Quote:
Originally Posted by rosepetal
Regarding crime in Baton Rouge, the 2007 crime statistics are in. Murders have gone up, but most of the victims knew their assailants, so it's not just random shootings out there. All other crime has gone down. So, crime hasn't risen by 70% as previously mentioned.
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That is a good segue to what I was going to say. I moved back after being away for 20+ years. Yes the crime is worst than it was then, but I think it is safe to say that is true for most places.
I think Katrina plays into it, but not all of it. It plays into it because there was a large influx of all types of people. But to be honest BR was growing before Katrina and the things that are going on were bound to happen eventually, Katrina just sort of fast tracked it all by a couple of years.
When I left, BR was a sleepy little town on the banks of the Mississippi with limited job opportunities.... which was the reason I had to leave. I graduated college and couldn't even find a clerk job. So I went to the east coast.
But now things are changing.. both for the good and the bad. Just 10 years ago I tried to move back here and couldn't find anyone willing to match my salary(and it wasn't that impressive in my opinion LOL
). Now I'm back and at a higher salary with better benefits. I'm not the exception either, I see higher salaries at a lot of places and more and more job opportunities in the Sunday paper and on job boards. This was a good benefit from the fast tracking of things caused by Katrina.
Continued growth is great for our city because it will bring in more people (and more college grads will stay) and our economy will continue to grow. I think proof is in looking at the rest of the country right now and how they are suffering. We have taken a hit of course but nothing like my friends in the Dallas, Detroit, Chicago, San Francisco and Los Angeles areas have been telling me about. One friend that work at GA Tech told me they had a new WalMart opening in GA and 6,000 people showed up for jobs the the first day and it continued that way for the entire week!! That same day a friend here that works downtown told me she had just got a nicer than normal annual pay increase. We really need to count our blessings. They haven't spread to everyone in the area, but as things become more competitive from the growth the will spread more and more. Just look at what is happening to the people working here in healthcare, hospitals are fighting not only for nurses, but other roles such as IT support as well. That will happen in other industries if we can keep the boom going.
However the down side of economic growth and new people coming in from various places is crime tends to come too. Crime seeks out prosperity. Especially when a city grows faster than its infrastructure can handle, which is definitely the case in BR.
It takes time for some of the people that have been in a sleepy city to adapt and start thinking like they live in a metropolitan city. Good example, when I purchased my home here I told the alarm installer in addition to window open monitor's on my windows I also wanted smash and break sensors in the ceiling of each room. That way if someone smashed a window vs prying it open the alarm would go off. His response was, "wow that is expensive, no one really break into houses that way here, they usually pry open a window, save your money."
See that is sleepy town thinking... in the area I came from they smashed first, unlatch, then pull up the window... what would make anyone think that could never happen here? Theives don't communicate? I got what I requested. We had the same discussion over adding panic buttons to every bedroom, walk in sensor lights, cell phone back up, and keypads at all entrances.. again I won. Finally he asked very sympathically, "were you a victim of a crime?" No I said, knock on wood, and it might be because I take precautions like this!
Same thing happened when I called the phone company and told them I wanted to move the phone box (which was in an open area by the garage) into my locked storage area of the home. The installer told me, "In five years this is the first time I ever had to do this" Again.. sleepy town thinking....
When you have lived in or close to a large metro area for awhile these things just become second nature, you don't even give them much thought, you just do them. But if you are new to a metro area (or the metro area has come to you) it can be very stressful at first. Some people don't want to think about these things and prefer to run from them. But as someone else posted you can't run forever.
When I lived in the Dallas area I lived in Plano. It was a wonderful suburb in Collin County. But as it grew guess what? The crime grew too. And the crime wasn't always poor minorities from the inner city. Many of them were juvenilles from very well off families, but they had developed meth and herion addicitions (you may have heard about it on tv, it made national news when kids started to OD at one of the nation's top ranked high schools) and needed to support those habits once their allowances ran out. Some of these kids drove cars better than me, yet they were breaking into houses, robbing cars for cellphones to pawn, and yes even holding up people at gun point in grocery store parking lots!
Some people in Plano ran to nearby Frisco and or to Denton county... but guess what? Crime is beginning to sprout there too. A few months before I left, a woman was called at work by her alarm company and told her alarm had went off. She went home, got there before the police, saw the door was open and why we will never know, walked in!! The robbers killed her. People were on tv saying, "I'm shocked, I left Plano to avoid this type of crime." Sorry, but again, that type crime follows wealth.
