Uptown Crime: All About Your Neighborhood Policing Plan

The Minneapolis Police Department compiles annual neighborhood policing plans for all of the city’s neighborhoods; these community-based plans allow the department and neighborhood to zero in on the specific issues faced by each individual neighborhood. These plans lay out specific goals, and evaluate the successes and failures of the previous year’s plans. 2009 plans are not yet available for Uptown’s neighborhoods, but the 2008 plans are compelling reading. Once the 2009 report is out I’ll spend a little more time investigating how things went in 2008. You can read the details for yourself on the city’s website, but to save you some reading I've listed the main goals/targets for each Uptown neighborhood. How do you think the neighborhoods stacked up in the end?

LHENA (the Wedge)

• Robbery suppression: Among other items, two new beat cops attempted to decrease the number of robberies in the neighborhood.
• Reducing residential burglaries: According to the report, there were 165 burglaries in the Wedge in 2007. The majority (approximately two-thirds!) did not require force, suggesting a lot of local residents leave their garages and homes unlocked. The department dedicated some of their time and resources in educating residents in the basics of common sense.
• Reducing theft from motor vehicles: As with burglaries, much of the prevention tactics focused on education. In case you missed the police department’s messages, I’ll repeat it here: please do not leave your purse, laptop, wallet, or valuables in your car.
  Other highlights: The MPD was also planning on working to expand the block club program, and to expand the concept of e-block clubs and the use of technology as an outreach tool. There was also discussion of the creation of a citizen block patrol.

CARAG

• Burglary prevention: The Department had the ambitious goal of eliminating all non-forced-entry burglaries. Education was an important element in this plan, as was an increase of nighttime patrols.
• Reducing drug trafficking: The 2008 goal was to reduce local drug sales by five percent.
• Increased curfew and truancy enforcement: Exactly what it sounds like: get kids off the streets and in bed or at school.
• Other highlights: Community involvement and engagement continues to be the common thread between all of these plans. In CARAG that means involvement with neighborhood meetings, encouraging block clubs, the continuation of a citizen “stroll patrol,” a group formed following the 2006 murder of Michael Zebuhr.

EAST ISLES
Interestingly, although perhaps understandably, despite the very low rate of violent crime in East Isles (nearly all crime is property-related), the report notes that residents are focused on the scarier stuff.

• Reducing residential burglaries: As with other local neighborhoods, two-thirds of residential burglaries did not involve forced entry. Lock your doors, people!
• Reducing theft from cars: Also like other area neighborhoods, East Isles gets a lot of people, residents and otherwise, who leave their valuables in their car.
• Other highlights: Continued block club expansion, the use of technology for communication with the community, and the creation of a citizen block patrol were all discussed.

ECCO

• Reducing theft from vehicles and car theft: The police intended to address the car theft (both from and of) through increased patrols and education.
• Reducing burglaries: While 2007 crime mostly went down, burglaries actually went up. The 2008 plan attempted to address this problem through increased and targeted patrols as well as increased enforcement of curfew and truancy laws.
• Other highlights: The Police Department expected to continue to strengthen and expand community relations, as well as to increasingly use technology to enhance communication.

Overall, Uptown is a pretty safe place. There is crime, of course, and residents and visitors alike need to take the standard basic precautions, but overall Uptown seems to be in pretty good shape. I might complain at times about the neighborhood organizations, but they have taken on a strong role in working hand-in-hand with the police to help keep the area’s streets safe and crime at bay. Given that crime – or even the perception of crime – can really impact a neighborhood in negative way (let alone the people it directly touches), it’s essential that community members and the police continue to come together to address crime of all types, from the broken car window to the more serious and scary crimes like robbery or assault.

And please, please, remember to lock your garage, your house, and your car.

Remember When Uptown Was "Bad"?

Remember back when people were scared to visit Uptown? When it was seedy and scary and "bad?" When people with kids moved away to "safer" neighborhoods? No? Well, I don't either, and I've been around more than a couple of decades.

This is a common enough refrain, though. I suppose each person has his or her own definition of what makes a neighborhood "bad." Still, despite occasional pockets of crime or problem houses, the main Uptown neighborhoods - CARAG, the Wedge, East Isles, and ECCO - have never been considered scary places to live or visit. Well, maybe they were by some people, but those people probably think everyone in city limits packs heat anyway.

So who is saying this and why do they continue to do so? A 2006 Uptown Neighborhood News profile of ECCO board member Tim Prinsen, a "born and bred" Minnesotan who moved to Uptown in 2001, remembers the '90s as a time when "people used to be nervous about coming into Uptown." While that is undoubtedly true, I think it's also fair to say that many of those people were basing their fear not on facts, but on misperceptions. And, unfortunately, perceptions take on the mantle of reality, especially when it comes to city neighborhoods. I doubt that many people actually living in Uptown at the time considered it to be scary or dangerous.

Although I don't fault Prinsen for that statement (yes, some people were nervous about Uptown although unjustifably so), I don't agree with him on his next point: "Tim remembers a time when young couples would move to the area, but once they had children they would move out. Tim and his wife are an example of how that is no longer the case."

I was born in Uptown. I grew up in Uptown, as did many other kids on my block, in my neighborhood, and at my school. If anything, Prinsen has it backwards. Young couples used to come to Uptown because they could afford to raise a family here. In more recent years young couples with children are moving away, not because they don't want to raise their kids here, but because they can't afford to buy a home in the neighborhood. I think it's wonderful that he and his family are able to live here, and hope that more families will have the opportunity to follow in their footsteps. An integrated community filled with people from all stages of life will make this a better place for all of us.

