Robbers stole from more people and businesses in Little Rock this summer than during the same season last year, an analysis of preliminary police figures shows.
From June 1 through the end of September, 371 reported robberies occurred in the city, a 26 percent increase from the 295 robberies reported during the same months of 2012, an Arkansas Democrat-Gazette analysis of initial crime figures shows.
September - usually a quiet month, according to the head of the Little Rock Police Department’s robbery division - saw 99 robbery reports.
“In our business, normally, from Aug. 15 to the [State] Fair, there’s kind of a lull. We attribute it to kids going back to school, all that,” said Sgt. Bruce Maxwell, who oversees the department’s six robbery detectives.
“I haven’t seen that lull in September that we normally see. … That’s unusually high,” he said.
The increase in reported robberies for June through September indicates that robberies likely will continue to drive an overall citywide jump in violent crimes once official numbers are tallied.
The newspaper’s analysis of robberies for the past two summers also shows an increase in addresses reporting more than one robbery.
This year, 12 addresses accounted for more than 11 percent of all robberies reported in the city from June through September, the Police Department data show. Police reports show each of the addresses was the scene of a robbery three or more times, for a total of 41 robberies.
From January through May, robberies drove an overall increase in what’s known as major crime, which includes murder, rape, aggravated assault and robbery - from 1,093 incidents in 2012 to 1,099 this year, according to official police figures.
Murders, rapes and aggravated assaults all were down in the first five months of this year compared with the year before, but robberies were up 24 percent in the period, with 356 robberies this year compared with 287 in the same months of 2012.
Over the same period - January through May - overall crime was down nearly 2 percent, going from 6,791 major offenses in the first five months of last year to 6,663 through May of this year.
The Democrat-Gazette’s analysis shows that the biggest rise in robberies occurred in the southwest part of the city and along retail sections of west Little Rock.
In the January-May period, the Police Department’s southwest division, which runs south of Colonel Glenn Road and west of University Avenue, recorded the biggest surge in robberies - a 45 percent jump, from 93 last year to 135 in the five months this year.
Over the summer months, the southwest division saw a 47.5 percent rise in robberies, from 82 between June and September of 2012 to 121 in 2013.
Capt. Terry Hastings, commander of the southwest division, said there is no clear-cut cause for the increase in a division that historically sees the fewest major crimes in the city.
“The business robbery side of that is more an act of convenience. We’ve got major thoroughfares,” Hastings explained.
Southwest Little Rock neighborhoods also are home to a large portion of the city’s Hispanic population, Hastings said, and “people know, or think, that the Hispanic population, they can rob them because they won’t call the police … it won’t go reported. … They’ll target them. It’s a case of opportunity and knowledge that this might not get reported.”
Looking over a map of his district and clusters of robberies around Base Line Road and Geyer Springs Road, Hastings said that’s his biggest issue.
Those areas in southwest Little Rock, like other parts of the city with high robbery counts, offer conditions conducive for robbery: lots of businesses frequented by lots of people, apartments, large parking lots and easy access to major thoroughfares for quick getaways.
From summer 2012 to this summer, robbery hot spots shifted locations, the Democrat-Gazette’s analysis shows, but police point out that the locations are similar - saturated by businesses and lots of traffic.
In 2012, the stores and residences around the Wakefield Shopping Center in the 5100 block of West 65th Street were beset by a rash of armed and strong-arm robberies.
The number of robberies in that area fell drastically this summer, but the other end of the southwest patrol division saw a sharp spike in robberies among businesses and residences in the Otter Creek area.
Commanders in all three of the Police Department’s patrol divisions monitor clusters or hot spots and try to respond accordingly.
But as soon as police increase their presence and undercover operations in one neighborhood or business district, the robbers, like swatted-at flies, find a new place to land.
“We identify a problem and we move in and work the area, but criminals are not dumb,” Hastings said. “They’ll see marked police cars moving around and they’ll move on to another place. Many times, we move it more than we stop it.
“Until we arrest those individuals, they’ll just move into anew location,” he said.
Where thieves move next is difficult to predict. Traffic patterns, lighting, even word of mouth among criminals can make a quiet area turn hot quickly.
To understand the task faced by Little Rock patrol officers and investigators, Maxwell recommended taking a piece of paper, folding it in half, then folding it again, and placing it on the map of the city detailing the two summers’ robberies.
“This is what police can do. It’s a defined amount,” Maxwell said, pointing to the folded paper. “I can’t cover everything. When I start moving, something else gets uncovered. … There’s a theory you can arrest your way out of anything. But what’s the cost? Is it a cost that no city can afford? Probably it is.”
In the city’s northwest division, which runs from University Avenue to the western ends of the city, robberies clustered along Rodney Parham Road just east of Interstate 430 during the summer months of 2012.
This summer, that cluster shifted to West Markham and out on Chenal Parkway.
Much of that action, Maxwell said, is connected to the same “crew,” one of whom was arrested and charged in the Sept. 26 armed robbery of a woman after she pulled into her garage on Chenal Circle.
Often, even just one arrest can cool off an entire robbery-prone area.
Other times, something as simple as an eviction can lead criminals to find a new place, usually an apartment, to lay their heads and use as a base to work an area.
Maxwell attributed much of last year’s clusters around North Rodney Parham Road and this year’s along West Markham to robbers living close by.
“[Robbing away from home] is what it used to be. Now, they will attack where they live. Most of them don’t have transportation or the transportation they do have they’re borrowing,” Maxwell said. “What happens is we’ll [arrest] one and they’ll slow down or they’ll move.”
Among the 12 addresses that experienced three or more robberies this summer, two were big-box stores: the Home Depot in west Little Rock and the Wal-Mart Supercenter on Base Line Road. The robberies mostly were acts of shoplifting that turned physical when security personnel confronted suspects.
The Acme Hotel at 3301 W. Roosevelt Road recorded the most robberies - five.
Although the hotel itself wasn’t robbed, several of its guests were robbed either at their rooms or on the property.
The hotel’s manager, David Patel, said he was unaware that his property was one of the most chronic for police robbery calls.
“I had no idea, that,” Patel said. “I don’t have a problem.
… Sometimes people come and rob, and there’s nothing I can do.”
Patel said his property uses several surveillance cameras, as well as hired guards on weekends, to deter crime.
Half of the most robbery-prone properties are in the Police Department’s southwest division.
Hastings said the robberies at the Base Line Road Wal-Mart store are expected, given the volume of traffic going in and out.
The Wal-Mart store had four robberies. The rest of the multiple-robbery addresses include four southwest Little Rock apartment complexes, a Shell station, an apartment complex in the western part of the city, a mobile-home park, the Target in midtown and the Paper Moon strip club.
The other locations, like the apartments at 5813 Base Line Road, also are well-known targets for criminal activity.
“Any apartment complex, you’re going to have more people, more problems,” Hastings said. “The crime level at apartment complexes is directly related to what the owners and the residents do. There’s a lot of apartment complexes that are very good and very nice.
They take the measures to be safe … those that don’t, will get on this list.”
Front Section, Pages 1 on 10/27/2013