While I've yet to be convinced that adding surveillance cameras to our downtown streets would be a good idea, I do want to point out one thing about crime rates.
Looking at the year-end summary for 2001's CODEFOR statistics, the neighborhood that reported the most crimes (of those that are tracked by CODEFOR) was Downtown West at 2410 incidents, mostly thefts. This was twice the number reported by the next highest neighborhood, which was Whittier at 1201 incidents, again mostly thefts. In contrast, Jordan had 799 incidents, Hawthorne had 665 incidents, Ventura Village had 709 incidents and adding up all four of the Phillips neighborhood segments gets to 1189 incidents. Downtown West may not be an "impacted neighborhood" but it has WAY more traffic of all kinds than any of these neighborhoods. I suspect that would be attractive to the criminal element. So I don't think this is a case of City Hall ignoring the impacted neighborhoods in favor of downtown. The statistics would suggest that downtown does have a significant enough crime problem to warrant the attention. Mark Snyder Windom Park On 6/2/03 6:25 PM, "Peter T Schmitz" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > But why the preferential treatment for Downtown, especially when the > Jordan and Phillips neighborhood are more besieged by drug peddlers and > gangs? Also, I've seen more panhandlers in Uptown near where I live than > Downtown. Why not distribute the benefits, dubious as they may be, > according to the greatest need? > > While folks at City Hall may talk about how concerned they are about > Jordan, it's obvious their priorities are > elsewhere.----------------------Peter Schmitz CARAG TEMPORARY REMINDER: 1. Don't feed the troll! Ignore obvious flame-bait. 2. If you don't like what's being discussed here, don't complain - change the subject (Mpls-specific, of course.) ________________________________ Minneapolis Issues Forum - A City-focused Civic Discussion - Mn E-Democracy Post messages to: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Subscribe, Unsubscribe, Digest, and more: http://e-democracy.org/mpls