But then there is the other type of crime that Rose Petal mentioned above. As I was living in the various metro areas across the nation, one thing I noticed more often than not was that a large majority of crime is known assaliants. The person knew their attacker or they were somehow involved in some type of unseemingly behavior that brought on the attack. Like the recent case in this area where the pregnant woman was ran over and killed in a drug deal gone bad.
Also, not blaming the victim here, often it was people being in places or doing things they had no business doing in a metro area. Like many of the grocery lot robberies that occured in Plano happened to women shopping alone at night and instead of asking for assistance to the car, loaded the cars by themselves. We just shouldn't do that no matter how safe we feel a place might be.
So what do you do other than run? Educate yourself on living as safe as you can in an unpredicatable world. Learn Do's and Don't like don't jog the same path every morning and definitely don't jog with out pepper spray and a cellphone. Things like that.
If you see your neighborhood declining and crime increasing, contact the HOA, or start an HOA if you don't have one. You will be surprised how much time senior citizens have on their hands and how much they LOVE to run HOA programs.
Involve the police, ask them to help you set up a neighborhood watch program and to educate your neighbors on crime prevention. Contact the utility company for additional neighborhood street lights, the assessment is only about an extra 2 or 3 dollars a month.
When you think about it, your home is your investment, you want the equity to grow. To do that you need to protect not only it, but its surroundings. Start talking to your neighbors, you might not only gain some new friends but find people that are willing to help you save your investment because they have the same one.
That is what we did in the part of Plano I lived in. We started with the county, they helped us set up things with the police, have neighborhood awareness drives, etc. Once we got the ball rolling and they saw we were not running, and participants were increasing in number at the meetings, they threw in some stuff to help us out. Like new wider sidewalks for walking safety, free basic alarm systems for senior citizens, new larger street signs for police and fire department to see on calls, speed bumps, extra police patrols in car and on bicycles, cutting tree branches that blocked street lights, etc. Neighbors began to call each other if they saw something strange, like a car in front of a house they had never seen before, etc. For my neighborhood after about two years crime was back down to pretty much where it was when I first moved there (the occassional TPing of trees by the local school kids) and other neighborhoods had started similar programs.
Speaking of the police and parish support, again this city has grown faster than its infrastructure. So if they don't have the resources to help now is the time to push the local councilmen, etc. to get the resources.
I complain about BR to my family a lot, because I miss the sleepy college town I grew up in. But I have accepted the metro city it has become and I look forward to the continued growth. I chose specifically to live within the city limits because of convenience but also because I want to be a part of that growth. For me that means not running if I see a change in my neighborhood, but instead fighting to protect my investment. I plan to sell this house in 15 years when I retire, take the profit and buy me a nice 1 bedroom condo in the city for cash, so I be dang if I will give it up without a fight, LOL.
One final note, someone mentioned they don't see much difference for kids here than they do in other cities. I have to disagree. One thing that strikes me as different here is the BREC system. BREC is this city's hidden jewel!!!
I'm amazed at how BREC has grown and all of the programs and parks it offers. When I was looking for a house EVERY neighborhood had some type of BREC park or facility near by... every one... that is practiaclly unheard of!! Most new communities in other cities have some type of green area built in by the developer but they don't have the support or programs to go with it. Why BR and local realtors don't advertise this key selling point of the city more is beyond me. Even the low economic neighborhoods in the north have BREC parks and programs... its just amazing to me.
Anyone new to the area wanting to know more about BREC, check it out here:
brec.org
For me, that is a major reason to stay and continue and build this city. If a city cares enough about me to provide great public facilities, then I can care enough about it to try to help it through this time of growth by being an active citizen. Besides... nothing good ever comes easy, we have to work for it.
As a final note, my brother moved back here 5 years before me. Whenever I complain about the traffic or the lack of this or that he says, "Sis we are on the leading edge of BIG change. We got in on the ground floor, if we ride it through, and work to make it good change vs bad change, we will be sitting on a gold mine in the end." Well I'm not as optimistic as all of that, I know we have a lot of bumpy patches ahead economically and other wise, but it does make me feel good when he say it, so I hope it inspires someone out there. BTW, he purchased a home close to downtown (BR High School area) and sure enough his neighborhood has been improving every year... maybe he is on to something....
Be safe all!
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