Julia Robinson photo

Michelle Sumy, left, spoke last week at a public forum on crime prevention. She asked that police officers be involved in educational outreach to combat rising youth crime.

Columbia’s violent crime rate is growing faster than at any time within the past 10 years and exceeds the growth of the city’s population, a comparison of Columbia Police Department and census figures shows.

Through about 11 months of this year, the violent crime rate in Columbia increased 23 percent compared with all of last year, according to data supplied to the Columbia City Council last week.

From 1997 to 2006, Columbia’s population grew from 79,128 to 94,428, a 19 percent increase, according to U.S. Census Bureau figures. During the same period, the violent crime rate rose 22 percent.

And if the 23 percent increase for 2007 is folded into the calculation, Columbia’s violent crime rate has increased more than 50 percent since 1997. This year’s 23 percent boost is the biggest single-year increase. Interviews with city officials and other experts attribute the increase to a possible combination of factors, including a larger population, a poor economy and changes in the housing market.

And like moving toothpaste through a tube, the police department’s heightened enforcement of the law in one area might have caused the criminal activity to shift to another part of the city. That shift is causing some people to think about moving out of certain neighborhoods.

A rash of recent violence that includes street shootings and a killing in a hotel lobby has given the appearance that crime is on the rise. Hard data back up that conclusion. The number of homicides, rapes, robberies and assaults are all higher this year than they were in 2006, according to the crime statistics. In the past, some types of crimes might be on the increase while the incidence of other forms of violence was lower.

“What is happening this year, it seems that in total they seem to be on an upward trend,” City Manager Bill Watkins said.

Police Chief Randy Boehm said it is not unusual for the city to experience a rash of some types of crimes, such as shootings or robberies. But in recent months, those increases have occurred simultaneously along with a homicide. Cynthia White, 55, was shot to death last month during an apparent robbery attempt while working as general manager at Comfort Inn.

“You have people reading about crime on a daily basis, and they start asking questions like, ‘Is the community safe? Gosh, what is going on?’ ” Boehm said. “I think that’s a positive thing. If you ever get to the point where you’re complacent about the level of crime in your community, that’s a tipping point.”

Safe neighborhood?

The police department has responded with extra patrols to try to curb robberies. A violent crime task force has been formed to investigate a rise in shootings. Some residents are considering moving to other areas of the city they consider safer.

Teresa Hunter last month described her neighborhood along Derby Ridge Road north of Smiley Lane as “wild” while police with tactical gear searched a duplex for a shooting suspect across the street. “I’m ready to move,” Hunter said.

Hunter said she moved into the Avatar Court duplex in July because she thought it was a nice family neighborhood. She liked its proximity to Derby Ridge Elementary, where four of her five children can walk to school.

“But I don’t want to be a victim of all this going on,” she said.

A neighbor, Kimberly Morgan, agreed. Morgan said she has lived in her duplex for about a year and a half and noticed things changing about six months ago. Teenagers walking through the area wear “gang colors,” she said.

“It’s just a bad element that needs to leave,” Morgan said. She locks her door and her SUV and leaves her front porch light on.

“Now I feel like I have to move,” she said.

Last year, Watkins drew attention to criminal activity along Garth Avenue after hearing complaints for months about drug sales and prostitution. Police put on more patrols, and a two-officer team focused on that area exclusively without responding to other calls.

Watkins said at the time he was concerned the criminal activity would move to another area. In a recent interview, he said that might have happened.

“I suspect that at least some of the problems we are dealing with have to deal with moving crime around,” he said. “Things are just a whole lot better in that area. Not perfect, but a whole lot better.”

Morgan said she has noticed a shift in the neighborhoods where crimes occur. “Everything you hear nowadays is north.”

At a recent community meeting at a church on Smiley Lane, another resident expressed a similar opinion.

“It used to be in Columbia that the high-crime area was easy to pick out,” said Thad Simmons, who said his Orchard Lane home in northeast Columbia had been broken into twice this year.

Lorenzo Lawson, director of the Youth Empowerment Zone, which helps troubled youths learn job skills, said criminals learned of the increased police presence and were scared away.

“It made them leave North Garth and go to other areas of the city,” Lawson said.

Boehm said it’s hard to know for sure whether relocating crime from the central city area is part of the problem.

