By Cleve R. Wootson Jr.
The Charlotte Observer
Charlotte - Mecklenburg police have identified 36 “hot spots” where concentrated crime demands their attention -- and can make life hard for people who live, work or shop there.
The hot spots contain some of Charlotte’s most violent streets but also include upscale retail areas where thefts from cars prompt most calls for police.
The trouble spots are spread across the county, as police have targeted the two or three most consistently challenging areas in each of the 13 patrol divisions. Many hot spots are clustered along highways and in areas packed with aging apartments, though every section of Mecklenburg has a place that keeps police busy.
Charlotte’s three major shopping malls and a Ballantyne retail strip fall within hot spots where property crime is the biggest battle. Neighborhoods and public housing in the urban core -- Grier Heights, Boulevard Homes and Tryon Hills -- are hot spots also struggling with violence.
Some hot spots generate high-profile crime, including last week’s quadruple homicide at the Tree Top apartments in southwest Charlotte, and the killings of two police officers last year in east Charlotte’s Timber Ridge community.
“It’s like in a movie (when) you go into the wrong neighborhood. ...,” says Sally Johnson, whose family was robbed at gunpoint in February in an east Charlotte hot spot. “Everywhere I go, I don’t feel safe.”
Police say they’re stepping up patrols in hot spots and, in some cases, sending in a special unit that helps combat violent street crime. That strategy contributed to a 7.2 percent decrease in violent crime in Charlotte-Mecklenburg last year, they say, though property crime ticked up 1.5 percent.
The hot spots aren’t a ranking of Charlotte’s worst areas. Instead, they represent areas that consistently cause a large proportion of violent or property crime within each division.
To identify hot spots, police mapped the location of crime reported from 2005 through 2007, then chose areas with the highest concentrations in each division.
“We’re putting dots on a map and saying, ‘There’s a lot of dots right here,’ ” says Capt. Glen Neimeyer. His Hickory Grove division contains a hot spot that accounted for 25 percent of its violent crime. “If I’ve got 75 or 100 officers in a division, I’m going to put them where the dots are.”
The police analysis shows some patterns:
--Two-thirds of Charlotte’s hot spots contain apartment complexes, some with lax landlords and a criminal element that preys on residents. At rental properties, violent crime is nearly four times more likely than at single-family homes occupied by their owners.
Property crime can also plague rentals. The University Place hot spot near UNC Charlotte is filled with apartments and had 698 property crimes last year -- more than any other hot spot countywide.
Most people don’t live in apartments for long, and in transient neighborhoods “it’s hard for us to get a base of community members that want to try to make a change,” says Deputy Chief Jerry Sennett.
--Concentrated retail areas -- from upscale malls to lower-end strip shopping centers -- are magnets for thieves. Crime here is typically not violent and mostly involves thefts from vehicles.
Quan Nash, 18, still feels angry when she thinks about the thief who broke into her Honda Accord and pried out her radio in January. “He was sitting in the car, and my seat was moved all the way back,” she recalls.
--Several patrol divisions face hot spots that are clustered together, which police say compounds problems and makes crime-fighting harder. Two hot spots in a sliver of southwest Charlotte account for 18 percent of the Steele Creek division’s violent crime. The area is home to the Tree Top apartments, where four people were found shot dead Monday. Crime there remains entrenched despite stepped-up police efforts.
“Ultimately, I don’t know that it will ever go away,” says Steele Creek commander Capt. John Williams. “We’ll find the right recipe eventually.”
Police have long used crime mapping to look for clusters and trends. But the department increased its emphasis on hot spots last year as it added a 13th patrol division and reshaped others to better distribute officers.
The department prides itself on data-driven policing. Patrol divisions -- as well as individual officers -- are expected to target areas based on the number, type and location of crime.
“Instead of me or a major or a captain looking at (data), we’re pushing it down to the officers,” says deputy chief Sennett. “Officers just riding around waiting for the next call is not really a good use of our resources.”
The focus on hot spots doesn’t leave other areas unprotected, he says. While officers between calls are encouraged to gravitate toward hot spots in their divisions, they must still provide appropriate patrol in all of their assigned neighborhoods.
Patrol areas are sized and staffed so that police can respond quickly if something erupts outside a hot spot, Sennett says.
Population isn’t factored into the police analysis -- so some neighborhoods may suffer a higher rate of crime, but the concentration of crime isn’t high enough to make them hot spots.
While police are increasing their focus on hot spots, Sennett says they still embrace “community policing” tactics of building relationships in trouble spots to help fight crime.
“It doesn’t mean we’re going to have to make a lot more arrests and write more tickets,” Sennett says. “We’re encouraging traffic stops. We’re encouraging talking to people.”
Copyright 2008 The Charlotte Observer