It would be one thing if this was just one isolated example of a reference to Uptown's scary past, but the revisionist history of Uptown's bad years is still around. Take Lara Norkus-Crampton's recent comments to the Southwest Journal, for example. I've discussed it in prior posts, but it bears repeating. "This area wasn't always seen as such a perfect place," attests Norkus-Crampton, There were parts of Uptown considered borderline." Norkus-Crampton is an ECCO resident and, unfortunately, a Minneapolis Planning Commissioner (as well as a newly-announced Ward 10 City Council candidate). I don't know what her definition of "borderline" is, but her comments only reinforce my impression that she is either unaware of Uptown's true history, or, possibly, finds the very attributes that made Uptown so popular to so many people - the "weird" and the artsy, the economically, age, and racially diverse, people who work blue collar jobs - to be uncomfortable.

In Lara Norkus-Crampton and other's defense, I suppose, I should note that Uptown in the 1960s and 1970s had its issues. It was, in fact, a very controversial designation of Hennepin and Lake as "blighted" that paved the way for the creation of Calhoun Square. Maybe Norkus-Crampton is talking about this era, although to many people Uptown wasn't "borderline" even then, it was just dumpier and and not as yuppified. What I just can't understand, as much as I think about it, is how anyone can make an argument that Uptown of the late '80s into the '90s was somehow a dangerous or even borderline neighborhood.

I'm tired of revisionist history. Uptown has had its ups and downs, but there's no point in highlighting a "bad" or "borderline" past that just doesn't exist. Why, then, do people insist on perpetuating this myth? Perhaps they like to envision themselves as urban cowboys, living in a tough neighborhood, turning it around through the toils of their labor. Or perhaps they just think living in a neighborhood without a North Face was really slumming it.

Violence is Violence

More than 400 people marched in support of local resident Kristen Boyne following her recent brutal beating. Boyne is a lesbian, and the two men who beat her used that as an excuse for their inexcusable behavior.

I think it's great that so many people in Uptown - and beyond - showed up to make the statement that we should be able to walk Uptown's streets, regardless of time of day or sexual orientation. What bugs me is that constant talk about this as a hate crime. I have mixed feelings about hate crimes; isn't a crime a crime? There may be times when it is appropriate to label something a hate crime. Someone who was systematically terrorizing a particular group of people to make a point would fall into that category. A team of men who roam the streets looking for lesbians (actual or just perceived) could fit into that definition. But two men who brutally beat a woman because she was out on the street? Like I said in an earlier post, the anti-lesbian aspect of this is the least of my worries. Who's to say that they would have just as happily beaten any unfortunate person who crossed their path? It's not like those of us who aren't lesbians can just breath a big sigh of relief because we're off the hook and wouldn't be bothered by these kind of thugs. Violence is violence, and the kind of people who would do something like this aren't going to be models of citizenship in the non-homophobic parts of their lives.

Discriminating against someone based on their sexual identity, let alone beating them, is, of course, completely unacceptable. That's not the point. The point is that EVERYONE should be able to walk the streets at night without being mugged, raped, beaten, murdered, hit on the head, or harassed in any shape or form. That does appear to be the main point of the march, at least, but the hate crime aspect does at times overtake the more basic issue of safe streets for all.

Some other questions: I've read that Boyne herself called 911 (or possibly a friend who then called 911 on her behalf) from her cell phone after awaking post-attack. If this is true, then one of the most troubling parts of this whole situation is that someone could be beaten brutally on a busy street in an urban area without anyone noticing. That scares me more than anything. Random, violent crime can happen anywhere, and even if we can't prevent horrible things from happening we should at least be able to respond to it quickly. We owe it to the victims.

Uptown Attack

It's things like this that really shock a neighborhood. A local resident - a woman walking home from work, stopping in at the store to get some ice cream before bed - is beaten by men who call her a lesbian. How could this, a hate crime, happen in Uptown of all places? Here, where we pride ourselves on being open and accepting? I don't know the latest, or if they've caught the jerks who did this. I have no idea where they live, or what they have against lesbians. It could just have been that they were out driving (walking?) around looking for trouble, and this woman was the unfortunate victim who first crossed their path.

There's only so much that Uptown can do to protect our streets. Uptown isn't a bubble; even if we rid the area of our own in-house criminals (and unfortunately they do exist) we can't block out others coming in from elsewhere. It's a trade-off - as long as Uptown is a desirable place to visit there will always be both wanted and unwanted visitors. That doesn't mean we should give up. People should be able to walk home from work even late at night. We should be able to stop by the store to pick up a late night quart of rocky road. Gay people, straight people, young people, old people - we should all be able to walk the streets of our own neighborhood without being mugged or assaulted.

Let's avoid the temptation to make this into a "hate crime" issue. Yes, she was possibly attacked because she was (or was perceived to be) a lesbian, but I doubt that this one incident suggests a rise of anti-gay sentiment in Minneapolis or Uptown. I don't care why these guys attacked her - what matters is that they did. Whether it's someone being mugged for $20, a woman beaten because of her sexual orientation, or someone attacked or assaulted for any other reason, the end result is the same. It's not just lesbians who are scared by this horrible attack; these men have shattered everyone's sense of safety. Let's leave it to others to focus on the sexual orientation aspect of this incident; as Uptowners we should be concerned about any such attacks on a fellow resident (or anyone else passing through our streets), regardless of motive. Let's focus on making our streets safer for everyone and make it clear that crimes - hate crimes or otherwise - are not welcome on these streets.