New chief visits East End
Newly appointed Uniontown police Acting Chief Ronald “Crow” Kozak, who has patrolled the city for 25 years, made a visit to Uniontown’s East End Thursday. Kozak, along with community relation’s officer John Kauer, spoke at the East End Neighborhood Crime Watch meeting held at the Interfaith Church on Coolspring Street about crime in Uniontown.
Kozak stressed that it is the little things that are important to operating a successful crime watch like making sure all homes have house numbers for emergency personnel and just taking a few extra minutes to check on neighbors and friends.
And Kauer discussed several specific areas for the new group to focus on, particularly license plate and registration theft.
Kauer said it has become the latest trend in city crime to steal the plate or snip the registration from a plate to use to commit a crime.
“With gas prices high, what they will do is take the whole plate and use that on their car to steal gas. Then, when the clerk says that they were able to get a plate number, we go pounding on someone’s door and sure enough, their plate has been stolen and the thief got away.”
Kauer said simple steps like checking your plate each morning as well as your neighbors can help deter license theft.
“You are our eyes,” Kauer said. “You are here to help us. We just need to work together. We want to sit on our porch in peace. We want to watch our kids play in peace. We want to better our quality of life.”
According to Kozak, when he began on the force in the early 1980s the station received about 3,000 calls for service a year and maintained a police force of 32 officers. Today, Kozak said the station receives between 13,500 and 15,000 calls for service and has a force of 16 officers.
Kozak, who worked midnight shift in the East End of the city for more than a decade sympathized with the residents’ concerns and said proactive approaches like the crime watch are ways to help the police combat crime in the region.
“I am working on grants for extra patrols in the East end,” Kozak said.
“I mean on some streets you see so many drug dealers that it looks like an episode of ‘Let’s Make a Deal’ with them running out to try and sell. But you need to know that there are a lot of police watching this neighborhood.”
“That is how we get these guys in drug sweeps. We work with the Attorney General’s office. There are officers watching all the time.”
Kozak said Uniontown is considered one of the hot areas for drugs in the region, especially crack.
And it is the new culture of drugs and the rising violence that Kozak said concerns him most about the current situation in the city.
“It is almost like a right of passage now for our young kids to have a scar from a gunshot or knife wound,” Kozak said. “No one respects or values human life anymore.”
The crime watch will hold their next meeting at 6 p.m. Oct. 19.