Violence Rising Fast Away From Big Cities
By Anthony Faiola
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, August 11, 2007
CHESHIRE, Conn. -- Ever since "that night," Kevin Mirando, 13, nervously questions his parents at bedtime: Mom, is the house alarm on? Dad, are the doors locked? How about the windows? When they reassure him that all is safe, he still tosses and turns for hours, unable to nod off until he checks and rechecks the bolts and locks himself. Kevin said simply "I'm afraid" as he stood alongside his mother during summer football practice.
Many are feeling unsafe in this New England community since July 23, when a pair of longtime drug users, released on early parole amid procedural errors in their case reviews, allegedly committed a savage crime that has rocked Connecticut.
The two men are charged with invading the home of a noted endocrinologist, William Petit Jr., 50, severely beating him, sexually assaulting and strangling his wife, Jennifer Hawke-Petit, 48, and sexually abusing their daughter Michaela, 11, and killing her and her sister, Hayley, 17. After seven hours with the family, the men set fire to the stately house at the mouth of a quiet cul-de-sac before being caught while trying to ram their way past police cars.
Court records show that both suspects (one of them from a prominent family in the city) have a history of drug use and of serial burglaries to fund their habits. Joshua Komisarjevsky, 26, used methamphetamine, and Steven Hayes, 44, had a crack cocaine habit, court records indicate.
The killings have stunned this state known for its staid insurance companies and old whalers in Mystic Seaport, sparking the broadest review of Connecticut's criminal justice system in modern history. But while rare in their scope and viciousness, the slayings, experts say, highlight a crime wave underway in small bedroom communities across America, where statistics are showing the biggest increase in violent criminal activity in years.
Not only was violent crime in suburban communities with populations between 25,000 and 49,999 up for the third year in a row in 2006, but it grew by 3.2 percent -- significantly faster than the nationwide increase of 1.3 percent, according to recently released FBI statistics. By comparison, during that same period, cities with more than 1 million people saw violent crime edge up by only 0.2 percent while rural areas saw a decrease of 5.3 percent. Only cities between 250,000 and 499,999 witnessed similar increases, with violent crime in those areas also surging by 3.2 percent.
It happens as fast-growing suburban regions find themselves coping with more drug-related and, in some cases, gang-related crimes that were once largely considered urban problems. Cheshire, a relatively affluent municipality of 29,000 between New Haven and Hartford, offers a micro-portrait of a town grappling with at least some of those ills.
Last month, Cheshire police recorded one of their largest drug seizures in years -- 22 bags of heroin found during a drunken-driving stop. Although smaller towns are more likely to witness broader fluctuations in crime than larger cities, this year Cheshire has had 28 burglaries, a 75 percent increase over the same period last year. Additionally, in February, the town witnessed a double murder (the perpetrator committed suicide) that brought its homicide toll for the year, including the Petit killings, to a record five, according to Cheshire police.
"What we're seeing is a dispersal of crime" beyond urban areas, said June W. Stansbury, special agent in charge of the New England field division of the Drug Enforcement Administration. "Especially with drug-related crimes, we're starting to see some of the same patterns in suburban areas. It's gotten to the point where it can no longer be kept quiet. And maybe that's not a bad thing. Maybe we need to admit there is a problem and deal with it."
To be sure, crime rates in U.S. suburbs remain substantially lower than in big cities. But as suburbs have grown in population and drug use and drug-related violence, experts say, their residents are increasingly facing more of the risks confronting urban dwellers.
"Does the crime that happened in Connecticut happen all the time? No, absolutely not. But are there more crimes happening in small- and medium-sized population centers? Yes, of course," said David M. Kennedy, director of the Center for Crime Prevention and Control at John Jay College of Criminal Justice. "Look, crime statistics may reportedly have improved in New York City, but on Long Island you are seeing the creation of pockets in suburban areas that are very, very tough."
The Cheshire crime has been dubbed a modern "In Cold Blood" for its parallels to the killing of the Clutter family in 1959 in Holcomb, Kan., made famous by Truman Capote's book. In the early-morning, two men broke into the Petit home, a two-story house on a street where drivers are asked to go slow because "we love our children."
The pair beat Petit and tied him up in the basement. After 9 a.m., his wife was forced to go to a Bank of America branch, where she withdrew $15,000 while alerting a teller that her family was being held hostage, according to law enforcement officials and documents.
Police, including a SWAT team, were dispatched to the Petit home and apprehended the men after they had set fire to the home and were attempting to escape in the family's SUV. Petit escaped from the house while it burned.
One suspect, the lanky, scruffy Komisarjevsky, lived less than two miles from the Petits -- he is the son of a family with a storied history in Russian opera and theater. Hayes appears to have met Komisarjevsky in a halfway house after they were paroled.
The case also generated a broad outcry because the men were granted early release from prison by a parole board that failed to review transcripts from the men's sentencing hearings, as mandated by a widely ignored Connecticut law. "They are saying they didn't have the funds to make the copies," said state Rep. James A. Amann, speaker of the Connecticut House. "It is the lamest and most inexcusable excuse I've ever heard."
Had board members read the transcripts, they would have discovered that a judge had called Komisarjevsky a calculating, "cold-blooded predator." He used night-vision goggles while burglarizing homes, the transcripts noted.
Gov. M. Jodi Rell (R) has convened a panel of specialists for a "top to bottom" review of the justice system to see how and why it failed in releasing the two suspects. The legislature is conducting hearings with the goal of enacting harsher laws.
But in Cheshire, the damage is done.
"It's always been a fear of mine that someone would [break] into our house," Kevin Mirando, the Cheshire teenager, said as his mother gave him a concerned look. "I tell myself to be quiet, that it's not going to happen. But I bet that's what the [Petit] girls were saying too."
Travis Fox of washingtonpost.com and staff researcher Madonna A. Lebling contributed to this report.
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