Column: Iowa City should look at crime program

Here's the full-blown column I wrote to follow up on yesterday's blog post: 

Would a Davenport anti-crime program work in Iowa City?

Iowa City Councilor Mike Wright wants to know.

He's forwarded fellow council members last Sunday's Gazette story about Davenport's Neighborhoods Energized to Succeed policing program. He wants the council to discuss the idea at an October work session.

Wright told me this week he's especially interested in program elements like running background checks on rental applicants and crime-free lease addenda that allow landlords to evict tenants for criminal activity.

Davenport police say NETS' combination community policing, environmental changes, tenant screening and education cut off crime at the knees in their city.

Calls for service are a third what they were five years ago in the formerly troubled Goose Creek Heights area, they told Gazette reporter Adam Belz. Law-abiding residents have their neighborhood back.

Cedar Rapids leaders have their eye on Davenport's program. It wouldn't hurt Iowa City to take a look, too.

Recently released crime statistics show that it's not just our imagination - crime is on the upswing in our little old college town.

Violent crime was up 24 percent and property crime up 27 percent in 2008 when compared with the year before, according to the Federal Bureau of Investigation's annual crime report.

At 3.8 violent crimes per 1,000 residents in 2008, it's still below the national average, but a lot of people are concerned.

Recent spotlights on downtown violence and a summer of southside flare-ups have caught council's attention, too.

They're considering a natural gas and electrical service franchise fee to pay for more police officers. They're moving forward with ordinances that would impose curfews for juveniles and make it illegal to block city sidewalks or streets.

No one pretends those ordinances are the whole answer. But Davenport's approach presents some interesting questions in rental-heavy Iowa City.

Could the already-strapped police department handle the extra work? Would landlords have the guts to turn down applications from problematic tenants?

But perhaps the biggest question isn't about the nuts and bolts.

I wonder, in Iowa City's students-will-be-students culture of underage drinking and disorderly houses, would we be willing to apply crime-reduction rules equally to every criminal offender?

There's only one way to find out.

Jennifer Hemmingsen's column appears on Wednesdays and Saturdays. Contact the writer at (319) 339-3154 or jennifer.hemmingsen@gazcomm.com