It’s a rare day when I wish someone would not send $1.1 million into Pierce County.

That day has come.

The state Community, Trade, and Economic Development Department has awarded $1.1 million to Citizens for Responsible Justice (C4RJ) to run a pilot program to see if 70 felons coming out of prison do better with stable housing and case management.

I’m pretty sure they do. Done well, the program could cut the rate at which former prisoners reoffend and get caught, convicted and sent back to prison on our dime.

But Pierce County is the wrong place for it, and C4RJ has not worked with or earned the trust of many of the neighbors it will be affecting.

The grant announcement says C4RJ “has a high level of collaboration with DOC (Department of Corrections), local law enforcement and agencies in Pierce County.”

That’s not the way Tacoma police see it.

“I personally wasn’t aware of this group until the story came out,” said Capt. Mark Langford. “Assistant chief (Bob) Sheehan’s feeling is that we are disappointed that we are getting this pilot program at a time when we are working toward a more proportionate distribution of felons. I am very wary at this point.”

That C4RJ has a comfy relationship with the Corrections Department is not reassuring.

For decades the prison system used Pierce County as a dumping ground for released felons. It created what County Prosecutor Gerry Horne calls the crime warp. It overloaded our cops, courts and jail and continues to overtax our residents.

On its application, C4RJ listed agency connections as House of Vision, New Beginnings Clean and Sober House, Action Association Counseling Services, Global Outreach Distribution, 4 People, A Choice for Change, Johnson Family Practice and Rebuilding Families.

It did not list agencies and groups it dealt with when it opened a 28-bed facility at 811 S. 11th St. in 2005.

That was during the city’s moratorium on housing for high-risk, high-needs people. The people of the Hilltop and other lower-income neighborhoods demanded that the city adhere to its Comprehensive Plan’s Fair Share policy. They wanted that kind of housing spread around the city, not foisted on their neighborhoods.

C4RJ’s Fresh Start House met immediate, united community opposition. The Hilltop Action Coalition’s Jeanie Peterson, who has worked successfully with other group homes for offenders, tried to work with Lesta Rogers of C4RJ.

“She did meet with us, but when we told her the benefits of a good neighbor agreement and suggested she participate in one, she withdrew,” Peterson said.

Discussions of security and neighborhood impact did not go well, either, Peterson and others said. The relationship has not improved.

“They think about their program and its operations,” Peterson said. “They don’t think about how their program will impact everything else around them.”

She, like Langford, is justifiably suspicious that this program will draw people from outside Pierce County. Even if it does not, it will concentrate the county’s own ex-offenders inside Tacoma.

C4RJ and its community partners operate 14 homes for released offenders, according to its application. Thirteen of them are on the Hilltop and east or south Tacoma. The 14th site is in Parkland, near Pacific Lutheran University. They are looking for more sites.

Unlike the worst Christmas present ever, we can’t return this turkey.

We can, and should, demand more diligence from the state when it funds a program that will have such an impact. Check the facts. Learn the history. Listen to law enforcement and neighborhood councils.

Had the state grant-givers done that, they might have spared us a grant with the potential to further damage neighborhoods that have been harmed for so long by misguided state policy.

Kathleen Merryman: 253-597-8677

kathleen.merryman@thenewstribune.com