TUESDAY
NOW SERVING: New restaurant to open following delays. 1B
January 26, 2010 126th year No. 26
VIOLENT CONFRONTATION: Custody dispute sparks shooting. 3A
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NICE ROADWORK: HPU women take care of business in Asheville. 1D
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WHO’S NEWS
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Guilford County contributes most HOW TO DONATE – the Salvation Army’s High Point ofto Salvation Army’s relief fund Visit fice at 301 W. Green Drive. Inside
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Log onto www.SalvationArmy.org.
Relief concert still on for Wednesday. 2A Quake creates need for tent cities. 5A
Call 1-800-Sal-Army, or 1-800-725-2769.
the largest contributor in the state for the international organization’s relief fund since the earthquake shook Haiti on Jan. 12. The Greensboro and High Point offices GUILFORD COUNTY – If you think the lo- collectively received $3,500 in monetary cal community hasn’t had a hand in the donations from county residents. From large to small donations, Perez relief efforts in Haiti, think again. According to Capt. Tony Perez at the High Point Salvation Army, Guilford County has been HAITI, 2A BY PAM HAYNES ENTERPRISE STAFF WRITER
SONNY HEDGECOCK | HPE
Capt. Tony Perez poses in front of the Salvation Army headquarters on W. Green Drive.
DeAnna Minor received the Youth of the Year Award from the ArchdaleTrinity Chamber of Commerce. The award recognizes a student in the Archdale-Trinity area who has overcome obstacles or demonstrated leadership in pursuit of an education.
INSIDE
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DELUGE CAUSES FLOODING
LOOKING AHEAD: Randolph school board OKs 2010-11 calendar. 1B OBITUARIES
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SONNY HEDGECOCK | HPE
A van crosses the flooded portion of Rivermeade Drive off Eastchester Drive near Oak Hollow dam. The city had the street blocked, but larger vehicles, like this van, crossed to pick up stranded residents. See state weather story, 3A.
Officials: Jobs program missing link to cutting crime BY PAT KIMBROUGH ENTERPRISE STAFF WRITER
HIGH POINT – High Point is adding a component to a crime-reduction strategy that has become a national model. Officials with the High Point Police Department and High Point Community Against Violence are working to set up a contract with America Works, a New York-based company that helps find work for people with criminal records and other hard-to-serve job-seekers. “This thing has been a long time in the making, and we’re anxious to get it rolling,” said police Chief Jim Fealy. “They have a class program that produces results. We have a class program that produces results. We’re going to
put the two together and, we really think, have a home run.” City Council last week approved the $100,000 contract, $55,000 of which was raised by business Fealy leaders in the community who comprise HPCAV’s advisory board. The city will fund the remaining amount. The goal of the arrangement is to strengthen what has been regarded as the weak link in the police department’s strategy for dealing with chronic offenders who drive the majority of violent crime: placing them in jobs to direct them away from a criminal lifestyle. “In the past, we’ve had people that were right on the tipping
point,” Fealy said. “They were, we believed, sincere about wanting to make lifestyle changes, sincere about wanting to avoid crime, sincere about wanting to avoid prison, and we just weren’t able to strike with the resources they needed to make those changes quickly enough.” Police and HPCAV representatives plan to choose 33 chronic offenders from a list of about 100 to undergo 40 hours of job readiness training, job placement and monitoring by America Works to make sure they stay in the position. All 33 will have felony convictions, some of which involve acts of violence. “We’re going to try to take the most risky and use them first,” Fealy said. “The first year of the contract will be kind of a demo
or pilot. During that first year of the contract, we’ll be looking for funding sources to sustain it.” America Works “has been successful everywhere they’ve gone” in making living-wage jobs available to ex-offenders who have little or no employment history. It has operated in large cities in the northeast, California and elsewhere, but High Point will be its first foray into the Southeast. “Our thinking is, if we have this tool available to latch on to them quickly enough, they will see the offer of help from the community as entirely sincere,” Fealy said. “They’ll be involved in the process and hopefully not return to that life of offending.” pkimbrough@hpe.com | 888-3531
Voters swing back between parties at breakneck pace BY PAUL B. JOHNSON ENTERPRISE STAFF WRITER
TRIAD – What a difference a year can make in politics – or, to be more precise, 13 months. In December 2008, Republicans were free-falling from losses in the fall general election. The party was scrambling to save a final Senate seat in the rock-solid Republican state of Georgia, where Sen. Saxby Chambliss, R-Ga., was forced into a runoff against little-known former Democratic state legislator Jim Martin. Chambliss emerged from the runoff victorious. Fast-forward to last week. Massachusetts state legislator Scott Brown, an obscure Republican politician outside New England as little as a month ago, soundly defeated Democratic Senate nominee Martha Coakley to capture the seat
Inside
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Fickle electorate. 2A of the late Democratic Sen. Ted Kennedy. Brown won the special election in one of the most solidly Democratic states in the nation. The change from late 2008 to today may show that shifts in political cycles, which historically have taken decades to play out, may be compressing into breakneck periods of time, area political analysts say. “We used to talk about political realignments in these 32-year, 36year cycles. But in recent years, we’ve been having these cycles take place in about two years. What we’ve seen happen from 2006 to today is really a very ac-
celerated pace,” said John Dinan, professor of political science at Wake Forest University. Democrats, for example, dominated Congress for decades leading up to the 1994 takeover by Republicans. Then the Republicans held sway for 12 years, “which actually, historically, is a short period of time when you compare it to other cycles,” said Matthew DeSantis, assistant professor of political science at High Point University. One reason voters might be shifting from one party to the other more quickly is the media saturation coverage of elections, DeSantis said. “But I also think there’s a misinterpretation that politicians are falling into today. Politicians in both parties misinterpret mandates. They get elected with 53 percent of the vote and go, ‘We have a mandate from the
YOUR COMMUNITY. YOUR NEWSPAPER.
American people.’ No you don’t,” DeSantis said. “Politicians today forget there’s a significant and critical mass in the minority. All you need is a couple of percentage points here and there to flip back over – become discontent with what you’re doing – and suddenly you’re out of office.” Another reason for the rapid shift in the electorate may relate to what Dinan terms the “nationalization” of congressional races. Elections that used to revolve around local or state matters now involve national campaign groups and money. “Congressional elections are as likely to be nationalized as they are to be localized. When you have these nationalized elections, it allows for national trends to have an effect more swiftly,” Dinan said. pjohnson@hpe.com | 888-3528
Roland Butler, 78 Evelyn Bunting, 91 Pauline Carroll, 98 Gathard Gibson, 79 Curley Manns, 67 Hubert Norris, 100 Alex Rhymer, 27 Donald Smith, 59 John Stirewalt, 72 Arlene Sturdivant, 91 Vickie Yeoman, 61 Obituaries, 2B
WEATHER
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Sunny, cool High 47, Low 26 6D
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