It's Everywhere!
Posted: Fri Feb 10, 2012 9:56 am
It's Everywhere!
A couple days ago the Lakewood Police released their annual report on crime in Lakewood. It had only hit the street for minutes when you could hear the ruffling of under-reporting, it seems worse, etc., reverberating through the backyards, over the fences, across the bars, and dinner tables. You could also hear the sounds of people packing, getting ready to flee, "Lakewood is not the Lakewood I remember...."
Well, my questions are: 1) Where are you going to run to? 2) Really? You are going to let some punks scare you off, and start the "white flight" that will surely make the city worse, not stronger. So let's look at the real facts in this case.
Issue 1) First, ALL CITIES under-report crime. ALL CITIES plead down offenses in a never-ending PR war to keep those numbers back, if only for a month or so. Some only report prosecuted crime, some only report successfully prosecuted crime. So really Annual Reports are feel good PR pieces and great for a general overview, but nearly pointless for evaluating one city to the next.
So wherever you run to, you are running with the hope that you are running to a better place.
It is odd, and I have not checked the numbers recently, but for the longest time you had a better chance of being involved in a violent crime in the country than in the city. Now you are thinking, there are fewer people in the country than in the city, and you would be correct. A city's density works for it in this case. The facts are the facts, you have less chance of being involved in a violent crime in the city, where there are more people around.
I am working in Avon Lake, and the word on the street out there is, "It is not safe here, crime is out of control." In Rocky River, they go through periods of "Lock Down" where the city has asked all to stay off the streets to give them a better chance at spotting criminals. In every city from Beachwood to Strongsville to Columbus, block watches have been ordered up to patrol even the nicest neighborhoods, and let's be honest-- that only makes sense-- why break into a house in the ghetto? I always laughed that the thing that kept Lakewood safe was if you break into a Lakewood home, you can steal a VCR and a TV with tubes that will hurt your back to carry. If you go just a little farther west, you can be guaranteed a flat screen and DVR. What would you do?
Also, right now crime is everywhere; it is a problem and it's growing.
Or at least growing in perception.
Ahhhhhh perception! Yes perception, that little thing that seems to rule over facts and common sense-- how does that happen? Well, in Lakewood it is easy to understand. We have at least seven websites with 4 of them concentrating on any and every crime in the city. So when a city is used to reading the silly Lakewood Police Blotter every week in the Sun Papers, and they go to 4 different sites using any crime just to fill their pages, it becomes overwhelming, and begins to really shake and destroy a community to its core, while destroying property values and brands that take a lifetime to build. Again, we need to understand that the Sun Papers Police Blotter was both a partial crime sheet, and news of the weird. They would pass over many of the day-to-day typical stories, to get the thief stuck in the chimney, the man bites dog stories, that made you laugh. That half of a page in the Sun was never a real representation of the crime in Lakewood. So when you go from that to four sites dedicated to crime, it seems to everyone that it is worse and out of control.
Which brings us to number two. Letting punks ruin your life. We have already looked at the fact that you cannot run from crime. The economy is tanking, the region is in decline, as is nearly every other region in the USA. Places that were booming a couple years ago like Vegas, and Phoenix now have some of the highest unemployment and foreclosure numbers in the country. So why not stay in a city that has done a pretty good job catching criminals? Which is always a great deterrent against new crime, as criminals generally take the path of least resistance. Why not work together with our friends and neighbors to say enough? Enough. We have seen this work time and again in other cities. A very proactive city of residents is the best deterrent against crime. Well, that and locks, locked cars, pump shotguns, and pit bulls.
Crime has been with people since there were two humans on the earth, do not let them push you around. Do not flee the city and friends you love in an act of senseless reaction to a couple news stories, or an increased flow of news. We, the residents, have built the schools, the parks, the parades, the nightlife, the library and other Lakewood gems. Why let anyone ruin this run?
However, we need a city that is proactive on crime. Instead of talk of laying off officers, we should be looking at more on the street. The city really only has three jobs: safety, services, and management of public assets. Perhaps it is time for Lakewood to spend more time and money on safety, and a little less on banners, fancy light-poles, and fluff, that really adds very little to a community, compared with the bad PR a double armed robbery takes away from it.
Safe and Clean is really all we ask from City Hall. At the end of the day with crime everywhere, doesn't it make sense that the safest community would also be the most desirable place to live in the region? There is no reason to leave Lakewood, none. But perhaps, we have become our own worst enemy?
