PUBLIC SAFETY Bike Cops and Beethoven Bring a Drop in Crime

BACK IN THE ’80s, the specter of crime scared many people away from downtown Dallas-a fear that wasn’t necessarily unjustified. Headlines about parking-lot shootings and gang wannabees committing robbery as a part of their initiation surfaced periodically. Many Dallasites believed that when the corporate work force vacated the skyscrapers at 6 p.m., the criminal class took over.

But with a little help from Beethoven, Disney and cops like “Stud Muscle” Russell, crime in downtown Dallas has dropped dramatically from five years ago. “In the 1980s, downtown was abandoned by the city in terms of public safety,” says Lt. Jeff Corner, Dallas police supervisor of the Central Operations Division. Comer was assigned in December 1991 to turn downtown Dallas around. “We’ve turned the corner on this place,” he says. “In 1992, I was dealing with violent offenders. Now, to fill our days, we’re dealing with parking tickets.”

The statistics bear out Coiner’s boast. From 1991 to 1995. violent crimes reported in the Central Business District dropped from 709 to 287. Nonviolent crimes fell from 5,154 to 2,063. Both represent about a 60 percent decrease. Though any crime is bad, when figured per capita, Corner insists, the numbers indicate that downtown Dallas now is one of the safest areas in the city.

Betheny L. Reid, president of the West End Association, says that a major change came when police shifted their thinking about downtown. “At night and on the weekends, we explode [with people],” Reid says.

“But the way we were being managed was 9 to 5. The population of the downtown work force is about 118,000, but for sports, concerts and other special events, that can double at night. The only time little is happening is between 2 and 4 a.m., when the delivery people roll in.”

When Corner took over, the eight-officer downtown force was increased to 75. Told he could use his resources the way he saw fit, Cotner immediately threw out individual “beats,” instead making officers responsible for every square inch of the one-and-a-half mile downtown area. Instead of being reactive-writing up reports after a crime had occurred-Cotner emphasized being proactive, stressing what he calls “basic order maintenance”-getting graffiti cleaned up, broken windows repaired and trash picked up. If a downtown officer sees a drunk urinating in public or sleeping on the sidewalk, he takes him to jail or detox.

Cotner encouraged his officers to get out of their cars, to go into businesses and talk to the owners, and increased foot, horseback and bike patrols. That gave the downtown officers more visibility and accessibility, to the extent chat women who work in the West End have dubbed one buffed bike cop “Stud Muscle” Russell and exchange news of biceps sightings.

“The downtown police officers are very different,” says Patricia Kleinknecht, operations manager of the Downtown Improvement District (DID). “They’re more personable, friendlier. They’re out of their metal cocoons.”

The downtown business community has pitched in, buying more bicycles, a paddy wagon and lapel radio mikes for the officers. They organized a fax network to alert the 500 or so private security managers in the district of scam artists, pickpockets and other safety problems. And they lobbied city hall to require parking lots to be fenced, landscaped and illuminated at night. When lot owners report break-ins, Cotner stations officers in “eagles’ nests” high atop buildings to catch the thieves in the act.

The city’s teenage curfew has given police a tool to get teens under ] 7 off the downtown streets after midnight. And the state legislature two years ago passed an ordinance prohibiting public consumption of alcohol; police now can arrest not only the downtown denizens who drink malt liquor hidden in a paper sack, but the rowdy bands of frat boys determined to booze their way from the West End to Deep Ellum.

The creation of the Dallas Ambassadors is yet another way the downtown business community has responded to help police. Taking the approach used in Disney’s theme parks-training even those with dustpans to help customers-these red-and-navy uniformed men and women walk the streets of downtown with walkie-talkies, answering questions for tourists and employees. The 13 Ambassadors are funded by the Downtown Improvement District; next spring their numbers will double. A “hospitality force” equipped with maps, trained in first aid and CPR, they are unarmed and have no official security function, but they act as unofficial eyes and ears of police.

One downtown area with a notorious reputation as a trouble spot was the corner of Commerce and Griffin, the location of a McDonald’s and a popular bus stop. Truants often gathered there during the day, milling around and harassing pedestrians; it was a well-known “staging” area for local gang induction rites. “We were logging more crimes there than anyplace else,” says Cotner. “It was a training ground for robbers, an initiation ground.”

But McDonald’s is no longer a problem, he says. Street officers began to make a habit of stopping by to say hello, sometimes several times a day, to loiterers. Police worked with Dallas Public Schools authorities to target truancy and with DART to shift the bus pick-up location. And the manager of the restaurant tried a novel approach. He began piping classical music over the loudspeakers both inside and outside the building. It worked. Apparently gang members and other troublemakers hate Bach, Beethoven and Bartok. The crime reports from the McDonald’s corner have since dropped dramatically.

When more people begin living downtown, the police lieutenant anticipates that keeping the peace in the Central Business District will get even easier. “They’re going to look out their window and say, ’That’s my street,’ ” Cotner says. “We had to kick out those people who thought downtown was theirs because nobody else claimed it.”