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Sunday, February 04, 2007

Crime Migrating To Suburbs

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posted by Bob at Sunday, February 04, 2007

3 Comments:

Blogger Bob said...

Suburbs combat crime's migration
Police in Brooklyn Center and Brooklyn Park are working with Minneapolis officials as serious crimes jump. "It's not just an urban problem," one chief said.
By Jim Adams, Star Tribune
Last update: February 04, 2007 – 8:52 AM

Suburbs combat crime's migration

Violent crime is rising in Brooklyn Park and Brooklyn Center, and police in the two suburbs are joining with Minneapolis to fight the surge.
"We believe we are on the front end of a crime increase," Brooklyn Park Chief Wade Setter said at a January news conference after a 21-year-old mother and her boyfriend were killed in a parking-lot shooting. "What happens in Minneapolis and St. Paul affects all of us in the suburbs to some degree."

Said Brooklyn Center Chief Scott Bechthold: "It's not just an urban problem. It is emanating outward."

The two chiefs met recently with Minneapolis and Hennepin County law enforcers to plan a joint task force to tackle violent crime in the three cities. They hope to have a full-time team of officers working together by summer, Bechthold said. He noted that Minneapolis officers last fall helped train officers in several suburbs to focus patrols and surveillance on crime hot spots.

Bechthold's first-ring northwest suburb of 28,600, bordering Minneapolis' North Side, has seen jumps in robberies and other serious crimes. That includes a fatal shooting early this morning and a fatal freeway shooting in December.

That incident began in north Minneapolis, and several St. Paul residents were charged.

In Brooklyn Park, robberies nearly doubled to 159 last year and were the prime contributor to its violent-crime increase. Unlike its fully developed neighbor, Brooklyn Park is still adding homes, schools and businesses on its north end.

At the Chiseler barbershop on the south side of Brooklyn Park a robber threatened a clerk last fall and took cash, said barber Byron Bynum.

And while barbershop chatter of late has focused on the double killing and other crimes in the city, "We don't walk around in fear of it, but we watch out for it," Bynum said.

Crime trends in the suburbs follow the recent rise in violent crime (murder, rape, robbery and aggravated assault) in Minneapolis and other large U.S. cities.

Demographics play a role

Criminologist and University of Minnesota Prof. Candice Kruttschnitt cited certain demographics as playing a role locally and nationally: the share of a city's population in the crime-prone 15-24 age group and the percentage of owner-occupied housing, as well as the prevalence of unemployment, poverty and single-parent families.

Kruttschnitt said that generally crime rates drop in areas farther from the inner cities, partly because neighborhoods become more stable as the share of owner-occupied housing increases and poverty and unemployment often decline. Census data show the share of rental units was 47 percent in Minneapolis and 41 percent in St. Paul in 2005, vs. 26 percent for the metro area. Brooklyn Park and Brooklyn Center had slightly higher rental rates than the metro average.

Bechthold said he is not surprised that his city's rate for serious crime has been close to Minneapolis' since 2002.

"Brooklyn Center is a transitional city. We are a mixture of urban and suburban," he said. "Our population density is higher, closer to that in Minneapolis than in the third or fourth rings [of suburbs].

"There is a big difference between someone who buys a home and settles down and a person who rents an apartment and might be gone in a year."

Bechthold said his department constantly analyzes crime and works with neighborhood clubs. He said the most common concerns he hears from residents are about traffic and housing-code violations. He said calls for service have been slowly rising in his five years, to 28,644 last year. State funding cuts, meanwhile, have reduced his force by a few positions, leaving him with 43 officers now, he said.

Bechthold said theft in stores and other businesses, including the Brookdale Mall area, is behind much of Brooklyn Center's crime troubles, highlighted by a 50 percent rise in robberies (to 89) and rapes (31) in 2006. He said police know many of the victims and offenders, who are often teenagers or young adults with easy access to firearms.

Crime creeps outward

Bechthold said he thinks tougher enforcement in Minneapolis has pushed crime to nearby cities.

When cops crack down on crime in one area, it's no secret that crooks move on, but not very far, said Ross Macmillan, another criminologist at the University of Minnesota. He said Brooklyn Center's large commercial and retail areas are likely targets for criminals leaving Minneapolis.

Minneapolis police Lt. Greg Reinhardt, a former city crime analyst, said some crimes such as business robberies and assaults migrate to suburbs.

Criminals "may start in Minneapolis and end up in Brooklyn Center," Reinhardt said. Police have seen gang activity move between Minneapolis and St. Paul, and he suspects it also spreads to suburbia, he said. And crooks who do identity and check theft or vehicle break-ins often work a circuit between suburbs and the core cities in the hope of eluding police, he added.

Concerns about crime led a group of Brooklyn Park residents to a City Council meeting in August to ask for more patrols. One of those residents, Jesse Whipps, lives just blocks from last month's double homicide outside an apartment building. He said the single-family neighborhood he moved into four-plus years ago has since seen several homes opened to renters, some of whom he suspects are dealing drugs.

Whipps' younger son attends Crestview Elementary School, smack in the middle of the two fatal shootings on Zane Avenue since August. Whipps said he obtained a gun permit after the double homicide and built a 6-foot-high privacy fence in his back yard to safeguard his children.

"I don't let them play out front," he said. "I'm afraid of a drive-by shooting. We haven't had any, but these guys [in the latest homicide] used a pistol and an assault rifle. What if we had another lovers' quarrel or a drug deal gone bad?"

Researcher Roberta Hovde contributed to this report. Jim Adams • 612-673-7658 • jadams@startribune.com

11:31 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Sounds to me like the goal of St.Paul and Mpls. is working, They are chasing the behavior issues of the offenders out of the city into the suburbs just as they planned. That is a cowards way of dealing with a problem, would it be that difficult to arrest the offenders and deal with the actual crimes?

12:39 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

It's not that difficult to arrest them. Thr problrm id thst they donot want to pay for the cost associated with the arrests. It's cheaper to chase them out.

2:17 PM  

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