know about these things, and obviously there’s a lot of concern in this area as I can see just looking out at all of you here,” said Fulton. “On a typical night, though, we only have four policemen on duty at any given time in all of Walla Walla. We frankly don’t have what it takes to be here all the time.”

Fulton and Reed both emphasized the importance of building strong community watch programs so that crimes never go without being reported.

“This is a great example of people working together to make sure their neighborhood is safe,” said Reed. “Keep doing exactly this kind of thing and you’re going to see your neighborhood improve.”

Fulton said he would sign a letter advocating improved signs and lights for the neighborhood, and distributed Braman’s contact information. He also agreed to meet with the group again in January to discuss whether progress had been made.

“I think you’re going to be seeing a lot more of me around here,” said Braman as the meeting concluded.

In general, the community members who attended Friday’s meeting were pleased that they had grown closer as a group throughout the process of forming Walla Walla Community Action.

“I am happy to finally get to know all these names and faces. I think this is a positive thing for this neighborhood,” said Shirley Rush.

While everyone took away some optimism from the meeting, Kerr and Hahn also left feeling somewhat frustrated with the night’s results.

“I’m disappointed that the city doesn’t have enough funding to support a fifth cop on the streets on any given day,” said Kerr. “I think now is a good time to increase focus in these areas, and it’s a shame that that’s difficult given that there are four officers doing the best they can.”

Hahn felt Fulton avoided addressing the concerns of the neighborhood and wasn’t willing to provide the resources necessary in the area.

“I felt frustrated with the chief of police and the way he approached the people there, and I think we could have done a better job to prepare the group for the way that they approached everything,” she said. “But what’s more important is that the first steps of bringing the community together have happened. In the future I know they’re really going to make more progress.”

Kerr, Hahn and Curtis plan to continue working with Walla Walla Community Action as they mobilize to create a more effective neighborhood watch program. They will also be involved as the group moves towards their second meeting with Fulton in January.

“This is kind of what I want to do with my life is help organize people. You just have to learn to talk to people. Any issue, be it police in the neighborhood or something as big as global warming, you just have to know how to help people come together and make the issues that they see fixable,” said Curtis.

Kerr will meet with the community members later this week to talk about Sunday’s shooting and discuss the results of the meeting with Chief Fulton. He feels the fight is ongoing, and more than that, it’s personal.

“It’s important for me to get my hands dirty. I want to feel like we’ve accomplished something immediate and real and that we can watch right in front of us. Something that’s right in our own community,” said Kerr. “I personally feel like there are so many things you can do on this campus that are really rewarding, but if I didn’t have this, I wouldn’t feel really satisfied with what I was doing with my time.”