Richardson Patrols Continued    from Dallas Morning News, Oct 5th 2010  Ian McCann
"Our crime watch patrols really put so many eyes and ears on the street," Spivey said. "This community is coming together in a big, strong way."

Richardson is not alone among large suburbs to see significant improvement this year, especially with property crimes such as burglaries. Plano, Carrollton and Irving have registered double-digit decreases in major crimes overall. Garland, too, has seen crime decrease, though by more modest amounts.

Most categories are down as well in Dallas, with total crime down nearly 6 percent through July. Totals this year have increased in some areas - notably, rapes and home burglaries.
Irving Police Chief Larry Boyd credits community groups, officers' focus on specific criminals and stepped-up code enforcement for this year's 10 percent drop in overall crime, as well as for a six-year downward trend in his city's crime rate.

Those measures will continue, along with additional focus on using volunteers and building communication networks, Boyd said.  "I don't have an acceptable level of crime," he said.
Policing also is more data-driven today than it has ever been. Crime analysts help to spot trends before they become problems, allowing commanders to better deploy their officers. That and increased numbers of volunteers affect the way people, including potential criminals, view a community.

"Visibility is a crucial thing to us," said Officer David Tilley, a Plano police spokesman. "I think what we're doing right is trying to remain visible in neighborhoods." Over the past year, Richardson has doubled the number of neighborhoods involved in the city's crime watch patrol program. Department liaisons train residents on what to look for as they watch their neighborhoods and send regular updates about crime trends in the city.

Marsha Mayo helped to get a crime watch patrol started in the Heights Park area of western Richardson after somebody broke into her home more than a year ago. She learned that there had been another burglary nearby the same day, and that others had occurred recently.
"Our neighborhood was becoming a very easy target," Mayo said. "I felt very safe until I was burglarized. I'm a little bit more of a realist now."

Now, volunteers patrol Heights Park daily, looking for suspicious people or neighbors who are making their homes or cars ripe for potential crime. They report anything that could be a problem to police. This year, Richardson also created a business crime watch, which puts police in direct contact with smaller businesses. Officers send crime alerts to companies and also work with them to improve prevention measures. Business burglaries have fallen by nearly 40 percent this year.
Whether it's businesses or residents keeping an eye out, officers said the most important thing is to communicate. Mayo said that before going through training she didn't realize how much police wanted to hear from residents.

"The only way they can catch people is if they know about it," she said. "Now I know what to look for. I'm not afraid to be the nosy neighbor."

CHIEF CREDITS COMMUNITY
After seeing a spike in burglaries in the first half of 2009, Richardson police responded by sending more officers into neighborhoods and beefing up volunteer-driven crime watch patrols.
By the end of the year, burglaries still increased over 2008 but at a much slower rate than the city had experienced through the summer. This year, burglaries have fallen by more than a third from 2009.
 
Richardson Police Chief Jim Spivey answered questions about his city's crime statistics and tactics his department is using to prevent crime from happening. 

Your burglary numbers jumped last year but have now fallen closer to the 2008 number. Was the first part of 2009 just out of the ordinary?
We'll need another year to know what happened last year. It might have been something of an anomaly. Crime is always cyclical. What we have done here is activate a resource that's going to flatten those cycles out. You'll see those spikes being smaller.

A year ago, you had that huge jump, so you put more resources into neighborhoods. It looks like what you changed last year is working, with both your officers and your volunteers.

It certainly has. I don't want to say that the Richardson Police Department has single-handedly reduced this crime. The community plays a big part in this.

Crime is down in a lot of cities - Plano, Garland, Dallas, Irving. Is this a sign that crime is actually going down regionally instead of moving from area to area?
There is some regionalization to it. I wish it were even better. We know that a burglar that strikes in Garland or Plano is just as likely to hit here.