Dennis Plante wrote:
I'd feel much better about using statistical crime stats to analyze the quality of life we're experiencing in our city, if there were some bigger plan in place that would allow us (as citizens) to determine whether or elected officials and paid officials were actually doing a good job.
WM: Statistical crime stats don't mean much to me, living as I do, in the middle of the whole enchilada on Lake St. However, there are some encouraging realities. Last summer we had shots fired every other minute it seems, certainly no five day period went by without shots fired. Four people were shot, one (I think) died. There was a spectacular arson fire across the alley and down a few houses and a store was fire-bombed. A woman walking home from the bus was shot 4 times by a jerk with a gun. He wanted her wallet.
By no means has this stretch of Lake St. become a yuppie haven or a Disney fantasy in pastel colors. We still have street dealers up the wazoo, we still have pavement princesses who will do darn near anything for 20 bucks, we still have junkies wandering around in a haze and at least one totally gone person with an invisible friend, it would appear, from his one man conversations. Our last 911 call was two nights ago for some jerk trying to beat the p-waddy out of a woman.
I know it's due in part to police attention in the area. I'm assuming they pulled out key gang players, but I don't know it. All in all, it's been kept down to a low roar so far this year. I know targeted resources from Green Central Weed & Seed had something to do with that. Sabri, though he may be largely castigatable, did us a favor in bringing back several buildings over the past six or seven years, and planting a building on vacant land that had been nothing but grief. James Walker's Aftercare had something to do with it, and block clubs that work with each other and police have something to do with it. Central Neighborhood Improvement Assn.'s NRP money had a huge amount to do with it. Immigrants had something to do with it.
Is it the suburbs? Jeez, I hope not, that's not my ecological niche. Is it pastoral? Nope. But it's way, way better than it was. Everybody working together produced a big improvement and the cops have been part of it.
Part of that is that both the police and we have undergone a change of attitude. Hurrah for us!
However, I will say that when I was up to my armpits in alligators, I may have made one or two unkind remarks.
WizardMarks, Central
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