RALEIGH - Raleigh has already had more homicides this year than in any full year since 2000, but most of the violence has been confined to one part of the city.

Of the 24 reported homicides, 17 occurred in Southeast Raleigh. Blacks and Hispanics have been hit particularly hard, accounting for 21 of the victims. Twelve of them were men between the ages of 20 and 35.

Police Chief Harry Patrick Dolan says the rise in homicides is closely related to an uptick in robberies. Robberies in Raleigh increased more than 50 percent during the first six months of the year, and robbery was the motive in at least eight homicides.

"If we reduce the armed robberies, then we will reduce a lot of the homicides," Dolan said.

Police say violent crime comes with being a "dynamically growing community," but add that more young people without economic resources, mentors or a high school education are being lured to criminal gangs where they commit far more serious first-time offenses.

"With young people, we used to see in their first introduction to the criminal justice system petty offenses like vandalism, then larceny, assault and drug dealing before they went on to something like robbery," said police Lt. A.D. Nichol, who works with the department's gang and robbery units. "Now you are seeing robberies right away."

Two of the killings took place in Lonnette Williams' neighborhood just east of downtown. Williams, a longtime Wake County teacher, community literacy teacher and co-leader of the Central Raleigh Citizens Advisory Committee, said city officials are doing little to help young people living in fragile communities that are breeding grounds for despair.

"I'm so disgusted with all this talk about Raleigh being one of the best places to live. That's a lie," Williams said. "How can you be one of the most attractive places when you don't even take care of your neediest citizens? There's an interest in building five-star restaurants and skyscrapers, but no capacity to build people. People are desperate. We aren't giving them choices."

City Council member and Mayor Pro Tem James C. West, who represents the district that includes Southeast Raleigh, said the city needs to put more dollars toward human development.

"The city is focusing on building its physical infrastructure," West said. "But we have lost sight of the people and their economic and spiritual condition."

Many of the Southeast Raleigh homicides occurred in neighborhoods that stretch along Martin Luther King Boulevard and Poole Road. Helen G. Cameron, 75, and her husband Walter, 76, have lived in one of those neighborhoods in a red-brick home on South State Street since 1977. Two people have been killed in the neighborhood this year, one less than a block from the Camerons' home.

Helen Cameron wants to build a fence to stop people from cutting through her yard after recently finding bags filled with white powder near her storage shed. Earlier this year, Walter Cameron was sitting on the porch when a boy no more than 12 walked through the front yard armed with a gun "bigger than he was," Helen Cameron recalled.

"I don't know what the police can do," Helen Cameron said. "These parents are not raising their children. That's the main thing. Children are out here in the street all times of the night, and the parents don't know where they are. And where are they getting these guns?"

City leaders say they are mindful of the violence that has beset Southeast Raleigh and the rest of the city.

City council members voted this summer to give the police department an additional $1.5 million to hire more officers and agreed to increase the starting salary for police officers by 5 percent in the hope of recruiting and retaining more of them. The council also voted to pay more to officers who are college graduates and to approve a lateral entry program that will enable officers from other agencies to retain their rank and comparable salary if hired by the Raleigh Police Department.

"The council has very substantial concerns" about the violence, said Mayor Charles Meeker.

The department will begin developing a five-year strategic plan this fall to reduce violent crime in targeted communities. The plan will include adding more officers to a test program that already has two community police officers assigned to neighborhoods plagued by crime in Southeast Raleigh. The community officers work with neighborhoods to identify and help solve problems, Dolan said.

The plan also calls for partnering with community agencies to provide counseling, mentoring and other support to young people and their families, police spokesman Jim Sughrue said.

"Saving these young people is doable," Dolan said. "By being aggressive, we know we can reduce the number of victims."

Williams, the teacher, says any help for young people and families trying to survive in poor neighborhoods that often erupt in violence can't happen soon enough.

"It's going to take major input from the city," she said. "You can't just put a Band-Aid on this."

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