A Very Fine Letter From Ryan Ewalt

"Joe,

Would you please post this response (to Fridayʼs articles) on your website? I really do appreciate you maintaining a sense of fairness and pursuit of truth by posting responses from those you and your contributors write articles about, and I sincerely hope this case is no different.

As you know, I grew up in the area, left to go to college and to work, and returned in May. My time back home has been humbling to say the least. I came back wanting to give back to a place that has been so instrumental in who I am today. As I sat down with various people in both of the city's political camps (including yourself) and tracked your website, it became apparent that the city had some serious challenges. So, I wanted to help any way I could.

I have never cared about sides, and I still don't. I care about faith, family, service, and problem solving. I was trained as an engineer and worked with local, state, and federal government agencies as a management consultant prior to moving back to Salisbury. I enjoy identifying problems, developing potential solutions, and helping implement them.
Even before I moved home, it was clear from your website and police data that the level of crime back home was worrisome. Then multiple murders happened in a short span of time this spring/summer, and a dead body was found close to where I now work in the industrial park. Based on multiple indicators (including Jim Ireton asking the city to make the reduction of crime a top priority at a Council meeting), it was clear that many citizens, including myself, were worried about the level of crime.

I asked the mayor to consider a crime task force. My idea was to take a community approach toward a community problem. Although I didn't know much about crime, I thought putting law enforcement together with concerned citizens would be an effective way to develop solutions to address the problem. I also asked the mayor to include both sides of City Council as well as the Sheriff on the task force. I don't know exactly why the mayor agreed to the idea (I had never met the mayor before I moved home), but she did. Since the formation of the task force, based on imperfect information, some have tried to undermine its credibility. To try to provide more context for your readers, let me provide the following statements:

1. For personal reasons, I will not run for any elected office this spring. I also will not work on anyone's campaign for office this spring, and I have no interest in an appointment to serve on the City Council this spring.

2. Debbie Campbell, Carol Smith, Jonathan Taylor, and others have worked very hard and delivered impressive results to the task force. As Debbie has acknowledged, her original subcommittee worked very effectively together and accomplished an amazing amount of work during the first two weeks by obtaining crime maps, walking the streets, taking photos, and creating a great website (http://salisburycrime.blogspot.com) with the help of Jonathan. Debbie also proposed the idea of focusing on a coordinated effort across law enforcement agencies to fight an anticipated spike in theft/shoplifting/robberies this holiday season. Carol and Jonathan worked to identify Dover as a city comparable to Salisbury with much less crime. My subcommittee focused on pulling together quantitative and qualitative data for the task force to get a better context for crime in the city, and Sheriff Lewis and Mark Tyler from SPD have done a good job pulling that information together.

3. After the first meeting, the task force agreed as a whole that it should develop new subcommittees, and Ed Cowell assigned all task force members to those committees without my input. I was assigned to Debbieʼs subcommittee, and, when I met with her subcommittee, I was very impressed by the website that shows the distribution of crime geographically. I did express to Debbie and Jonathan that SPD and WCSO might be surprised by the showing of the website at the task force meeting, but I told them I thought the website would be an effective tool for informing citizens and should be used. I have enjoyed working with Debbie and her subcommittee, and I look forward to continuing to help her subcommittee and the task force any way I can.

4. I was informed half an hour before last week's meeting that Ed wouldn't be able to make the meeting due to an emergency at Salisbury University, and he asked me to facilitate. During the meeting, I did verbally support and reinforce both Debbie's proposed holiday crime fighting effort when she presented it again as well as the crime mapping website (http://spotcrime.com/md/salisbury), but I should have made it clear that Debbie originally developed and proposed both ideas. I believe that this website as well as the crime reports website (http://www.crimereports.com) should be evaluated.

5. Chief Webster is not on the task force, so he has not been assigned to any subcommittees.

I hope this information is helpful to those trying to discern both the context and the happenings of the crime task force. Most importantly, I sincerely hope this task force is not a political ploy, and I hope that the findings of this task force are acted upon quickly. Reducing crime really is a goal that I think both political camps in Salisbury (and those not in one of the two camps) can agree upon, so let's not let political agendas get in the way of the community trying to come together around a common problem. Let's not remain divided around an issue that requires a unified and comprehensive effort of the whole.

Thanks again for posting my response; I really appreciate it. Hope you're doing well!

Respectfully,

Ryan Ewalt"