By Tom Benning
The Dallas Morning News
The relaxed atmosphere at the Wildflower Apartments disappears as Dallas police officers start knocking on doors one balmy summer evening.
Neighbors nervously peer out from behind modest but well-kept blinds at the aging complex off Park Lane. Men huddled around pickups hush their boisterous conversations.
Children even pause games of catch to observe the officers going door-to-door, asking questions for a crime survey.
“They’re scared of the uniform,” Detective Jeff Baumann says, walking away from one particularly anxious woman.
The officers’ queries are central to Operation Heat Wave, a summer push to gather tips and reduce property crime across the city. And police have already received valuable information, including a fresh lead in a murder case.
But in Dallas’ crime-plagued sections - such as the notorious Five Points area, which surrounds these apartments - the operation’s true value might come at a more basic level.
A friendly hello. A warm handshake. A timely reminder of an upcoming Crime Watch meeting.
Brief, nonthreatening, face-to-face interactions.
“It’s not just the surveys,” said Lt. Mackie Don Ham of the northeast patrol division. “You can’t gauge the positive impact this has out in the community.”
About 150 officers fanned out one evening last week in an operation Dallas police will replicate nearly 30 times this summer in neighborhoods across the city.
Toting survey sheets and safety brochures, they focused on a half-square-mile sliver of Five Points, named for the intersection of Park Lane, Ridgecrest Road and Fair Oaks Avenue.
That slice, home to eight apartment complexes and a busy strip of businesses, has long been a trouble spot. In the first four months of this year, the neighborhood saw 45 burglaries, 12 robberies and several car break-ins.
Last weekend, a Dallas police officer shot a man at a nearby apartment complex on Ridgecrest Road after he allegedly reached for an officer’s gun during a disturbance call.
And the challenges go beyond specific crimes and statistics.
“There are lots of good people who live in these areas,” Ham said. “But they are trapped by no fault of their own, and their voice often gets lost.”
Expecting a large Hispanic population, officers brought information printed both in English and Spanish.
But at the Wildflower Apartments, the group - which included patrol officers, but also dozens of detectives - encountered an enclave of Asian families, from Myanmar and Thailand.
In addition to language barriers, officers had to confront a distrust carried over from homelands where an unsolicited visit from police might not be a good thing.
Baumann and his partner, Detective Russell Sanchez, knocked on four, five, six doors in a row where adults warily waved them off.
But often, there were kids who were less inhibited and could translate.
So the detectives changed their approach. Learning that one boy attended nearby Conrad High, Sanchez asked, “How’s school going?”
At another apartment, Baumann gave a young girl a friendly wave as he passed out a sheet outlining ways residents could give police anonymous tips.
“All this contact is really great,” Sanchez said. “The key is being able to publicize the effects: that by them saying something, we take action.”
That mentality came as a relief to residents such as Saul Rivera. Burglars broke into his apartment in March and stole his computer, his son’s Nintendo Wii and more than $1,000 in cash.
He planned to mail in his survey responses, but he said the strong showing of officers was a welcome sight.
“This is good,” said Rivera, 41. “I wish we had more security around here.”
Given the hit-or-miss nature of the survey process, there’s been some grumbling among officers that the operation is taking time away from other important police work.
But those on the patrol said the effort would pay dividends down the road.
That night, officers knocked on about 2,200 doors and received more than 1,000 surveys back. There were countless unrecorded breakthroughs, too.
Officers Dan Waller and Andrew Maldonado spent about five minutes with Asmerom Asfaha, who works at the Habesha Restaurant and Bar on Shady Brook Lane.
Asfaha complained about drug addicts and panhandlers hanging around the restaurant. But he was intrigued by an upcoming Crime Watch meeting just down the road at Half Price Books.
The officers gladly filled him in.
“It’s nice to actually get to talk to these folks,” Waller said.
Copyright 2011 The Dallas Morning News