Joseph Paul

Journal & Courier

Last year was the busiest in Joshua Saxton’s 4 1/2 year history as a patrol officer with Lafayette Police Department.

Growing up, the Harrison High School graduate heard stories about law enforcement from his parents. His dad worked 14 years with LPD; his mom is a captain for Tippecanoe County Sheriff’s Office. But none of those stories prepared him to patrol the changing streets of his hometown.

“Honestly, I think it’s been one of the busiest years since I’ve been on, especially for violent crime. It was a huge eye-opener,” Saxton said.

“And even my dad and my mother have done ride-alongs with me since, and it’s been an eye-opener for them. Twenty years ago, things ran a little bit differently.”

Few years in the past decade have been more indicative of that change than 2015, during which Lafayette’s central neighborhoods — a zone bounded roughly by Kossuth and Greenbush streets, Sagamore Parkway and the Wabash River — were troubled by a spike in certain crime rates.

Based on incident data from Lafayette Police Department dating back to 2005, the Journal & Courier projected in July that reports of burglary, rape and robbery, among other crimes, would outpace the preceding decade average in the city’s core neighborhoods. Although reports weren’t as pronounced as the J&C’s projections, recently released crime statistics prove Lafayette residents’ increased sense of insecurity was based in reality.

A sampling of news stories from the second half of the year depicts the trend:

In one November weekend, two victims walking along near-downtown streets said they were held up by men in dark clothing, wielding knives and handguns.

A week later, a North Street resident said he was attacked by four men as he took out the trash in broad daylight.

In December, a woman said she was pistol-whipped after five men invaded her Union Street apartment. She wasn’t hit when one of the men fired a handgun, she told police, but hours later a juvenile showed up at an area hospital with a gunshot wound.

These headlines and many others have induced a sense of uneasiness in the community, Lafayette police Chief Patrick Flannelly said. But he pointed to the city’s growing population, influx of new jobs and emphasis on crime reporting as reasons for the spike in numbers. Still, “pockets of people” remain intent on breaking the law, he said.

“With growth, you’re going to have an increased presence of criminal activity,” he said. “But it doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s going to make it unsafe.”

‘It’s been pretty noticeable’

While population in the rest of the city has steadily grown, the number of people living in Lafayette’s core neighborhoods has remained nearly constant in the past 10 years, according to annual population estimates from U.S. Census Bureau and American Community Survey data. Still, central Lafayette last year experienced more crime per capita than the rest of the city, with some rates jumping well beyond the preceding decade average.

Compared to the rest of the city, core neighborhoods saw:

180 percent more rapes per capita.

70 percent more motor vehicle thefts per capita.

50 percent more robberies per capita.

50 percent more burglaries per capita.

18 percent more aggravated assaults per capita.

The reports all occurred within a 3-square-mile radius, in which more than a quarter of the city’s population is housed.

“When you get that many people living on top of each other, you’re going to have issues,” Saxton said.

Core neighborhood residents also a saw a spike in crime compared to the preceding decade average. Reports of rapes per 1,000 people more than doubled, while per capita reports of robberies jumped 36 percent compared to the decade average. Per capita reports of motor vehicle theft and burglary also rose moderately.

Overall, residents of central Lafayette experienced the most personal and property crime in the past decade.

“It’s nothing that’s scary, but it does alarm,” said Monie Kruger, who’s lived in Valley Center Neighborhood for seven years. “I’m from (the neighborhood). I lived there as a child, moved away and came back there, and we had nothing of that sort. It was all safe, we never locked our doors or anything back in the day.

“But now I would not do that.”

Crime has wreaked havoc on local businesses as well.

About 9 a.m. on a May morning, a hooded bandit — who was later found to be intoxicated — robbed a downtown candy store, threatening to kill the owner. And in August, two men threw a brick through the window of Virtuous Cycles in the 200 block of North 10th Street, stealing three bicycles valued at more than $750 each.

A previous burglary left Virtuous owner Zoe Neal feeling vulnerable, so he installed security cameras that caught the alleged perpetrator in the act. The company also restructured its purchase policy last year under the suspicion that several people tried to sell stolen bikes.

“In 2015, there’s just been more cop cars, more ambulances, just more drama than previous years,” Neal said. “It’s been pretty noticeable.”

‘We shouldn’t be surprised’

Behind the numbers, Flannelly said, is an addiction epidemic driving an increase in violent crimes.

