To the Editor:

Mayor Perkins and his city hall social planners have concocted an expensive plan which costs $314,000 for five months and hires some 24 part and full time people to Build Trust.

If the citizens of Selma already trust the mayor and city government, why spend such an extravagant amount to build trust? The necessity of a TrustBuild plan

is an indication that the citizenry does not trust

city government.

This plan, which exponentially will cost over $700,000 a year, surely is not the way to build trust in city government.

I have read the entire proposal at least 10 times.

It is bureaucratic gooblegook masquerading as a “Community Development Based Strategy on Crime.”

The plan contains such meaningless phrases as “identify employees with good scribing skills,” “be consistent in message-scripting” and

“develop after school monitoring.”

The Police Department’s part of the plan contains these two gems of wisdom, “We also will have a number that citizens can call and not worry about having to identify themselves but can report a suspect without fear of retribution” and “only police officers and city personnel with strong communications and peoples skills will be considered for the Task Force duties.”

Can anyone define “strong communications and peoples skills’?

One component of this misguided plan which could have come right off the left coast at Berkeley is “build trust by visiting homes.”

This component has city employees using police department areas to go into people’s homes.

Although city personnel called S.S. (social service) Persons will be going into people’s home, I don’t think the employees should be called, as the TrustBuild plans calls them, S.S. Persons.

Remembering who and what the Schutzstaffel (SS) were, surely we can call our employees something less offensive than S.S. Persons.

When the first sentence in the TrustBuild plan is “enforcement is not enough” one knows that another big spending social program is about to follow.

How do we know enforcement of the law

is not enough to combat crime?

We surely haven’t tried total enforcement in Selma. We don’t enforce the noise ordinance. We don’t enforce the garbage ordinance. We do not enforce the trains blocking crossing ordinance. The lack of enforcement in these smaller areas makes one wonder if we have tried enforcement in the larger areas.

One of the wide spread delusions of our day is that it is our unfavorable surroundings which are responsible for the degenerate conduct of so many of the present generation.

We are told that society can only improve be changing the environment in which criminals live.

God’s Word teaches that it is “out of the heart” and not from our faulty environment that all proceeds which defiles human nature.

The gospel and not social programs like TrustBuild is the only remedy for the crime problem in Selma.

Cecil Williamson

Councilman Ward 1