RPO drops crime 50% and keeps your sidewalks drunk-free

Ever since the BelmontNA went on a wild spending spree and spent nearly $8,000 to bring Resident Parking Only to 11 streets in the neighborhood - on the eastern side of Lowest Greenville's bar zone - the crescendo of kvetching by scumbar owners (at least, the ones still in business) and the property owners has slowly but steadily been rising in volume.

RPO is bad for our hoochie-mama customers, who can't walk very far in high heels and keep their balance. It's bad for the gangbangers, because they can't park their mobile entertainment centers for free on residential streets. It's bad for the cheap drunks who can't afford $10 and $20 'complimentary' valet parking charges. And that takes money out of our cash register.

But in the past few weeks, as new RPO zones are installed on 5700 Prospect and 5600 Lewis, the level of just plain and nasty bitching has reached a new high - or low - depending on your perspective.

Crime is going up on the streets without RPO. Bar patrons are getting robbed, and their cars are disappearing from the streets every weekend. RPO is making the neighborhood so dangerous that the police department wants to get rid of RPO - right now!

And, pray tell, who is the source of this awful and scary information?? Why, Dallas' police officers, of course, according to the bar and property owners. These police officers and their commanders are afraid, they whisper, to tell the BelmontNA the scary truth, so they smile and nod their head in agreement when a certain dog-eared resident starts telling anyone who will listen how cool RPO is.

Give me a frigging break, guys, and stop trying to blow smoke up the butt of anyone who happens to get caught in the same room with you. Maybe your tenants and their drunken customers believe this garbage, but the truth is out there. Really, it is. All you have to do is ask for it.

That's what BD did.

If a car disappeared off the street, it's a good bet it was towed for illegally parking in an RPO zone or other No Parking zone in the neighborhood. Every weekend, nearly a dozen cars are spirited away by DPD or PWT tow truck teams, to a place where you never ever want to visit, even in broad daylight. If the City's budget cuts go through, the Vilbig pound will be closed to the public on weekends, which means you won't get your car back until Monday morning. Maybe.

When it comes to crime in the city, the best source for the raw information is the Dallas Police Department. BD asked for a database of all Class 1 crimes in DPD Reporting Area 1164 for CY 2007 and CY 2008. In English, that means all major crimes in an area bounded by Greenville, Belmont, Skillman, and Ross Avenues. That also happens to be the boundaries for the BelmontNA, and of course the home to nearly a dozen RPO zones. We asked for 2007 since that is the last year in which there were only three RPO zones in the neighborhood. After January 2008, an RPO zone was added about every three months. By June 2009, there are 11 RPO zones.

BD cut the list down to four major crime categories - Robbery and assaults, burglary of a motor vehicle (BMV), unauthorized use of a motor vehicle (UUMV) and theft of auto accessories.

This survey only covers crimes which occur outside of homes and businesses, thereby impacting residents and non-residents equally.

He also fine tuned the premise descriptions to reflect the facts on the ground at that hour. For example, when a car is burglarized on Whole Foods' parking lot at 2pm Monday afternoon, the premise location is a Supermarket Parking Lot. When the same event happens at 11pm Saturday evening, it's a Commercial Paid Parking Lot.

By no stretch of the imagination does BD claim to be a math wizard. This review does not account for domestic disputes between residents, what side of the street an incident took place on, changes in police patrols, when a street went RPO, or any special events in the area.

The conclusion? Since the introduction of RPO in 2008, crime has decreased, not increased, an average of 40% in the BelmontNA neighborhood. You have a better chance of being beat up by a gang bouncer than you would finding your car stolen when you crawled down the street.

The first chart shows a comparison between daytime (6am to 6pm)and evening incidents. From 2007 to 2008, the total number of all surveyed incidents dropped by 35%. Daytime crime dropped by 42%, while evening crime declined 30%.

For all streets, Assaults/Robbery dropped 61%, and BMV's dropped 30% between 2007 and 2008. When comparing between streets with and without RPO, the results are still good, but opposite what conventional wisdom would tell you. Assaults/Robbery dropped from 22 to 8 incidents (a 64% reduction) while BMVs dropped from 45 to 35 (a 22% reduction).

The most important changes are things that cannot be measured on crime reports - the improvement in the Quality of Life for area residents. The number of drunken patrons parking in front of our homes has been reduced inversely to the number of RPO streets, the empty-beer-bottles-on-front-lawns count is way down, and the number of quiet, restful nights without any interruptions by drunks fighting on our streets is up by billions.

Sounds like a good deal to BD.

If you want to see all the incidents reviewed for this study, click here to download a PDF of the three reports. If you are a math genius and want to work on the Excel files, send BD an email.