Reports of drug violations last year jumped more than 36 percent in core neighborhoods. Conversely, Flannelly contends that residents not associated with selling or buying drugs are much less likely to be the victim of a crime.

“I’ve always tried to be conservative in saying probably 80 percent of the crimes we experience are drug-related,” he said. “A lot of our violent crimes stem directly from that.”

Heroin use in particular has been growing in the past decade, officials said last year. Overdoses from the drug have been climbing at alarming rates, authorities told the Journal & Courier in October, with a peak of seven overdoses — five of which were fatal — in one week in March.

In total, 27 people died last year of an overdose involving prescription or illegal drugs, including heroin, Coroner Donna Avolt said.

Although not reflected in police records or crime statistics, addiction influenced last year’s major crimes — all three homicides and the majority of robberies were connected to drugs, Flannelly said — and more common thefts and burglaries, among other reports, as people desperate for money or drugs resort to illegal activity.

“Clearly, when you have that level of addiction, of course you’re going to get an upsurge in all of this stuff that’s attendant to that,” said Will Miller, a police chaplain, psychotherapist and professor of communication ethics at Purdue University. “So we shouldn’t be surprised.”

To stem the problem, Tippecanoe County Jail over the summer created its Community Navigators program, in which volunteers connect inmates with addiction and other mental health services before reintegrating them into the community. In an investigation published in December, officials told the Journal & Courier that about 95 percent of the jail population lives with some kind of substance abuse or mental health disorder.

Although it’s a step in the right direction, Mayor Tony Roswarski said a larger partnership with the medical community is needed to create more avenues toward recovery — a process that with prescription drugs, heroin or methamphetamine can take years.

“Unfortunately, once people do get addicted, there is just not many addiction services,” Roswarski said. “We know that ... here in Lafayette, we have those same issues that lead to a vast majority of the more violent-type crime.”

Find crimes reported near your home

‘Some can break out of the cycle’

Some neighbors would walk by with their dogs. Others would call police. But John Howieson thought it best to take photos of the cars parked for minutes at a time outside an apartment home in the 1000 block of North Street.

“We knew they were running drugs out of there because of the traffic,” said Howieson, who has lived in Historic Jefferson Neighborhood for 17 years. “Pull up, leave your car running, run in, and a couple minutes later they come out. That kind of traffic.”

Police ramped up patrols after receiving frequent calls and complaints from Howieson and his neighbors. Officers parked at the curb outside the home to do paperwork. As business dried up, the walls began to close in, he said, and the suspected drug-dealing tenant of two years moved out in June.

It was a small victory for residents in one of Lafayette’s most troubled neighborhoods.

But the problem “doesn’t go away, and it’s kind of a Band-Aid solution,” Howieson said. “It doesn’t really solve the problem, it just moves it somewhere else.”

But residents are seeking more solutions to deter criminal activity.

In the spring, volunteers planted a straw bale garden on Erie Street, bringing activity to a vacant city lot. The neighborhood association was revamped over the summer, with several visits from police officers and the mayor, followed by a cleanup in which volunteers picked up trash on sidewalks, curbs and alleys. This year, the group is planning to meet with landlords who own dilapidated properties in the area.

“The (landlords) that don’t care about their property, the tenants probably don’t stay as long,” said Scott Brown, a commercial Realtor who’s lived on North Street for nearly a year. “And that makes it more of a transient neighborhood, people coming and going.

“The more stable neighborhood you have, the less crime you’re going to have in the area.”

Ken McCammon, president of the Historic Centennial Neighborhood Association, and his neighbors took a more direct approach, partnering with the city and a developer to build a row of single-family townhomes in place of a vacant industrial site. Units built last year were quickly bought up, McCammon said. Construction on the rest of the complex is set to continue this year.

“It was a very altruistic deal for the neighbors to take stock in the neighborhood and try to build it up,” McCammon said.

Most recently, officials broke ground Jan. 25 on a community center in Lincoln Neighborhood — the culmination of a yearlong partnership with residents, the city and a faith-based development group. Hartford Hub will offer recreational, educational, mentoring and addiction counseling, with hopes of turning the tides on poverty and crime in the area.

“If we can start working with these kids on basic skills,” Arvid Olson, development director for Faith Community Development Corp., said Jan. 25, “some can break out of the cycle.”

‘There is a fear that crime is on the rise’

Across the entire city, Lafayette has followed a similar trend in crime.

