Police sub-stations: are we big enough?
Posted on January 5, 2008 in Crime & Law Enforcement by DM
Meanwhile, on the Des Moines City Council’s January 7 agenda is an item to approve an agreement with Drake University to lease the building at 1222-24th Street to the Des Moines Police Department, for use as the base for the traffic unit. Is this a sign that the PD has outgrown its riverfront headquarters, or is Des Moines just big enough that these sub-stations are beginning to make sense?
Several years ago I regularly read a blog written by a very brave individual who lived in the heart of a crack-house district in Baltimore, Maryland. He was struggling to take back his neighborhood, “one arrest at a time” so to speak, and he had taken the old carriage house behind the apartment building he owned and turned it into a “potty-and-coffee stop” for the police department. Officers were invited to use the bathroom, grab a cup of coffee or warm a meal in the microwave, etc., so they could remain close in the neighborhood to answer the frequent calls for busting up drug deals. I always thought that providing such a facility in the neighborhood was a really good idea and wondered if it could work here.
subscribe to my RSS feed!
Comments
2 comments to “Police sub-stations: are we big enough?”
Leave a Comment
-
Get Updates!
-- OR --
-
have you been to Baltimore?
your “I always thought that providing such a facility in the neighborhood was a really good idea and wondered if it could work here” statement lacks reasoning and freedom justification. Baltimore, at this Very moment has cameras located at select sections/intersections of the city with blue lights constantly flashing. Its the city’s attempt to say “We’re Watching You”
Number 2- You may not be aware there are two sides to the coin of drugs and both sides are playing the same game.
To be innocent in your statements is to be ignorant of your statements.
Tom, it’s interesting that you would take issue with my statement. I certainly admit I don’t know much about the full scope of the problem in Baltimore except for having read the “Rebuilding Madison Avenue” blog regularly for a couple of years. In that sense, yes I’m ignorant about the full scope of the problems there. But I am not “innocent in my statements,” I can assure you, especially as I have applied them to the situation here in Des Moines.
What we have here are neighborhoods where there are pockets of drug activity and crime, surrounded by responsible, caring neighbors who abhor that activity and want it gone from their streets. I don’t think there are any areas where at least some of the residents don’t wish that the police were a little closer at hand when trouble arises - if I remember correctly, the “Rebuilding Madison Ave.” blogger used to say the same thing about *his* neighborhood.
I’m well aware that cameras result in all people being watched more closely - the good as well as the bad. If I lived in a crack-infested neighborhood, though, and was myself a responsible citizen, I’d probably welcome that “eye in the sky” in the hopes that perhaps it might prevent someone in my family from being murdered or one of my children from succumbing to the temptations of the drug dealers.
As for sub-stations, I don’t consider it a violation of *my* rights, or an infringement on *my* freedom, to have a strategy in place that reduces response time and puts on-duty officers closer to law-abiding citizens.
~ Janet