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Featured Listener Comments Section: Contents List |
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Listener: Jane
Category: Lubbock City Politics
Date: 16 May 2008
Time: 22:11:50 -0700
Remote Name: 69.149.123.14
Sometime you'll have to discuss the crime rate again. So
far this week we have run off thieves EVERY SINGLE DAY! They are just coming
into our business complex in broad daylight and taking whatever they want!!!
We just really feel beset by the criminal element. We have been burglarized more
than 50 times since last August and after the 20th time the police told us there
is nothing they can do to help us or stop it and we should just hire private
police to take care of it. So I guess we are in the market for regulators. Do
you know any?
If the police won't help and now we don't even call them to report the break-ins
any more, can the crime rate be accurate? From where we stand, crime is so out
of control here that I cannot recommend any one move here. What can we do about
this?
Some nights we patrol all night running off the criminals. I'd like to support
the police but I don't think I can any more.
Let's hear your thoughts on this.
Thanks,
Jane
Pratt responds:
I know this business. It is a long-time established Lubbock business to whom we owe a bit of a debt for buying and using what was a large empty industrial park. If we cannot police more effectively, everything else at City Hall is pointless. The primary reason people organize themselves into communities is to provide protection and such is Job #1 of the City of Lubbock - even when it is inconvenient or difficult.
This is now a half-dozen such reports I've had from established, respectable citizens and business owners over the past two years and something MUST be done. Either the new Chief needs to get on the ball or we must demand other steps.
This was not a problem in Lubbock a decade ago but is now. Add to this and similar stories, the fact that downtown, just a block or so from Police HQ, is covered with aggressive bums who sleep openly around the Mahon Library, and it is clear we have a declining commitment to policing for quality of life and the business community.
There can be no start to downtown redevelopment until it is cleared of visible signs of this and no trust in LPD leadership until the business community and citizens get more focus upon property crimes. We've found a way to go far overboard on Public Intoxication and other "sin" policing but cannot handle basic burglary and vagrant control.
New council, add this to your list not under, but next to, water resources.
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