So, after suffering through these nights most of the year, picking up cans, cups, and bottles the next morning with depressing regularity, you finally call the police. You know they've got other things to do, and you know that you tipped a few yourself when you were 21 or 22. You never wanted to be "that guy", but this has gotten ridiculous.
That, readers, is a wild party disturbance complaint: incident code 12311, location code 81, with a default initial response of two units, priority three, code one. As of midnight, we have dispatched police officers in Lincoln to 282 of these. Usually, the call is the last straw in a situation like this that has been brewing over hours, if not months. During the same time period last year, Januray 1 through July 21, we dispatched police officers to 519. That's a pretty dramatic reduction by any standard. But wait....
In 2005, from January 1 through July 21, Lincoln police officers were dispatched to 1,012 wild party disturbance complaints. Could that really be accurate? I double checked and checked again. Are we missing a few months from the data? Does this query have a syntax error? Apparently not. It is both accurate and remarkable.
You can click the link in my label cloud to Party On. read about the trend and the strategies, and follow the emerging pattern over the four years I have published the Director's Desk.
14 comments:
Sir, I'm a Retired Police Officer and just completed two missions training the Afghanistan National Police. I enjoyed reading your blogs all the way from Kandahar and Kabul. You have inspired me, given me ideas, made me laugh, and allowed me to continue being proud to be a Police Officer. Congrats on your new assignment. Thank You for your service to Lincoln.
Now, if you could just get the parked vehicles off the rental property front lawns, and the stuffed chairs and couches off the front porches, Lincoln neighborhoods would start to look like they did when I was a kid! :)
Maybe there was a drop since we moved our parties to a more remote location.
First, love the Blog and hope your new assignment allows you to continue!
You hit the nail on the head. I live in an area with several revolving door college duplexes. We seem to get a new set of kids every fall. My husband and I try to be cool but our cool wanes when we have kids yelling at the top of their lungs and peeing in the front yard! So we appreciate the time and effort your officers have put into curbing the wild parties. We have noticed a significant decrease in the number of parties in the 7+ years we've been in our neighborhood. Our street used to look like a used car lot every Friday and Saturday night. So either our new duplexites are pretty lame with few friends or the word is out that LPD will shut them down. With your numbers it looks like the word is out! So thanks for all of the hard work!!
This is such awesome news from a quality of life perspective in our neighborhoods. We so rarely celebrate the absence of something. I hope it means more college age kids are using designated drivers, or perhaps drinking less (doubt it). The second derivatives of this also have value: less drunken fistfights, less officers in danger, less drunk drivers(?), less property damage, less bad choices by drunken teens in general.
I guess my hypothesis is that this demographic is still partying *somewhere*. Is it simply in smaller, quieter groups? Or has there been a genuine cultural shift, where drinking to get hammered is no longer as desirable? Does the ubiquity of mobile devices play a role? How do we explain it?
I want to see party houses' landlords prosecuted ASAP and sentenced as stiffly as the law allows (yes that would include jail time). Fines alone don't do spit; they just build it into the next rent increase.
However, most landlords would crap their drawers if they had to do even one night in jail. The message would be heard loud and clear - screen your tenants, and kick out the problem renters in short order, or you're going to jail.
Here is a geek of an idea. People who have had more than two DWI'S have an electronic gizmo on or in the license plate. When a police car scans the plate a small icon like a "Sweedish Bikini Team" member pops up. For those readers who do not remember, the team was on most all TV ads of a leading selling beer in the 1980's.
This would help keep other drivers safe as well as be entertaining to the officer. After a few arrests, another piece of bikini would vanish. Got to have some incentive, right?
JimJ:
What can we say to that? Wow. What a brain you must have.
What happened to it? :)
Steve: Remember the ink pens that you would turn upside down. They were really big in the 70's
I guess I just saw too many ink pens. Can you get lead poison from a pencil?
Not really sure about the brain, but let me know if you or anyone finds it.
Now everyone one knows I was on the Wiz Of Oz...such a long kept secret, darn!
Jim J,
I had an embarrassing moment with one of those upside down ink pens. Mine was the lady with the grass skirt. Turn it upside down and there she would be in all her glory. A friend of my Mother asked to borrow my pen. I didn't even think about it as I handed it to her. She noticed the special feature and asked me where she could buy one for her husband. I was as Red as a beet.
Gun Nut
JimJ:
Oh, yes, I had a crush on one of those pens....
Parents and landlords, don't worry. After all, it's not like anything really bad can happen at a crowded house party. I mean, it's not like someone could get murdered or anything like that. Hey, wait a minute...
Murder at house party
TKC,
Another case of 70 or 80 of the owners' kids' closest friends and professional associates, binge-drinking in an 1,134 sq ft house with (according to the county assessor) no more than two or three (if they topped the rough-in) toilets, with the owners blissfully unconcerned one state away. If that's not a disorderly house, I don't know what is.
Now look at this - later that same day, not even two blocks away, in broad daylight:
ROBBERY 1657 07-31-2011 300 BLOCK S 52ND ST B1-072087 VICT ROBBED @ GUNPOINT IN CAR ON STREET BY SUSPS IN MARIJ DEAL CELL PHONE/POCKET KNIFE/NE DL/MONECLIP/N CARD/CASH/CAR KEY/DRUG PARAPH
It's amazing how quickly a neighborhood can start circling the bowl, isn't it.
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