Preservation officials had asked for a meeting with the police to discuss the erroneous perception that the downtown historic areas have high crime rates. Not so, police said, pointing to crime maps and statistics pinned to the meeting room walls. A list of criminal problem areas did not include any of the historic areas Preservation is involved in. You can check it out yourself at the city's Web site, where crime statistics are searchable by address. Click on the Police2Citizen link and you'll get a new screen with crime data, including the actual incident reports. The data are available thanks to the department's new OSSI law enforcement software. You can also request a daily bulletin of all crime reports for that day. (A few sensitive ongoing investigations and sex crimes are withheld from public view. It's a pretty amazing development, considering the difficulty in the old days of going to the police station and copying crime or accident reports.
The point, for Preservation officials, is that Wilson's crime rate is relatively low, and little of the crime that does occur happens in the historic areas where Preservation is focusing its efforts. Downtown is one of the lowest-crime areas of the city. Homeownership is one key. Neighborhood involvement is another. More transient, mostly rental areas, even in new developments, are more likely to have crime problems. Homeowners, who have a financial stake in the neighborhood and who expect to be around for the long term, are more likely to take an interest in what's going on around them. They're more likely to call in suspicious activities, and that helps police solve and prevent crimes.
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