My comments are included --
Tulsa Neighborhoods Fighting for Street Lights
Tuesday March 20, 2007 Reporter: Abby Ross
http://www.ktul.com/news/stories/0307/407021.html
"To shut me up they put a light in front of my house saying now you have a light."
The fight's gone on for years. Jane (Malone) and many other neighbors in the Chamberlain Park area want more street lights in their neighborhood and all around North Tulsa. "If you drive around the area, you'll see what I am talking about and if you need more specifics, come with me you'll see."
We (KTUL) take Jane up on that offer. First, up North Hartford, then down North Cincinnati. Jane says more lights would cut down on crime.
We asked police if that's true. Capt. Richard Lawson of Tulsa Police Dept. "I am convinced the better lit an area is there's a crime deterrence factor." (Lawson is administrative captain at Uniform Division North, swalton@cityoftulsa.org, askacop@cityoftulsa.org)Unfortunately, the "lights-fight-crime" assumption is more urban legend than fact, and is unsupported by empirical evidence or even a credible (non-industry-funded) study.
Back in 1977, the US Department of Justice set out to evaluate the relationship between lighting and crime, and concluded that "…while there is no statistically significant evidence that street lighting impacts the level of crime, especially if crime displacement is taken into account, there is a strong indication that increased lighting-perhaps lighting uniformity-decreases the fear of crime" (National Institute of Law Enforcement and Criminal Justice, July 1977).
The Institute of Justice, which replaced the National Institute, followed up on the study in 1997: "We may speculate that lighting is effective in some places, ineffective in others, and counter-productive in still other circumstances. The problematic relationship between lighting and crime increases when one considers that offenders need lighting to detect potential targets and low-risk situations (Fleming and Burrows, 1986). Institute of Justice,
"Preventing Crime: What Works, What Doesn’t, What’s Promising," 7-32.
Fact is, if all you needed were streetlights to stop crime you really have to wonder what progress we have made in over 100 years of electric street lighting.
Cpt. Lawson uses the Northgate community as an example. After the city cleaned up the area and installed better lighting, the crime rate dropped by 30-percent. Jane says that's what her neighborhood needs.How is Northgate's crime now? ...3 months from now?
In instances where there has been a concerted push to address crime in a specific location, increasing the quantity of lighting is usually in concert with increased police patrols and citizen vigilance, and crime subsides. Over a period of time, the interest and patrols taper off while the bright lighting remains, and with the increased nighttime activity facilitated by the lighting, criminal activity not only returns but often exceeds the pre-lighting level.
(Chicago Alley Study).
Sue Swepton lives in the Lakeview community. "We have a problem with break-ins and I think it'd eliminate some of that if we had more lights." So for all neighbors in North Tulsa, Jane will keep fighting--even if its one light at a time.
The FBI reported that most burglaries occur in broad daylight, how can it be argued that streetlights help in such instances? (
http://www.fbi.gov/pressrel/pressrel03/ucr2002.htm)
Federal studies have also found street lighting to be effective at improving peoples perception of safety, even when the streetlighting is so poorly designed that it actually compromises real security by creating glare, deep shadows, more opportunity, etc.
Maybe these neighborhood leaders might accomplish more by shifting their improved streetlighting emphasis from quantity to quality, and from increasingly expensive illusions of safety to more practical and real safety.
Get rid of the glare, and you wont need the thick curtains 24/7. This improves "natural surveilance," and more good eyes on the street is the first step to taking those streets back.
Patric.
Comment to Reporter Abby Ross: http://www.ktul.com/news/talent.hrb?i=274
