In a previous post, I talked about David Kennedy and his unorthodox methods of fighting crime in urban areas. Police Chief Settingsgaard told me that he has “a team being trained by Kennedy and his staff.” At the same time, I wrote to the State’s Attorney’s office to see what they thought of Kennedy’s methods. I recently received this reply from Kevin Lyons:

Dear C.J.:

In reply to your inquiry about David Kennedy, I am, indeed, familiar with him and this topic. In fact, four Peorians (including a prosecutor from my office and a Peoria police officer) recently returned from Raleigh, NC, following a three day training conference on details of the High Point Project. Recreating the High Point (NC) Project in some cities has met with great success; in others, uh, not so much. But I felt it worthy enough to take a look to see if we may want to embrace this effort and achieve some success for three targeted areas within the city (sorry, but I can’t share with you the neighborhoods that have been designated for this).

These four people will soon complete two more sessions before the ‘project’ here begins. I don’t know whether it will work but I do know that entire generations are lost to the buying and selling of mind-twisting drugs and that changing an entrenched culture will only be accomplished by impacting whole neighborhoods and not just a person here, a person there.

Perhaps it’s because David Kennedy and I are both 50ish and have watched drugs give the grave to friends and neighbors for more than 30 years. Perhaps it’s because we have watched battles being lost for years when waged against criminal drug sales in America. Perhaps the High Point Project makes a little sense because countless other projects do not. We’ll see.

It is interesting, C.J., that you and I were both piqued by this particular approach because, at first blush, this would never be my style…rolling the videotape to the offender and his family and then giving him a free pass. It will be a time intensive task that will take a lot of time by authorities. Then again, as prosecutors say – “there is never enough time…unless you’re serving it.”

Fingers crossed. Thanks for your inquiry.

KEVIN W. LYONS
Peoria County State’s Attorney

My thanks to Mr. Lyons for responding and sharing his thoughts on this topic. It will be interesting to see how these methods work here in Peoria.