LR crime perception, reality clash

Extra police sent to River Market even as offenses there fall

Police have stepped up patrols in Little Rock's River Market.
Police have stepped up patrols in Little Rock's River Market.

— It was close to midnight Friday and Robert Barnum still hadn’t caught a fare.

The longtime cabby is used to the wait. Slouching against the side of his yellow cab, he smoked cigarettes, checked his watch and scanned the River Market with the same alert eyes as the two police officers standing 15 yards away.

With 20 years of experience, he’s gotten used to waiting alongside the dozen other idle cabbies. But he’s never liked it.

And with the police out in the River Market area en masse, he said he’ll be waiting even longer until foot traffic reaches its normal levels.

“They’re everywhere down here tonight,” Barnum said. “I ain’t seen this many [police officers] before on a weekend, not here.”

The officers were obvious. On a typical weekend night, there are usually around a half-dozen working out of the kiosk at President Clinton Avenue and Rock Street.

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But on Friday night, there were roughly four times that many officers circulating around the River Market area, patrol cars swooping into a stretch of President Clinton Avenue as though it were a landing strip, only to speed off minutes later, sometimes with their lights flashing, sometimes not, to some unknown call.

The Little Rock Police Department’s downtown mobile unit, a team of officers designed to combat burglaries and break-ins downtown, is just one group of officers who’ve been diverted into the mixed unit meant to beat back a perceived influx of crime in the city’s entertainment district. Community policing officers, traffic police and other mobile units have been pulled in to maintain the area east of Broadway and north of Capitol Avenue.

But crime in the River Market has been steadily in decline, dropping from 860 major incidents in the first half of 2008 to 595 through June of this year, according to an Arkansas Democrat-Gazette analysis of police reports.

“Crime in the River Market ... wasn’t a problem that just surfaced,” said department spokesman Lt. Terry Hastings. “[Officers] are there because of perceptions and problems we’ve been dealing with for a long time.”

With the rise of police presence, there was a noticeable drop in traffic between the city’s bars and late-night restaurants as midnight approached.

Barnum said the decline could have been because of the humidity, as sweat beaded over his face and those of the officers working without the luxury of an air-conditioned car.

But he thinks two recent shootings — one involving an officer — might have had something to do with it.

Little Rock Police Sgt. Joe Miller is a little more certain.

“Oh, I guarantee that’s what it is,” Miller said, leaning against his car parked at the intersection of Scott and East Markham streets, looking over the spot where officer Robbie Hinman, one of his subordinates, fired three shots at an armed suspect in front of a large crowd.

“Last night [Thursday], it was pretty slow, too ... we may go back to overnight burglaries, but Friday and Saturday, we’ll definitely be here.”

July 15 was the first night Little Rock police started its River Market assignment. And before the end of the night, the 2 a.m. shooting near the intersection of Scott and East Markham streets left 18-yearold Jacobe Malone in critical condition at UAMS Medical Center, after he reportedly turned toward Hinman with a stolen 9mm pistol in hand.

The shooting was another in a series of highly publicized crimes in the River Market area.

During River Fest, a 15-year-old boy was shot in the leg May 29 outside the Peabody Little Rock hotel, after a “dispute” between two “large groups” of people around 11:45 p.m., police said.

The night before that, a Mabelvale man was robbed and then beaten by 10 to 15 young males.

And by the end of Friday night, Little Rock police arrested Al-Amin Bilal, 27, of North Little Rock, after he led law enforcement on a lengthy high-speed pursuit that originated with him striking a Little Rock officer with his car near the intersection of Center and West Markham streets.

Hastings said reports of assaults, robberies and car break-ins are what led police to invest more manpower into what he called the city’s “crown jewel.”

THE COST OF NUMBERS

A Democrat-Gazette analysis of raw Little Rock police data shows crime, or at least, reported crime in the downtown entertainment district and its surrounding blocks has been on the decline for the past three years.

Total offenses in the River Market reported to police in the months of January through June have declined year-overyear since 2008.

During the first half of that year, there were 860, excluding traffic accidents, reported to police in the district. That number fell to 776 in 2009 and then again to 738 in 2010.

The 595 incidents reported this year mark a 31 percent decline from four years ago.

Aggravated assaults, simple assaults, auto break-ins, thefts and alcohol offenses all were lower than in 2008, according to the newspaper’s analysis of data from the first six months of the past four years.

