By Matt Dinger
The Oklahoman
OKLAHOMA CITY — Instead of just fielding complaints and responding to crimes in progress, Oklahoma City police officers in the Springlake division are pounding the pavement and knocking on some 9,000 doors to speak with residents about their issues with the northeast side.
The community policing approach is made possible by a $730,000 Safe Oklahoma grant from the state attorney general’s office.
Kicking off Dec. 14, police already have knocked on more than a thousand doors in a 3.3-square-mile area targeted because of a high volume of violent crime.
“We want to identify by going door-to-door to find out from them, to get them involved in the community approach by saying, ‘What’s important to you? What can we do to work with you to make your neighborhood safer?’ Once we get those things identified, then we put together either enforcement shifts, or we work with the city utilities or action center or other groups,” said Maj. Don Martin, Springlake division commander.
“It solves a problem, but also builds a relationship that can be sustained for a long time.”
The number one complaint so far has been about speeders and other traffic voilators, which is the most common issue nationwide. The second most common complaint is about random gunfire, a byproduct of gang activity that has been a mainstay of the area for years, Capt. Bill Patten said.
The hope is that giving direct voice to residents will help staunch crime in an area that has had more than 40 homicides and slews of rapes, robberies, and assaults over the past five years.
“We don’t want that to be status quo. We don’t want people to assume that’s how life is, and it seems to be getting to that point,” said Patten, a 25-year veteran who has worked more than 17 years in Springlake.
Patten is Springlake’s executive officer, and second in command after Martin.
“Crime is a symptom of the problem. We want to make that area a climate where crime cannot sustain itself because the neighbors won’t approve of it, we won’t approve of it. It’s just not a place to set up. We could send an IMPACT team in to hit the drug house, but we want to know why it was OK for that drug house to set up there. How did that happen?” Patten said.
“We don’t want to do symptomatic policing. We want to go right to the problem.”
And the problem is concentrated in an area with a jagged boundary that goes as far north as NE 50 and as south as NE 13. Lindsay Avenue is the westernmost street in the target area, which also juts out to NE Grand Boulevard in the southeast.
The boundary focuses on where violent crime is most concentrated, and cleaves through certain neighborhoods rather than being delineated by a grid.
On the first night out on the streets, officers were invited into a home where they shared a meal, prayed together and sat and talked for about two hours, Patten said.
“In Springlake, we’ve had families that have lived there for three, four, five generations. It’s not multi-family housing. This is their home. It’s been their home for a long time,” Martin said.
“We can go out and send an enforcement shift, and he can go do X, Y, and Z, but X, Y, and Z may not even be on the radar for people who live in that neighborhood. The law enforcement perspective to solving a problem is dumping a massive amount of resources in an area to do enforcement.
“If you’re trying to build a relationship, that’s probably not the best thing you can do. You want to go in, you want to get them on your side, you want to talk to them, make them feel empowered to be part of the solution, and then, based upon what they say, send enforcement in,” Martin said.
“We’re going to direct our enforcement actions off of what the neighbors feel is important. We had one guy say he feels safer if the police moved out west, but everybody else wants more police in their neighborhood,” Patten said.
If residents aren’t home, officers leave behind “sorry we missed you” cards with a phone number and email address. They plan to knock on those doors again, but police want to provide multiple avenues of communication in case someone does not want to be seen talking to officers on a street with a high level of criminal or gang activity, Patten said.
Another provision of the grant will be the juvenile intervention program, which kicks off this month. Low-level, underage offenders will be recommended by the municipal court to go through a seven-week program that teaches leadership skills and alternatives to a career in crime.
The grant term is one year, but police can apply for an extension if the money has not all been spent.
“You want to solve crime, you create an environment where the citizenry and the people that live in that area say, ‘That ain’t going to fly here. You ain’t coming in this area and doing that.’ It’s like water, it takes the path of least resistance. Criminals are the same way. You make an area where they don’t want to go do it, they’re going to go find someplace else to do it, and we hope that’s the next state over,” Martin said.