A SPEGIAL REPORT

Crime touches all of us. It spreads its shadowy tendrils and wraps us in fear. No one is immune, not even those who have managed so far to stay out of harm’s way. Living in a city, or in a neighborhood, or on a street where crime has truck demands small, sometimes imperceptible changes in the way we live. We check the back of our car when we’re in a dark parking lot. We tense our bodies in response to rapid footsteps behind us. We drive by our children’s schools to reassure ourselves that their bicycles are safely in the rack, and they are safely inside.

We live in a time when no issue can be debated without considerable discussion of rights-women’s rights, animal rights, smokers’ rights, the right to die. How ironic that our rising concern for the rights of others has come in the midst of a massive, ongoing violation of the rights of every citizen.

That is what crime is-a violation. When a criminal steps through the shattered glass of your back door, he invades not just your house, but your privacy, your values, your soul. Talk of dignity and self-determination means little in a society in which property, health, and even our lives can be instantly stolen.

In putting together this special issue on Crime and Fear in Dallas, we asked ourselves if we were exaggerating the problem, “blowing it out of proportion, ” as critics of the press are wont to charge. But the alarming statistics and the opinion polls, along with the anecdotal evidence we hear every day, point to a problem that can scarcely be exaggerated. Crime is so prevalent today that the violence tends to group itself in horrifying but familiar categories. Child snatching. Prostitute butchering. Drive-by shootings of innocent bystanders. Late-night restaurant raids.

Since we began work on this issue seven months ago, four D staff members have been robbed-two of them by the same man, police believe. An art director’s best friend was brutally raped.

Opinion poll after opinion poll confirms that crime is the number one issue on people’s minds. Indeed, no political candidate for any office can hope to succeed without a crime platform-some five- or 10- or 17-point plan that can make our streets safe again. More police in the schools. More crime watch units. More early intervention programs. More officers on the streets. The current mayoral candidates will speak loudly and, they hope, eloquently on the subject.

The individuals you will meet on the following pages can’t wait for the political rhetoric to produce results. They are victims of crime whose lives will never be the same. They are warriors reclaiming their streets from criminals. They are workers within the criminal justice system trying valiantly to get through to young murderers before they can kill again.

Is there any way to win the war against crime? How safe is your neighborhood? How can you protect yourself? The answers, some of them at least, follow.