Robberies were higher this year than in 2008, but were slightly lower than in 2010.

Fourteen robberies were reported in the area through the first six months of this year, down from 16 in 2010, the newspaper found.

Through May, the latest citywide crime numbers available, there were 241 robberies reported to Little Rock Police.

Burglaries in the River Market dropped every year, falling an overall 85 percent from 20 reports in 2008 to three this year.

Still, the department will continue to deploy specialized units, including its mobile units, whose main function is to track and deter break-ins and burglaries in “hot spot” neighborhoods throughout the city.

The number of burglaries citywide in the first five months of the year jumped 5.6 percent — from 1,264 through May of last year to 1,335 through May of this year.

When asked if committing half of the city’s mobile units to curb a perceived crime wave was a sound allocation of resources given the jump in burglaries, Hastings said it was necessary.

“We do the same things in various neighborhoods downtown,” Hastings said. “But they don’t get the media attention that a crime on the River Market does.”

The media is just one player that prompted police to address growing concerns over the River Market, Hastings said. The department has heard concerns from Mayor Mark Stodola and some of the city’s Board of Directors.

But the biggest driver, Hastings said, is the growing voice of the city’s many neighborhood watch groups and associations.

“The very thing that defeats us on this is e-mails,” Hastings said. “Someone will write ‘I went to the River Market and someone broke into my car’... it’s an anonymous e-mail that goes from a friend to a friend, it grows legs and goes all over.”

Hastings said the disconnection between perception and reality still has real effects in an area that is supposed to be a signature of the Little Rock experience and a driver of development.

“It’s as much an economic thing as it as a crime thing,” Hastings said. “It’s an area that’s very important to the city of Little Rock ... [the crime] is counterproductive to the business we’re trying to attract.”

THE ROVING PROBLEM

The bulk of the incidents in the River Market, according to police, can be blamed on the growing phenomenon of “large groups” idling in corners and in parking lots. Hastings said some of the people in these groups, who range in age from 15 to early 20s, are the ones behind the crimes that have scared off some wouldbe patrons of the downtown bars.

Standing at the Big Whiskey’s American Bar and Grill parking lot Friday night, where a week earlier police said two such groups collided, leading Malone to shoot a 19-year-old Conway man in the foot moments before he was shot by police, Wally Waller agreed.

“The real issue is the people not going in to eat, or drink, they’re just loitering,” Waller said. “They’re the same people committing the burglaries, robberies, harassing people.”

Waller, 37, who runs Out-OnThe Rock.com and works with many of the River Market bars and clubs in developing their social media, said the crime in the River Market is mostly what you would expect from an entertainment district.

But the downtown area’s growing popularity for those too young to get into the bars is a cause for concern, he said.

“We can only tell them to move along so many times,” Waller said. “And we can be shot at.”

Barnum said he doesn’t give them much attention. The young people in question don’t pay for cabs and they don’t give him any trouble. He thinks they shouldn’t be there, but ultimately, crime will happen, even if they’re not.

“A lot of youngsters out, but I don’t feel threatened ... [crime] happens everywhere, everyday,” Barnum said. “The kid who got shot on Butler Road ... that wasn’t near here.”

‘IT IS WHAT IT IS’

Even though Miller and other officers working the area said the number of roving groups of people was down Friday, they were just as visible as the police. By 12:45 a.m., groups of teens flocked around the edge of the River Market and in the parking lot of the Block 2 Lofts opposite the Statehouse Convention Center.

Police, either in cars, on bike or on foot, shepherded the groups, and by 1 a.m., the roughly 30 people idling at the intersection of East Markham and Scott streets had moved on.

Other than the pursuit of Bilal, it was a relatively quiet night.

By 2 a.m., the parade of partied-out patrons was at an end, leaving only a few officers on the empty corners watching quietly as bar employees swept the walks outside their doors.

Three women passed by officer Jacob Koehler near the intersection of Rock Street and President Clinton Avenue. Their voices still at club volume, it was easy to spot by the uncertainty in their voices that they didn’t come to the River Market that often.

“Where y’all headed?” Koehler asked. “Third Street?” The look on the officer’s face was infectious. “Is it not safe?” Koehler gave them another look and shrugged. “It is what it is,” Koehler said. “But I’ll walk you.”

Front Section, Pages 1 on 07/25/2011

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