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With hot dogs grilled by Stillwood neighbor, John Anderson, and a very cool dog that “stole the show” from APD’s K9 Unit led by Sgt. Mike Fitzgerald, North Shoal Creek neighbors celebrated National Night Out in a big way at Pillow Elementary! Austin Fire Department brought their impressive ladder truck and gave away two fire extinguishers courtesy of Lowes. APD District Rep James Hellums hung out with us as we discussed current crime issues and the need for our neighborhood to be aware of crime activity that happens around us, the importance of reporting crime to 911 or 311, and a sense of community that allows us to know and watch out for each other.Click here for photos of the event.
Special thanks to Bryan Hardeman and the Austin Infiniti Dealership on Burnet Rd for his financial support of this event. Debbie Luna from Randolph Brooks was on hand to help with water bottles, glow necklaces and some gift certificates to Target and Home Depot. Special thanks to Lowes for door prizes: two personal safes, a motion detector floodlight, two fire extinguishers. Cothrons Lock and Key gave us two combination key holders. Austin Energy gave us energy efficient light bulbs to remind us about turning on our porch lights to fight crime at night. Also in kind donations were made by Dairy Queen, Mrs. Baird’s Bread, Sonic, Picky’s Pantry at Steck and Burnet.
Extra special thanks to the whole Anderson family: John and Denise, Caleb, Ben, Lauren and Arial, who presided as our hosts that evening and made the event go so smoothly. Thanks to Linda Wilson for her assistance with checking people in and making them feel welcomed. Thanks to Malcolm St. Romain for his assistance with the presentation, not to mention his “neighborhood event” sized grill.
There were 126 attendees including a baby less than a year old, all the way to Flossie Sweat, 100 year old resident of our neighborhood who still lives in her own house, who found the time, motivation and strength to come and participate in National Night Out. We were honored by her presence.
Stillwood residents won the energy efficient bulbs for having the highest number of attendees.
Thanks to everyone who made it a success!!!
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Toby Futrell, the City Manager, invited representatives from all Austin neighbhorhood groups to attend a town hall meeting on July 19th of this year. You can view the invitation here. The City staff were busy putting together 2008’s proposed budget and wanted to get feedback from the neighborhoods before finalizing it. During this event, more than 100 neighborhood groups were represented and the top priorities of each neighborhood was discussed. Our President, Malcolm St. Romain attended the meeting and discussed our top issues with many people.
Today, we received a letter from Toby with the results of that meeting, containing a list of the top 5 priorities most sought after by neighborhood groups as well as a detailed description of each top priority with information on how much money each will get in the proposed 2008 budget.
You can read the letter here.
And please feel free to go to the new discussion forum and discuss it in more detail. Tell us what you think…
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Sandy Perkins provided some photos from this year’s 4th of July Parade. 2007 4th of July Parade photos
If you have any photos you would like to share from this event, please email them to Chris Jones at webmaster @ nscna dot org.
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The block captains distributed flyers to all residents last week inviting everyone to the National Night Out event on Tuesday August 7th at Pillow Elementary. If you did not get a flyer, click “Continue reading” to read a copy.
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APD held their second quarterly Commanders Forum at Barrington Elementary on May 8th at 7:00pm. Commander Al Eells and District Rep Sgt. William Beechinor gave a presentation on the following agenda:An award of recognition was presented to Wooten resident Evan Rifee for his assistance in apprehending a suspect that is being investigated in connection with 16 BOV (Burglary of a Vehicle) crimes across the area. Mr. Rifee noticed the individual looking in car windows and called 911. He was able to give a detailed description of the suspect to APD and stayed in the area to direct APD to the suspect’s whereabouts.
Another award was presented to Sr. Police Officer Jason Chiappardi for Officer of the Quarter, Jan – Mar 2007 for the North Central Command Area.
Office Mike Young made a presentation about a “crack house” at 9011 Slayton Dr. This residence was owned by one woman for many years and after she died, the house was held up in probate due to disputes over the inheritance of the property. In the meantime, it became a haven for crack addicts. Forty individuals had been arrested at this residence over just a few months and each gave this address as their “home”. Due to the complexity of dealing with the ownership of the house in limbo, APD had to employ some extraordinary efforts to clear out the bad elements and get the house cleaned up. It is still an ongoing situation.
Officer Lee Davis gave a presentation on Project 2007 where 1500 UT students volunteered through various UT organizations to clean up a very blighted area.
Commander Al Eells gave a presentation of crime stat trends for the North Central Command Area. Below is a summary comparison with some other sectors. Note the area in sq miles difference between NCAC and NWAC:
Crime Category N CENTRAL AREA COMMAND (13 SQ MILES) NE AREA COMMAND NW AREA COMMAND (45 SQ MILES)
MURDER N/A 200% -100%
RAPE 25% +30% -42%
ROBBERY -23% +6% -31%
AGG ASSAULT -4% +14% -23%
TOT VIOLENT CRIME -9% +13% -30%
BURGLARY +30% +33% +15%
THEFT -2% +21% +3%
BURGLARY OF VEH -2% +17% +5%
AUTO THEFT +24% +71% +40%
TOT PROPERTY CRIME +6% +26% +5%
Commander Eells attributed the drop in robberies to the new bike patrols, removing undesirable people from the neighborhoods (transients, drug arrests, prostitution arrests). Burglaries are up all through the city. Auto Theft is also up. The category of Rape is mostly where the attacker was known to the victim, not random attacks.
North Central Command is half-way through their N. Lamar Clean up. The N. Lamar corridor is by far, the most crime ridden area in the whole sector and so efforts are being concentrated here for curfew enforcement, more bike patrols, bait vehicles to entrap Auto Theft attempts, shutting down transient camps, abatement work and passing out crime prevention info.
Officer Lee Davis offered to come to a any resident’s house and perform a free security analysis of the property. He can give some good suggestions for how to “crime proof” your property. To contact him call 834-7456, or Kay Vargas at 834-7402.
There will also be an opportunity to have your car windows etched with the vin number. This results in the windows being traceable in case of auto theft. It also may represent a discount from your car insurance carrier. Details will be announced later.