“Anytime you do any type of a saturation of an area, one of your concerns is that you just relocate those issues,” the police chief said. “Some of it is relocation, but some of it is making cases and arresting people in that location.”

A housing slump

The city’s housing situation might not explain the rise in crime, but it could provide clues why crime occurs in certain neighborhoods.

Columbia Housing Authority Chief Executive Officer Phil Steinhaus is used to hearing complaints that Section 8 properties play some role in the increase in crime. But Steinhaus said Section 8 reflects the overall housing market.

Section 8 is a federally funded housing program that subsidizes rent paid by the poor. Tenants pay 30 percent of their household income toward rent, and the government picks up the balance. Tenants are issued vouchers, which they use at rental properties approved to receive them.

Because of the current “glut of rental housing,” Steinhaus said, more landlords are willing to accept the vouchers.

People who qualify for one of the more than 1,000 Section 8 vouchers are not screened as rigorously as those who live in Columbia Housing Authority units. Steinhaus said the agency conducts a criminal background check of Section 8 users but does not check credit history or contact a person’s previous landlords.

Meanwhile, crime has decreased on housing authority property, something Steinhaus attributes to stricter enforcement of regulations and the willingness to quickly evict problem renters.

“Most of our tenants are really great tenants and follow the rules,” Steinhaus said. “It’s that 10 percent involved in drugs that make this neighborhood less desirable, just like other neighborhoods.”

Columbia police Officer Tim Thomason teaches a crime prevention program to landlords to reduce crime in rental housing. The police department cross-references rental property locations with arrest records and sends notices in the mail when someone appears with an address of a rental property.

Thomason said the housing market could be a factor relating to crime.

“It’s certainly spreading out to different areas in part because of the housing market,” he said. “Places that weren’t rentals before are rentals now.”

Thomason said areas such as the Citadel-Derby Ridge area were initially constructed to appeal to families and college students, but “for some reason they haven’t taken off as well.”

University of Missouri sociology professor John Galliher, who teaches a criminology course, said the economy could be to blame for the rise in crime. Galliher said crime dropped in the 1990s and that some said it was because of a robust economy and low unemployment. He said with a ready supply of guns, people turn to crime “if they don’t have any other way to survive.”

More officers?

The increase in crime coincides with a 5 percent decrease in the amount budgeted for the police department in fiscal year 2008 — but officials said there’s no connection between the two. Because city sales tax revenue had not grown as anticipated, Watkins called last month for all city departments to cut spending by 5 percent and to keep vacant positions unfilled for 60 days.

Boehm said the budget problems have not affected the department’s ability to police the city because there is a priority on being “as fully staffed as possible” at the patrol level.

The police department will have seven vacant positions at the beginning of next year, four because of resignations and three attributable to planned promotions. Three school resource officers might be pulled out of Columbia’s middle schools to help fill some of the existing openings in the patrol division, Boehm said.

Watkins recently proposed spending $100,000 in money from new cable franchise fees to immediately hire officers, an issue the city council is expected to vote on next month.

Boehm and Watkins have not called for more officers. Watkins said the city has “kept up” with community growth, adding 25 officers since 2000. A police officer costs the city about $75,000 a year.

“I don’t think there’s a direct correlation between hiring a bunch of new officers and dealing with crime,” Watkins said.

Boehm has announced plans for some officers to work overtime on a robbery detail to increase police visibility near at-risk businesses.

The violent crime task force consists of seven Columbia officers from throughout the department, two Boone County sheriff’s deputies, an officer from the MU Police Department and two FBI agents. The members work full time investigating crimes, mostly what police describe as retaliatory shootings between loosely organized gangs involved in the drug trade.

During its first two weeks, the task force has made more than 20 arrests and seized two guns, Columbia police Capt. Brad Nelson said. Officers are targeting people whose names have come up often during investigations of the shootings. A lot of the suspects have outstanding warrants, Nelson said, and it’s a matter of officers tracking them down.

Boehm said he is unsure how long the task force will exist, but it will be evaluated toward the end of the month. He said even though rising crime has brought more criticism to his department, it also has raised more awareness to the fact that crime is a community issue.

“The conversation overall is a positive thing,” Boehm said. “In the end, crime is not just a police issue. It’s a community issue. It’s meant for all of us to get involved and look for solutions.”

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