In broad categories, more personal and property crimes were recorded last year than in the past 10 years. LPD responded to more than 90,000 calls for service, and the Tippecanoe County Prosecutor’s Office reviewed 7,660 criminal cases — both all-time records.

Meanwhile, neighborhoods near the city’s boundaries — while experiencing significantly fewer incidents per capita than core neighborhoods — also saw a spike in certain crimes. Per capita reports of robbery rose 50 percent compared to the decade average, while per capita reports of rape rose 25 percent.

“There are no neighborhoods anymore that are as friendly as they used to be,” said June Hasle, who in 2009 helped create the Tecumseh South Neighborhood Watch. “ (But) we keep an eye out for people.”

Lafayette isn’t alone.

Violent crime — defined as homicide, rape, robbery and aggravated assault — nationwide increased 1.7 percent during the first half of 2015, compared to the same months in 2014, according to statistics released Jan. 20 by the FBI. Property crimes, however, fell 4.2 percent in the same time frame.

Those statistics — which have manifested in national headlines, reaching readers instantly through social media and the Internet — have only fueled the perception in Lafayette that crime is increasing, Flannelly said.

“Nationwide, I think there is a fear that crime is on the rise,” he said. “And I think a lot of that is driven by what you see on these stories coming from major metropolitan news areas.”

In hopes of re-establishing a sense of security, the city has planned several initiatives, starting with five new patrol positions.

LPD last year employed about 1.9 officers per 1,000 people, less than the national average of about 2.3 officers per capita in 2014, according to a uniform crime report published by the FBI. The new positions will bring the department’s force to 142 officers, or about 2 per 1,000 residents.

A police presence, however, can’t be compared to population alone, Flannelly said. LPD uses a complex algorithm that calculates the city’s size, population and calls for service, among other factors, to determine the optimal police force.

“You can’t put a police officer on every corner,” he said.

In addition, LPD will add a new dispatcher to work solely with the roving street crimes unit. And officers who live inside the city limits will receive take-home cars in hopes of establishing more visibility in neighborhoods.

“We’re hoping that will motivate more and more officers to live within the city limits,” Roswarksi said. “They’re in the neighborhoods, they build those relationships. But they also have that take-home car with the high visibility, they have their equipment right there handy.”

‘Our eyes are out looking for them’

Overall, neighborhoods last year were “more involved, more interested,” said Margy Deverall, a planner and project manager for the city’s economic development department.

Deverall led efforts to create the straw bale garden on Erie Street — which this year will become a permanent community garden — and is the head of a collaborative working to establish more gardens in the “food desert” — a large tract of land near downtown that’s at least a mile from any major grocery stores.

“We had homeowners and renters working together in the (Erie Street) garden, which is exactly what we want to have happen,” she said. “People were meeting each other who otherwise would have no occasion to meet and talk.”

That kind of presence and communication can go a long way in showing potential criminals that residents care about their neighborhood, Brown said.

“It really doesn’t take much. A few calls to the police, a few neighbors talking to each other,” Brown said. “(Criminals) don’t tend to mess with people who are aware of their surroundings and take care of their things, because they know they might get caught and our eyes are out looking for them.”

Neighborhoods, however, aren’t as physically connected as they used to be, so police are trying to interact with residents where they’re most comfortable: online.

Use of Nextdoor, the city’s social media network for neighborhoods, more than doubled last year — from 3,079 users to 6,417, Lt. Brian Gossard said. The network allows neighbors and officers to quickly disseminate information about potentially suspicious or criminal activity.

The department also continues to promote the online reporting function on its website, giving officers more time to patrol the streets.

“We’re always looking at more ways to be more efficient and free up time,” Gossard said.

Although last year’s numbers are startling, Flannelly said increased avenues to report crime resulted in the uptick, which is “a good indicator of high engagement.”

That engagement is essential, he noted, considering that even the best departments cannot police communities by themselves.

“Almost every single thing that we do is generated from a phone call from a citizen.”

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Twitter: Updates are posted regularly at @LafayetteINPD.

Facebook: Some news items are posted to the Tippecanoe County Project Safe Neighborhood account.

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Report a crime online

To file an online report with LPD, visit the department’s website at lafayettepolice.us.

Connect with your neighborhood

Every neighborhood in Lafayette has a point person in the city’s Community & Economic Development Department. More information about joining a local association is available by calling the office at 765-807-1090.

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