NETS program calms neighborhood
- Font Size:
- Default font size
- Larger font size
By Tom Saul | Monday, January 30, 2006 |
Photos by Jeff Cook/QUAD-CITY TIMES Davenport Police officers Bob Bytnar, left, and Scott Fuller chat with Shirley Kitchens in front of her home on Paul Revere Place. Police have found they meet more residents in this northwest Davenport neighborhood by patrolling on foot or riding mountain bikes.
In its first six months, Capt. Kevin Murphy says the Davenport police Neighborhoods Enhanced Towards Success, or NETS, program has shown results in one of the city’s most troubled neighborhoods.
“All the numbers are going in the right direction,” Murphy said of crime statistics collected from June 13 to Dec. 31 in the Goose Creek Heights neighborhood where police launched NETS last summer.
Overall, the number of reported crimes in Goose Creek Heights plunged 33 percent in the past six months when compared with the same period in 2004.
Some types of violent and nuisance crimes have seen even steeper drops, according to a report given to aldermen earlier this month. Shots fired were down 60 percent. Vice crimes decreased 62 percent. Parking and traffic violations were down 68 percent.
At the same time, police are making far more vehicle stops, serving a greater number of warrants and dealing more aggressively with things such as abandoned vehicles.
“We can spend more time there so we can get at what the real issues are,” said Bob Welch, one of three police officers who devote all their time along with a sergeant who spends half his time on NETS. “We’re giving citizens the time they deserve. That’s when you see long-term effects of this instead of just putting a Band-Aid on it.”
NETS sprang from a experiment during 2004 in the Taylor Heights area of the central city where police and other city departments spent several days cracking down on crime and neighborhood nuisances. A few days after the experiment concluded, city officials and others traveled to Dubuque, where they received a presentation on the impact of community policing there.
But some in the neighborhood are not fully convinced yet by the impact of NETS, a program that uses community policing techniques, “close enforcement” of even the smallest infractions and partnerships with other city departments and agencies to deal with non-law enforcement matters.
Many are holding their breath with the approach of spring and especially summer, a time when there are plenty of people milling around the neighborhood with nothing to do and when crime skyrockets.
Steve Nichols, 52, has lived in the 6400 block of Western Avenue for 19 years and said he has yet to see the NETS officers walk down his street. His property is protected by a camera that watches the back yard, lights attached to a motion sensor in his driveway and a rambunctious dog that had to be shut away before he could talk to a reporter at his front door.
Nichols said he also makes a point of cleaning his firearms at a back yard picnic table “because I want people around here to know that I have guns in this house. If I didn’t, people would break in.”
Loitering, drug dealing and a profusion of rental housing in the neighborhood where some landlords do not seem at all picky about whom they rent to contributes to the problem, he said. Nichols would like to move, but believes he would not be able to get what his house is worth if it were located in a better Davenport neighborhood.
“Now, it’s wintertime so you don’t see much going on,” he said. “In the summertime is when all the kids are out and they don’t have anything to do. That’s when we have trouble.”
As a former Neighborhood Watch block captain, Nichols said he has called the police plenty about crimes and disturbances. He also called on behalf of neighbors who were afraid of retaliation if their name appeared on a complaint.
He continues listening to a police radio scanner in his home and says that officers sometimes will not come into the neighborhood to investigate a disturbance or crime until a back-up squad arrives.
Dina, who lives across the street from Nichols in the 600 block of West 64th Street and did not want to give a reporter her last name, said she agrees the true test of the NETS program will come this summer. In the meantime, she added, the intense focus of the NETS officers on her neighborhood has been as much of an inconvenience as a help.
“A lot of times they’re at the exits to the neighborhood, pulling people over in the morning when we’re going to work,” she said. “I got pulled over once because the cop said I didn’t have a front license plate. When I showed it to him, he said, ‘Oh, yes, you do.’ ”
Others in the neighborhood say they love the extra attention Goose Creek Heights is getting from the police. Tara Rico, 30, also of the 600 block of West 64th Street, said she feels safer in her home and yard these days.
Wardean Allen, 65, a nine-year resident of West 64th, said she has noticed a decrease in fights, booming music and people running through yards since the NETS officers have been on the scene. But what she finds really telling is the thing she does not hear as frequently, Allen said.
“There’s not all that gunfire all the time,” she said. “It’s been a long time since I heard that.”
Also gone are the crowds of people that used to congregate outside his apartment buildings in the 300 block of West 65th Street, said Darin Garman, a Cedar Rapids, Iowa, landlord who owns the 60-unit Lexington Manor Apartments.
They intimidated tenants, left behind garbage and damaged landscaping and items such as air-conditioning units, he said. When he bought the apartments two years ago, Garman added, it was normal to see anywhere from 12 to 20 people hanging around outside one of his buildings. At one point, he had a property manager stay in a vacant apartment all night just to observe traffic through the neighborhood and the comings and goings from his buildings.
“You’d have people hanging around causing trouble and then a small skirmish would break out and you’d have a real problem,” he said. “When the sun went down, that’s when things really go intense. There was gunfire. You could basically drive in here and not know what to expect.”
With the arrival of the NETS officers and the exit of the crowds hanging around, things have quieted down considerably, he said. The officers visit frequently and they make an effort to get to know tenants as well as his people on-site, he said. They also exchange information about what is going on in the area.
Sgt. Mark Hanssen, the NETS supervisor, said getting to know tenants and landlords has been part of the strategy for the unit. It harkens back to the era of neighborhood cops when officers knew the good and bad people on their beat and is a more effective way to do policing, he added.
“We take a call from the beginning and follow through until there is an arrest, rather than the usual fragmented approach traditionally used by law enforcement,” he said. “If we could do it on a larger scale, that would be great, but we have get the department and the community to buy into it. In the long term, this is a more effective way to do policing.”
The NETS officers do many things as a matter of routine he has rarely seen during his 20-year career in law enforcement, said Scott Fuller, another NETS officer.
They ride bikes through the neighborhood or get out of their cars and walk and talk. They also work regularly with city housing code enforcement officers, public works employees and the city legal department to deal with things that are not crimes but do detract from the quality of life in the neighborhood, he said.
“Code enforcement has been a huge asset to us,” Fuller said. “As we patrol, we notice things. A screen off an apartment or an abandoned vehicle or garbage, we pass that information along to code enforcement and it’s taken care of the next day.”
All of the attention in the past six months has bumped Goose Creek Heights from “the top of the charts” in terms of crimes reported to a more peaceful neighborhood where activity that would attract the police has begun to moderate, Murphy said.
This summer, the city plans to coordinate activities there that will attempt to occupy children and keep them out of trouble, he added.
“This makes a good case for expanding the program,” Murphy said. “To this point, it is paying for itself.”
Tom Saul can be contacted at (563) 383-2453 or tsaul@qctimes.com.
del.icio.us
Digg
NewsVine
Fark
reddit» More Local Stories
Highest Rated Articles from the last 7 Days
- 2008 Diet Of The Year:
- Finally, A Diet That Really Works! Seen On CNN, NBC, CBS & Fox News.
- www.Wu-YiSource.com
- Cheap Airfare
- Compare multiple travel sites. Discount web fares made easy.
- www.LowFares.com
- Technology News Articles
- Computers, MP3, Phones & More. See Product Pics, Specs & Reviews.
- www.NexTag.com
- Ads by Yahoo!
