Mark and Sue Moore live with their 2-year-old son in a simple white house on a winding street in Palatine. Theirs is a quiet middle-class neighborhood, with children’s bikes and toys strewn across front lawns.
But inside is the family’s version of a foolproof home security system: three hidden guns and Fido, their 100-pound pit bull. Mark Moore also takes a self-defense class and has taught his wife to fire a handgun at a local shooting range.
Though the Moores moved to the northwest suburbs from Chicago four years ago, partly in search of safety, a fear of crime has followed them.
“I watch people all the time,” Mark Moore said. “Eventually, a lot of ne’er-do-wells come out to the suburbs to find better, more affluent homes.”
The Moores, like many residents of the northwest suburbs, worry a lot about crime, even though overall crime rates in the suburbs always have been far lower than in Chicago. And in recent years, crime rates actually have fallen locally and in Cook County as a whole.
But to the Moores and others, the statistics don’t mean anything. The fact that crime occurs, and could happen to them, is all they need to know. A recent Tribune poll found that only 16 percent of northwest suburban residents thought crime was declining.
As further evidence, a growing number of northwest suburban residents are taking action to ward off crime, local police say. And whether they join a Neighborhood Watch group, outfit a home with a burglar alarm, take a self-defense class or buy a gun, residents who have turned to these measures say they feel more secure.
Karen Lucas, a 36-year-old Palatine resident, is a classmate of Mark Moore’s in a jujitsu class. She said she turned to self-defense because she worried about becoming a crime victim. But now she walks her neighborhood with a new attitude. The 120-pound woman said she has learned to pull an attacker twice her size over her shoulder.
“I definitely have a lot more confidence now,” she said.
Community policing efforts have encouraged neighborhood watch programs, offering free home security inspections and sponsoring citizen police “academies,” where residents learn up-close about police work.
But the challenge for local police is to encourage crime prevention without feeding crime fears.
“While we want people to be aware of their surroundings, it’s also wrong to breed panic among the public,” said Des Plaines Police Chief Robert Sturlini.
Even so, he added: “We live in the Chicago metropolitan area. We have all the good things that come with it. But we also have the traffic and the crime.”
In Elgin, police send out regular neighborhood crime briefings and newsletters. And if residents want more specific information, it’s available.
“There’s been an effort by police across the country to fuel people’s understanding about crime, so (residents) can make better decisions about their lifestyles,” says Elgin Police Chief Charles Gruber. But he acknowledged: “There is an initial fear factor, and I don’t think it will necessarily parallel what the reality is.”
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In Cook County, the reality is a violent crime rate that dropped 11 percent in 1996. And while a few northwest suburbs reported increases in some categories, such as theft, overall crime in the area was down, according to statistics from the Illinois State Police.
Statewide, reported crime declined for the fourth time in five years. Among violent crimes, robberies fell the most, 15 percent, followed by aggravated assault/battery and criminal sexual assault, categories that each dropped 7 percent. Murders declined by 4 percent. Property crimes fell by less than 1 percent.
While crime is headed down, local police with strong community-policing programs report dramatic increases in resident interest.
– Palatine’s full-time crime-prevention unit is busier than ever, doing everything from telling kids about bike safety to reviewing blueprints before the village’s Planning Commission to determine whether proposed buildings have enough lighting and other safety features.
– The Schaumburg Police Department advertises its citizen police academy at the village’s annual Septemberfest and has had a “huge” response from residents, said Deputy Chief Rich Casler.
– Mt. Prospect’s long-running Neighborhood Watch program now includes 209 blocks and 5,000 households.
– And in Des Plaines, what started as one citizen police academy has branched into a senior citizen crime prevention academy and a junior citizen academy for high school students. Each of these programs has waiting lists of residents eager to go on ride-alongs with officers and learn about police work, gun safety and protection against home-repair fraud.
Local police encourage participation in their crime-awareness programs as an alternative to more extreme moves, such as buying handguns. And most law enforcement officials are relieved that Americans aren’t buying more guns for protection. The manufacture of handguns in the U.S. has remained relatively stable over the last decade, hovering between 1.5 and 1.7 million, said Jack Adkins, a spokesman for the American Shooting Sports Council in Atlanta.
Of the estimated 44 million owners of firearms in the U.S. in 1994, slightly less than half owned a gun primarily for protection against crime, according to the National Institute of Justice, the research office for the U.S. Department of Justice.
But some local gun-range owners say the gun market is starting to change as women and senior citizens are taking more of an interest.
“The number of women taking my course has gone up by leaps and bounds, and the majority of women take it for personal protection,” said Michael Falcone, who teaches a class in gun use and safety for area residents at Pepper Sports Indoor Shooting Range in Glen Ellyn.
Of the 350 people he teaches annually, 10 to 15 percent are seniors, many of them women who’ve recently been widowed and are living alone for the first time, he said.
Criminal justice experts attribute persistent fears about crime, especially in relatively safe neighborhoods, to news reports and reality-based TV shows about crime, as well as a growing recognition that crime can occur anywhere.
Some experts add that, if not carried out properly, even a crime-awareness program, such as Neighborhood Watch, can contribute to the alarm.
For such a program to be more than fear-provoking, it should establish a readiness to take action and offer proven ways to solve problems, said Wes Skogan, a political science professor at Northwestern University who has studied community policing.
“Too often, we do the readiness part: People get up at a Neighborhood Watch meeting and describe the terrible muggings going on, and police read off the crime reports,” Skogan said. “But there’s not the efficacy component: If we do these three things, this will work. Then you say, `Here’s a sign-up list. Who’s going to volunteer? When are we going to start?’ You tell people what will work,” Skogan said.
Daniel Polsby, a criminal law professor at Northwestern, said he worries that what’s really bringing down crime rates is a fear so pervasive that it simply has taken people off the streets.
“Take a drive and see who’s on the street tonight; you aren’t going to see Grandma walking her dog,” he said. “They’re holing up, and it doesn’t involve investing in new hardware or new equipment or new anything.
“The real way of defending yourself against a problem is staying the hell away from the problem, and people do that when they can,” he added. “But if you don’t have the resources to move somewhere safer, all you can do is hole up all the time, and that’s no way to live.”
Officer William Roscop of Mt. Prospect’s crime prevention unit agrees that going to extremes winds up making a person the victim of fear.
But he says complacency isn’t the answer, either.
“On the whole, people feel safe and secure in the communities where they live, and that’s what all of our villages strive to do. But we can’t assume that all of our villages are totally crime-free,” he said.
“People just need to get in a good habit of doing the little basics. It’ll make their homes so much more secure than if they do nothing. And a majority of people still do nothing.”