DAY 7: Not as different as you might think
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By LORI PILGER / Lincoln Journal Star
Off-duty cops used to help break up fights with baseball bats outside McDonald’s and Mum’s Liquor on North 27th Street.
Police Sgt. Randy Clark said it’s a different street these days. Neighborhood groups get together. People cook out in the summer. They care, Clark said.
“The neighborhood’s taking it over.
“You’re still going to have your pockets of problems, but it’s definitely changed,” he said just before 5 while driving a cruiser around the neighborhood one recent evening.
The North 27th Street community may have been reluctant about a police substation in its midst at first, he said, but these days Center Team members get invited to the cookouts.
Traffic is thick as people work their way home during rush hour, but the streets are dry and there are no accidents. When it gets slick, Clark said, they get busy.
“We’ve had some spectacular accidents,” he said.
They sometimes get busy late at night, too, he said, with calls about parties or fights or domestic assaults.
The calls along 27th Street aren’t much different than those in any other stretch with lots of businesses and lots of people, Police Chief Tom Casady said.
But more businesses means more shoplifting calls, more drive-offs and more break-ins. Police were dispatched to 2,300 incidents in Lincoln from Dec. 6 to 11. Of those, 119 were along 27th Street — 75 north of O Street and 44 south of O.
On the north side, there were 14 traffic accidents, five alarms, six larcenies, two assaults, four child abuse calls, four disturbances, one drunk, one drunk driver, three frauds, two narcotics and two suspicious person calls, among others.
On the south, four traffic accidents, one alarm, six larcenies, three disturbances, one drunk, two drunken drivers, one fraud, two narcotics and five suspicious person calls.
There are still some problem areas. This year, for instance, 27th and Vine got more calls than most parts of the city. The area just south of 27th and Holdrege got more than its fair share, too.
But Casady said things are better on North 27th than in 2000, “even compared to the rest of the city.”
The substation at 27th and Holdrege has been a catalyst, he said.
The darkest spots on a map the chief made using 2006 data on residential burglaries, child abuse or neglect calls, drug cases and domestic assaults to reflect neighborhood well-being are still south of downtown, where some houses just generate lots of calls, Clark said. That’s true all over Lincoln, he said.
Clark pulls through an alley near 22nd and Y streets to look for new graffiti. For a while, it was popping up everywhere on these side streets. There’s some on 27th Street, too.
A few minutes before 6:30, things have quieted down. No calls to 27th Street for two hours.
Alfred and Dorothy Smith of Beatrice walk out of Super Saver at 27th and Pine Lake Road with a couple of bags of bridge mix.
They come to Lincoln to shop a couple of times a month, they say, and they list the places they stop along 27th: the two ShopKo stores on the south end, Denver Mattress on the north.
Traffic moves a little faster than back in Beatrice, and it can be awkward where it narrows to three lanes, but the Smiths have no qualms about crime.
“It’s been pretty peaceful,” Alfred Smith said.
Back in 1990, Cindy Hruza lived near 27th and Q streets until someone broke into the house and somebody started her car on fire.
The car was the final straw.
Now she lives near 27th and Van Dorn, and she kind of avoids her old neighborhood, admittedly associating it with how it used to be. But even then, she said, she had good neighbors, and people were making efforts.
She doesn’t think crime is a problem where she lives now, although someone jumped into her bushes early one morning to hide from police.
“It’s really pretty peaceful except for the traffic,” Hruza said.
Traffic is the only issue Howard and Alison Tegtmeier have at Primitive Scents and Treasures, a shop they own at 27th and F streets.
They’ve been there about two years and have had no problems with theft or vandalism.
Alison Tegtmeier said she has no worries walking to the parking lot across the street after closing the shop.
They see new stores popping up, a kind of resurgence in the area, they said. Farther north has changed, too.
“They’ve really cleaned some things up,” Howard Tegtmeier said.
Loc Le, a nail technician at Queen Nails in a strip mall at 27th and O streets, said somebody broke the window and took some cash a while back. It made them more aware that things like that happen, but he doesn’t worry about crime in the area.
“We do care,” Le said.
Graffiti sticks out on the sign at Home Depot, 27th Street and Cornhusker Highway.
Steve Rolfsmeyer, who lives near First and Cornhusker, rolls a cart out to his Suzuki a few minutes before 6 p.m. He said he thinks there’s more crime than most realize, particularly drug-related crime. He’d like to see more drug treatment options and less graffiti.
But he doesn’t worry when it comes to 27th Street.
“I’m not afraid to go anywhere in this city,” Rolfsmeyer said.lpilger@journalstar.com.
Reach Lori Pilger at 473-7237 or
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