Building on
Success:
Anti-Crime
Initiatives Lead to New Investments at Chicago-Lake
October 2003—"Chicago-Lake
has long been an 'if only' intersection," said John Wolf,
owner of Chicago-Lake Liquors. "People would say, 'With so
much traffic, this would be a great location to invest if
only the crime wasn't so bad. Now crime is down and we have
the right conditions to make those investments."
Wolf should know. A
member of the Chicago-Lake Business Association, he became
part the Chicago-Lake Crime Workgroup, one of most successful
neighborhood-level anti-crime efforts in the city. And he
is the investor behind one of two ongoing redevelopments of
storefront businesses at Chicago-Lake that total more than
$1 million.
Wolf is backing the
construction of a Mexican eatery, Carne Asada, to be operated
by Ernesto Reyes, whose Me Gusta restaurants are among the
best-known on East Lake Street. Across the street, on the
intersection's northeast corner, Peter Boosalis is remodeling
for a Foot Locker shoe store and other new retail tenants.
"My family has owned
this building since 1909," said Boosalis. "They were the first
Greek immigrants in the city. So this corner is in my blood.
It feels great to be expanding rather than waiting out the
bad times, as we've had to do for many years. The corner is
more stable, and that gave me the confidence to move ahead."
These significant
reinvestments come only a year after a neighborhood group
approached the Phillips Partnership seeking leadership in
addressing a particularly disturbing spike in crime. When
the partnership formed the Chicago-Lake Crime Workgroup in
March 2002, the crime rates were twice what they are today.
Chicago-Lake
Intervention
By building strategies
to fight quality-of-life issues like corner drug dealing and
litter, the Chicago-Lake Crime Workgroup created a model for
targeted enforcement. The workgroup focused intensely on coordinating
the efforts of several law-enforcement jurisdictions and neighborhood
initiatives. The major results were constant patrolling, stepped-up
parole monitoring and a near-daily schedule of street cleaning.
"The corner is mostly
calm. It's as clean as I've ever seen it," said Ted Muller,
executive director of the Lake Street Council and a member
of the Chicago-Lake Crime Workgroup. "We did a lot of good
by making our presence felt."
Ten months after
its creation, the Chicago-Lake workgroup issued a final report
in February that proposed the formation of a law-enforcement
partnership that would apply the crime-reduction strategies
of the Chicago-Lake intervention throughout the Lake Street
corridor in Phillips.
"We set up the crime
workgroup and the crime rate fell," said Hennepin County Commissioner
Peter McLaughlin. "Now we need to see this happen all along
Lake."
That mission has
been entrusted to the Phillips Police Probation Partnership,
or P4, a new alliance of enforcement officers from Minneapolis
police, county probation and Metro Transit. The 11-member
group also includes city and county attorneys and neighborhood
representatives. The Phillips Partnership provides a staff
member to convene and support the group.
At P4's core is a
probation-based strategy--considered the central accomplishment
of the Chicago-Lake workgroup--that targets repeat offenders
who return to a regular hangout after serving short jail sentences
for misdemeanors.
"We expect this new
crime fighting partnership to continue with a sense of urgency,"
said McLaughlin. He said P4's initial operational focus is
Lake Street between Chicago and Bloomington Avenues.
Cooperation
Finds Answers, Raises Questions
When the intervention began, the Crime Workgroup's goal was
to explore cooperative solutions for improving public safety
at the intersection.
First, the Minneapolis
Police Department and Metro Transit Police aligned their schedules,
ensuring the intersection would have continual patrolling
from 2 pm to 2 am. This measure stayed in effect from April
to October, 2002.
The workgroup analyzed
crime at the intersection and found that misdemeanors committed
by repeat offenders already on probation accounted for the
bulk of the activity. This finding became the central element
in the workgroup's response.
McLaughlin and Commissioner
Mark Stenglein sponsored a resolution authorizing $5 million
dollars for neighborhood-based enforcement. The county board
then earmarked a portion of this funding for the addition
of two probation officers stationed in the Phillips neighborhood.
The workgroup tied
stepped-up law enforcement to other methods of crime deterrence.
