Chamb. Offenses

At the Council Public Safety Committee meeting in March, Chairman John Conrad asked Chief Oliver whether we could be given the offense data by address. Up until then the police had given out the data by block but had refused to produce the data by street address.

Chief Oliver said there were some technical problem with the new database that might cause some delay but no reason why we could not have the data. Sgt. McKinney put some personal sweat into the issue and sent us the data on March 30. The crime data are an eyeful.

First the geography: The area looks like this. Rt. 1 is Chamberlayne. The blue is Bellevue; the light green is the Ginter Park Residents Association area.

We get the Police Dept. data by Census Tract. For us the relevant tracts are 102 and 104

The data for Chamberlayne Ave. in CT 102/104 contain 2192 reports for the period 1993-99 after the natural deaths, traffic, and other noncriminal reports are deleted.

OFFENSE	Total	%
ABDUCTION	10	0.5%
AGGR ASSAULT	129	5.9%
ARSON	12	0.5%
EMBEZZLEMENT	2	0.1%
FORGERY/FRAUD/BRIBERY	16	0.7%
HOMICIDE	9	0.4%
LARCENY	422	19.3%
LARCENY FROM AUTO	182	8.3%
MANSLAUGHTER	3	0.1%
MOTOR VEHICLE THEFT	292	13.3%
NON-RESIDENTIAL BURGLARY	30	1.4%
PROPERTY RELATED	298	13.6%
RAPE	2	0.1%
RESIDENTIAL BURGLARY	326	14.9%
ROBBERY AGAINST BUSINESS	9	0.4%
ROBBERY AGAINST PERSON	118	5.4%
SEX OFFENSE	1	0.0%
SIMPLE ASSAULT	287	13.1%
THROW/SHOOT MISSILES	41	1.9%
WEAPON OFFENSE	3	0.1%
Grand Total	2192

Turning to the 1999 data, there where 319 offense reports on Chamberlayne north of Brookland Parkway (3000 block to 4900 block). The data by crime look like this:

OFFENSE	Total	%
Abduction	2	0.6%
Aggr Assault	12	3.8%
Arson	4	1.3%
Forgery etc.	10	3.1%
Homicide	2	0.6%
Larceny	43	13.5%
Larceny from Auto	34	10.7%
Manslaughter	1	0.3%
MV Theft	38	11.9%
Non-Resid Burglary	4	1.3%
Prop. Related	60	18.8%
Resid. Burglary	29	9.1%
Robbery from Business	2	0.6%
Robbery against Person	11	3.4%
Simple Assault	60	18.8%
Throw/Shoot Missile	7	2.2%
	319

Here are the hotspots combined with the 1999 calls for services. 4930 is the BP station at Chamberlayne and Azalea; 4924 is the check cashing store; 3206 is an adult home; except for the obvious exceptions - City, e.g. - the rest appear to be apartments.

Address	Offenses	Calls	Owner
3207_11_15	22	154	Court Associates
4930	18	60	Southern Retailers Inc.
3505	14	115	Bernstein Associates
3918_20	12	127	Americana Associates
4924	12	17	Frank & Eve Gross
3905_43	11	145	Bellevue Apartments
3916	10	75	Frank & Viola Woelfl
3803	9	32
3817	9	15	City of Richmond
4801_19	9	71	Chamberlayne Investment
3201	7	8	Wm & Grace Trimmer
3006	6	47	Court Associates
3206	6	55	Page & Brown
3804	6	13	Zacharias
3818	6	12	Zacharias
4223	6	28	Harris
4320	6	10	Woodson Holdings
3510	5	23	JMR LLC
3901	5	17	City of Richmond
4301_27	5	71	Chamberlayne Investment
3214	4	16	YWCA
3603_5	4	39	Zacharias
3613	4	11	John & Audrey Black
3618	4	22	ANI Associates
4907_13	4	30	Arthur Carter

(Owners from the March, 2000 Assessor's Report). And here are those data in graphical form. NOTE: high crime to the right, high disorder toward the top:

More particularly, here are the calls/offenses data for the west side of the 3900 block for 1999:

In interpreting these data it may help to know that the Ginter Park folks brought an Operation Squalor (public nuisance) prosecution against the Redwood (3916) and Northcourt (3914) in 1998. Note how Northcourt improved in '99 while Redwood did not. Also of interest, there was a new owner of 3902 in 1997. It sure looks like the owner can make a difference if he wants to.

At the end, the Redwood has about twice the crime per apartment as Abbey Square and about four times as much as the other apts on the west side of the 3900 block.

This information certainly suggests the places we should look first to obtain improvements in the unacceptable crime rate on Chamberlayne. Here are some details: