NIMBY makes a comeback - Nfld in the News

NIMBY (Not In My Back Yard) is getting a positive spin. Northfield Police Chief Gary Smith announced Tuesday that through a collaborative effort throughout the community, Northfield will use a three pronged approach to stop drug usage from spreading here: Prevention & Education, Support and Treatment Options, Dry up the supply. The latter came through the press conference. Chief Smith has said: "Consider your Northfield users burned ... we know who they are. We just need to catch up with them." Formally, the NIMBY program is 1.) Sound crime prevention strategies and community education; 2.) Stopping the access to the drug through aggressive drug enforcement and; 3.) Removing the funding sources for drug purchases through "fences" and other means and the heightened awareness of treatment options.

Support and treatment options are a bit more tricky--the closest methadone treatment program is the Dakota Treatment Center in Burnsville. Smith countered this problem with talk of working with the right people to get a rotation program through this area, much like the traveling MRI or medical specialist. All that said, how do we prevent this? What do we learn about this? We're not in Kansas anymore Toto. Lock your doors. If we turn a blind eye to what is happening around us--be it in North Minneapolis or in our back yard, we run the risk of inviting it to invade our own colleges, cows and contentment. Our carelessness or refusal to deal with the problem helps the drug pushers and users get what they want. Let's not make it easy for them shall we?

I have to say thank you to the police department for inviting Northfield.org (and our colleagues at Locally Grown) to a press conference limited to those with official press credentials. While you can get the hard news from other sites, what this citizen journalist has to say is different. The big news isn't that people are doing drugs in our community...that happens in most others as well. I think the big news is that this community can pull together and stop it--or at least decrease the usage--by becoming educated about the signs of use, the real facts and how to steer those we love as family or as neighbors towards help. For once why don't we give Not In My Back Yard a positive spin and use it to strengthen our community.

You can find out about more programs offered through the Northfield Police Department in which they try to work with the community members to prevent crime in their multi housing units for example or get a traffic violation dismissed through the completeion of a driving safety course. Through his blog, Chief Smith also warns the community of current crime trends via the net or other means.

If you didn't know or read about it, the facts show that burglaries and car thefts have increased considerably compared to the past two years. There were 67 burglaries in 2005 but compare that to 133 in 2006 and 102 in 2007 so far. The police have linked these crimes to drug users stealing to support their habit. This, combined with reports of heroin use among students and intelligence gleaned from drug investigators, indicate that the use of heroin and Oxycontin has increased significantly in Northfield over the past 18 months among individuals from 15 to 23 years old.

For more on this story, Locally Grown has a post about the press conference, along with a huge discussion thread in the comments to a previous post. And here's a selection of links to additional media coverage:

• Northfield News
• StarTribune
• Pioneer Press
• Fox 9
• Kare11
• KSTP