One step was to coordinate a regular schedule for litter removal
with the city, county, Metro Transit, Sentence to Serve and
neighborhood volunteer groups, including the Chicago-Lake
Business Association. Another was gaining a pledge by the
Greater Minneapolis Council of Churches to visit all identified
arrestees in the workhouse.
And the workgroup
raised awareness of the need for better reporting and analysis
of crime statistics for misdemeanors.
Police records show
that "quality of life" crime accounts for approximately 60
arrests per month at the Chicago-Lake intersection. Roughly
half of those arrested are on probation. The workgroup advocated
for a better system of tracking misdemeanors that would be
modeled on the Minneapolis Police Department's CODEFOR database,
which has published violent crime statistics broken down by
neighborhood since 1998.
Budget Cuts
Threaten Progress
The handful of city and county law enforcement personnel whose
informal coordination drives the P4 group have expressed guarded
optimism that they can realize the workgroup's mandate.
"Any time you put resources
together and form partnerships, you have success," said Minneapolis
Police Lieutenant Kris Arneson of the Third Precinct. "With
Chicago-Lake, community police and business came together
and worked out what they wanted to see happen. It's the cooperation
that brings lasting results. No one group can achieve them
alone."
At issue, said Arneson,
isn't will power but budget.
"We saw the value
of six months of scheduled enforcement at Chicago-Lake. The
problem is, overtime paid for those patrols, and authorizations
for overtime are getting less and less frequent."
McLaughlin expressed
concern to the workgroup at its final meeting that state budget
cuts to public policing--$5 million in the 2003 budget--has
created a struggle for resources that could forestall his
efforts to move more probation monitoring into the community.
He urged concerned people and organizations to write Governor
Pawlenty to communicate the importance of special enforcement
programs in targeted neighborhoods.
The current cuts
will "draw down" 12 probation officers in adult supervision,
said Craig Vos of Hennepin County Probation, but they will
not immediately affect staff in south Minneapolis. The likeliest
impact, he said, would be felt at the level of city and county
attorneys who make the inter-agency coordination possible.
"If we're squeezed at the top, it's uncertain how well our
efforts will translate into prosecutions."
The Phillips Partnership
has pledged continued support for the P4 in organizing community
resources and issue advocacy.
Phillips
Police Probation Partnership (P4)
- Lt. Kris Arneson, Minneapolis Police
- Scott Christensen, City Attorney's office
- Sadie Facion, Hennepin County Probation
- Don Greeley, Minneapolis CCPSAFE Officer
- Karen Green, Minneapolis CCPSAFE Officer
- Denis Haven, Metro Transit
- Shirely Heyer, Midtown Phillips Neighborhood Association
- Julie Ingebretson, Ingebretson's
- Andy LeFevour, County Attorney's office
- Jana Metge, Midtown Phillips Neighborhood Association
- Michael Sandin, Hennepin County Probation
- Craig Vos, Hennepin County Probation (convenor)
- Louis Smith, Phillips Partnership (staff)
Chicago-Lake
Crime Workgroup
- Lt. Kris Arneson, Minneapolis Police
- Lee Cunningham, Messiah Lutheran Church
- Sadie Facion, Hennepin County Probation
- Bob Hand, Minnesota Workforce Manager
- Dennis Haven, Metro Transit Police
- Pete Huber, Abbott Northwestern Hospital
- Andrea Jenkins, Council Member Robert Lilligren's Office
- Joyce Krook, Abbott Northwestern Hospital
- Sharon Lubinski, Minneapolis Police
- Gwen McMahon, Citizen
- Jana Metge, Citizen
- Nicole Magnan, Minneapolis Police, CCP Safe
- Ted Muller, Lake Street Council
- Jack Nelson, Metro Transit Police
- Ken Palmer, Wells Fargo
- Michael Sandin, Hennepin County Probation
- Eric Shogren, Minneapolis Police
- Muriel Simmons, Phillips West neighborhood
- Lisa Vecoli, Hennepin County Commissioner McLaughlin's office
- Craig Vos, Hennepin County Probation
- John Wolf, Chicago Lake Liquors
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