Letter to Chief O'Guinn

In the wake of the meeting with Chief Jody O'Guinn last Thursday, Arbor District board member Jane Adams sent the following letter to the Chief:

OPEN LETTER TO CARBONDALE POLICE CHIEF JODY O”GUINN

September 7, 2009

Dear Chief O'Guinn,

Thank you for meeting at the First Presbyterian Church with the residents of the Arbor District last week. As you could tell from the large turn-out and the questions and comments, crime is a very big issue for the people who live here.

I was pleased to learn that you are upgrading the Police Department digitization capabilities and make that information available to the public through the Carbondale Police website. I hope that you will also map the home addresses of those arrested as part of your efforts to use our limited resources to the greatest advantage.

As long as Carbondale residents don't know the "profile" of the criminals, they will remain shadowy and malevolent – a force that erodes confidence in our police and other institutions.

Unfortunately, I have serious reservations after listening to you and Asst Chief Grubbs. There was a quality of don’t worry, everything is alright. But that’s not the way we feel in the neighborhoods. We feel that crime is out of control.

I fear this sense of impotence and growing lack of confidence in the police is heightened when you deny that there is a problem. Asst Police Chief Grubbs provided statistics that he claimed showed that our neighborhood was not disproportionately affected by crime. He said there had been 253 “incident reports” in the month of July, of which 40 had occurred in the Arbor District. I assure you, we are not worried about the number of traffic tickets or calls about firecrackers. We are concerned about the serious crimes to person and property. Felonies. I doubt there was anyone in that meeting who didn't see through that attempt to diminish and trivialize our concerns – and most, from feedback I have gotten from several people at the meeting, were angered by it or, if they were disposed to be generous, puzzled at why Asst. Chief Grubbs was not responsive to our concerns.

We were disappointed that you did not provide the tabular data that accompanied your maps of crimes that have occurred this year. Not only were the maps very difficult to read, but there is no way to understand the data that they represent. I did my best to count the crimes by area and, based on this potentially inaccurate tabulation, found that fully 24% of the crimes you mapped (excluding damage to property that I could not tabulate) occurred in the Arbor District and another 37% occurred on the southeast side. That is, the areas in which students primarily live and walk about accounted for over 61% of the criminal activity in Carbondale, despite the fact that students represent only 40 % of Carbondale’s population. Seventeen percent occurred on the northeast side, 12 % on the north central and northwest side, and only 7% on the large residential southwest side although 28% of the residents of Carbondale live there.

You stated to Channel 12 that crimes have decreased by about 18 % from previous years. We may be working with different statistics, but the data provided by your department to Blackwell Thomas, published in the Southern Illinoisan, shows an apparent increase in armed robberies – one of our primary concerns – with more occurring in the first 8 months of 2009 than in all of any previous year except one. It does appear that burglaries are down significantly, which is good news. But the armed robberies have continued, as have the gratuitous beatings, which would suggest that factors other than good policing cause these patterns.

You explained to us that our demographic “causes” the crime, pointing out that 40% of the people here are between 16 and 25. But Charleston (Eastern Illinois U) has 44% of the population between 18 and 24. Yet they have extremely low crime rates.

In fact, Carbondale has the worst crime rates of any university town in the state, except possibly Champaign-Urbana. Our city lives on the vitality of Southern Illinois University. If you visit any website that shows city crime rates, and there are many, you will see that Carbondale is dead last when compared to those university towns that draw from the same pool as Carbondale – DeKalb (Northern Illinois U.), Bloomington-Normal (Illinois State U.), Charleston (Eastern Illinois U.), and Murray State, Kentucky and Cape Girardeau, Missouri (Southeast Missouri State U.).

Our crime rates are also far higher than any of the surrounding towns. Carbondale needs families with school-aged children and other young working people to live here. The shootings and wounding of 5 young men that occurred this weekend happened on N. Michaels St. just north of Sycamore – a residential neighborhood where young working people live – and the 400 block of S. Marion, two blocks from the university campus and the middle of the housing projects.

Please do not trivialize or dismiss our apprehensions about crime in our neighborhood. We are concerned about our own personal safety and our own property values. But we are also concerned about the well-being of the young people who live among us and to whom we have a great responsibility. We want to live here and feel safe to walk the streets and secure in our homes.

We heard you say that you have ordered targeted patrols into our neighborhoods. And we are grateful, but we are still deeply concerned as gunshots are heard again in Carbondale.

You are new to our city. You may have too few resources to do what needs to be done. I heard you say that you have knowledge of how to use new technologies (including reverse 911 which for some inexplicable reason our system lacks). And from reading your biography you appear to have a depth of knowledge of effective policing techniques.

We wish to support your efforts to make this town as safe as it can possibly be. We hope you will listen to our concerns and our knowledge. You need to enlist the neighborhoods as force multipliers for the police force. We’re ready and willing, and as the large turn out the other night revealed, we are a large and motivated citizenry.

Sincerely,

Jane Adams

Board member, Arbor District Neighborhood Association

618 457 8228