Join with me, and make a stand in the best city in the county.
.
A couple days ago the Lakewood Police released their annual report on crime in Lakewood. It had only hit the street for minutes when you could hear the ruffling of under-reporting, it seems worse, etc., reverberating through the backyards, over the fences, across the bars, and dinner tables. You could also hear the sounds of people packing, getting ready to flee, "Lakewood is not the Lakewood I remember...."
Well, my questions are: 1) Where are you going to run to? 2) Really? You are going to let some punks scare you off, and start the "white flight" that will surely make the city worse, not stronger. So let's look at the real facts in this case.
Issue 1) First, ALL CITIES under-report crime. ALL CITIES plead down offenses in a never-ending PR war to keep those numbers back, if only for a month or so. Some only report prosecuted crime, some only report successfully prosecuted crime. So really Annual Reports are feel good PR pieces and great for a general overview, but nearly pointless for evaluating one city to the next.
So wherever you run to, you are running with the hope that you are running to a better place.
It is odd, and I have not checked the numbers recently, but for the longest time you had a better chance of being involved in a violent crime in the country than in the city. Now you are thinking, there are fewer people in the country than in the city, and you would be correct. A city's density works for it in this case. The facts are the facts, you have less chance of being involved in a violent crime in the city, where there are more people around.
I am working in Avon Lake, and the word on the street out there is, "It is not safe here, crime is out of control." In Rocky River, they go through periods of "Lock Down" where the city has asked all to stay off the streets to give them a better chance at spotting criminals. In every city from Beachwood to Strongsville to Columbus, block watches have been ordered up to patrol even the nicest neighborhoods, and let's be honest-- that only makes sense-- why break into a house in the ghetto? I always laughed that the thing that kept Lakewood safe was if you break into a Lakewood home, you can steal a VCR and a TV with tubes that will hurt your back to carry. If you go just a little farther west, you can be guaranteed a flat screen and DVR. What would you do?
Also, right now crime is everywhere; it is a problem and it's growing.
Or at least growing in perception.
Ahhhhhh perception! Yes perception, that little thing that seems to rule over facts and common sense-- how does that happen? Well, in Lakewood it is easy to understand. We have at least seven websites with 4 of them concentrating on any and every crime in the city. So when a city is used to reading the silly Lakewood Police Blotter every week in the Sun Papers, and they go to 4 different sites using any crime just to fill their pages, it becomes overwhelming, and begins to really shake and destroy a community to its core, while destroying property values and brands that take a lifetime to build. Again, we need to understand that the Sun Papers Police Blotter was both a partial crime sheet, and news of the weird. They would pass over many of the day-to-day typical stories, to get the thief stuck in the chimney, the man bites dog stories, that made you laugh. That half of a page in the Sun was never a real representation of the crime in Lakewood. So when you go from that to four sites dedicated to crime, it seems to everyone that it is worse and out of control.
Which brings us to number two. Letting punks ruin your life. We have already looked at the fact that you cannot run from crime. The economy is tanking, the region is in decline, as is nearly every other region in the USA. Places that were booming a couple years ago like Vegas, and Phoenix now have some of the highest unemployment and foreclosure numbers in the country. So why not stay in a city that has done a pretty good job catching criminals? Which is always a great deterrent against new crime, as criminals generally take the path of least resistance. Why not work together with our friends and neighbors to say enough? Enough. We have seen this work time and again in other cities. A very proactive city of residents is the best deterrent against crime. Well, that and locks, locked cars, pump shotguns, and pit bulls.
Crime has been with people since there were two humans on the earth, do not let them push you around. Do not flee the city and friends you love in an act of senseless reaction to a couple news stories, or an increased flow of news. We, the residents, have built the schools, the parks, the parades, the nightlife, the library and other Lakewood gems. Why let anyone ruin this run?
However, we need a city that is proactive on crime. Instead of talk of laying off officers, we should be looking at more on the street. The city really only has three jobs: safety, services, and management of public assets. Perhaps it is time for Lakewood to spend more time and money on safety, and a little less on banners, fancy light-poles, and fluff, that really adds very little to a community, compared with the bad PR a double armed robbery takes away from it.
Safe and Clean is really all we ask from City Hall. At the end of the day with crime everywhere, doesn't it make sense that the safest community would also be the most desirable place to live in the region? There is no reason to leave Lakewood, none. But perhaps, we have become our own worst enemy?
Join with me, and make a stand in the best city in the county.
.
