The 3rd quarterly Commanders Forum was held on Tuesday, August 14th, 2007 at Austin Revival Center, 305 Deen Avenue at 7:00pm. Attending from North Shoal Creek Neighborhood Assn was Mary Arnett, Jo McFerren, and Margaret Flaniken. First on the agenda was District Rep Mike Young who gave an update on the Slayton Dr house which had been the target of an intensive effort to clean up the property and make it safe for children walking to Barrington Elementary. There had been numerous issues with the ownership of the property. A resolution of the issue was achieved when several of the persons who had a joint interest in the property were arrested on various drug or other charges and an investor from the community stepped forward to buy out their interests and the remaining owners interest in the property. The house is now boarded up and safe for the neighborhood.
The N. Lamar Corridor Property Crime Reduction Initiative included an APD “audit” of several retail parking lots where customers vehicles were looked over by APD to determine if they “pass or fail” the inspection. APD was looking for valuables in plain view, unlocked vehicles, or other temptations to criminals for car break ins. A note was left on cars letting people know if their car passed/failed. The effort was to raise awareness of what each person can do to reduce the opportunity crimes that are so numerous in this area.
Since this Initiative has been under way for the last several months, this area has experienced a 22% reduction in property crime.
Operation Good Neighbor continues on Sam Rayburn drive. There are still problems, but APD is making the neighborhoods safer by incentivizing landlords to clean up areas, improve tenants. APD has been using the mounted patrols and bike patrols to make themselves visible in the area. There has been a 65 to 85% reduction in certain crimes for this area. A good sign that things are working is that children can now be seen playing in the open, whereas before, they stayed inside too afraid to venture out.
A Night Without Crime walk through the streets was held along Lamar and Rundberg lane with 500+ attendees. These people represented 70,000 residents from many surrounding neighborhoods. It was designed to put criminals and businesses on notice that drug, prostitution and other activities will not be tolerated.
District Reps offices are now moving to Barrington Elementary to provide more visibility to this troubled neighborhood. The Dr’s number is still 974-5722.
North Austin Coalition of Neighborhood leaders will be provided with a new operations plan at a special meeting to be called in the near future.
Former commander Al Eells, (newly promoted to Assistant Chief) presented his last North Bureau Crime Stats for Year to Date Jan to June 2007 and compares with Northeast Area Command and Northwest Area Command.
The newest Commander for the North Bureau (Formerly the North Central Command area) is Commander Phil Crochet, former staff commander for the South Central Command. South Central has shared some of the same characteristics of the North Central Command Area in that there are large groupings of the immigrant community with the same set of problems that can bring. Immigrants can quickly become targets for drug dealers and prostitutes as some people do not believe they can call the police if they are robbed or assaulted.
Larry Hardison is the new president of North Austin Coalition of Neighborhoods and he spoke briefly about his support and plans for working more closely with APD to clean up the Rundberg area.
Art Acevedo arrived. He awarded a commendation to District Rep Lee Davis who mugged for the cameras shamelessly. Acevedo spoke of some of the accelerated changes that he is bringing about in the organizational infrastructure of the police department: recentralized motorcycle units for better traffic enforcement, partnering with DPS on enforcement and patrol of IH35 and other freeways, Street Response was moved to central command under Duane McNeil. Acevedo is hoping for some new strategies for quickly moving patrol assets throughout the city to respond to ever changing priorities in crime waves.
Meeting was adjourned around 8:30pm
submitted by Mary Arnett
