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Safe City officers keep malls secure

By CLIFTON ADCOCK World Staff Writer
12/7/2007

A TPD official says police here are trained for situations like Wednesday's killings at a Nebraska mall.

Wednesday's shooting spree in an Omaha, Neb., mall is an example of why officers in the Tulsa Police Department's Safe City Initiative and police reserves are keeping a high profile around Tulsa's two shopping malls during the holiday season, said police Capt. Matt Kirkland.

Since the Friday after Thanksgiving -- the traditional start of the Christmas shopping season -- Safe City Initiative officers have increased patrols in the parking lots and public areas around Woodland Hills Mall and the Tulsa Promenade, Kirkland said.

Tulsa police officers have been training for incidents similar to the Omaha shooting for years, and those on the Safe City Initiative carry mall security radios along with their normal police radios, he said. That would enable them to respond to such incidents almost instantly, rather than waiting for the call to go through 911 and a police dispatcher.

''It's something we thought about a long time ago,'' he said. ''If something were to occur inside the mall, immediately there would be officers rushing in the nearest entrance to deal with it.''

Although security procedures at Woodland Hills are not publicly disclosed, the mall does work with law enforcement to ensure that appropriate security measures are taken, Director of Mall Marketing Jenna Rupprecht wrote in a prepared statement.

Tulsa Police Deputy Chief Dennis Larsen said that ''in light of what happened in Omaha, we want high visibility with police cars and men and women in uniform they (potential criminals) can see when coming into a retail store.''

Not only does the high visibility discourage random violence, but it also gives shoppers a sense of safety, he said.

Kirkland noted that ''holiday shoppers and crowded parking lots with cars full of goodies make a tempting target for criminals.''

The presence of the Tulsa Police Department's reserve officers at the Tulsa Promenade has helped reduce the number of thefts around that location, Larsen said.

''Seven days a week in the evening, . . . our TPD reserves have launched their own Safe Shopper program," he said. "We've had virtually no crime in that area.''

Reserve officers have made several arrests and issued several traffic and parking citations to try to keep holiday traffic flowing smoothly, Larsen said.

In addition, a federal grant is providing money for full-time officers to work overtime, Kirkland said.

The result has been a dramatic decrease in the amount of crime at the malls at a time when the targeted areas usually see a rise in crime, Kirkland said, adding that only one auto theft has been reported there since the increased patrols began.

The only purse-snatching that has occurred at the Promenade so far during the increased enforcement ended with the thief being caught as he attempted to get away, Larsen said. Last year, in comparison, a significant number of purses were snatched in that area, he said.

''They (reserve officers) are allowing us to do a whole lot more with the same number of full-time officers,'' he said. ''I've been inundated with calls from retailers about how pleased they are. It's been so impressive. I can't see us not doing it again and again.''

Clifton Adcock 581-8367
clifton.adcock@tulsaworld.com

Copyright Tulsa World 2007. All rights reserved. Format differs from original publication.

Safe City officers will deck the malls

By NICOLE MARSHALL World Staff Writer
11/23/2007

Task force members will help stop criminals who are out to take advantage of holiday shoppers.

In its nearly three months of existence, the Tulsa Police Department’s Safe City Initiative has netted at least 235 arrests and 31 guns.

On Wednesday, the officers assigned to the initiative began working with other Tulsa Police Department units in stepped-up holiday patrols, Capt. Matt Kirkland said.

The Police Department began the Safe City Initiative on Aug. 26 in an effort to reduce violent crime throughout the city by targeting known violent offenders and locations with a history of violent crime.

The department has decided to continue the initiative through the end of the year.

Safe City officers will have a visible presence in shopping areas by providing foot patrols and marked cars in high-traffic areas.

In addition, officers in plain clothes will watch for robbers, burglars and car thieves at targeted locations.

They also will use decoy cars to entice people who are casing parking lots for cars to steal or burglarize. If someone tries to get into the vehicles, officers will arrest them in the act.

Kirkland said officers will be working in shopping areas almost the entire time the malls are open.

Meanwhile, violent criminals continue to be the unit’s top targets.

In the month of October alone, Safe City officers made 71 arrests resulting in 53 felony charges and 18 misdemeanor charges. The officers also recovered 18 guns, records show.

Of the 71 people who were arrested, 18 are classified as career criminals. Fifteen were arrested for firearms-related charges, and 11 were arrested on robbery-related charges.

“Last week, we caught an armed robber we had been looking for for a while,” Kirkland said.

One robbery warrant and several other warrants had been issued for the juvenile’s arrest, and he had been named as a suspect in a shooting.

Other statistics show that since the unit was originated, the Safe City officers have located and arrested eight suspects for robbery, 13 for burglary- related charges, four for shooting with an intent to kill and one for homicide.

Nicole Marshall 581-8459
nicole.marshall@tulsaworld.com

By the numbers

Arrests: 235

Guns confiscated: 31

Cash seized: $8,900

Search warrants served: 5

Felony charges filed: 152

Misdemeanors filed: 95

By NICOLE MARSHALL World Staff Writer

Copyright Tulsa World 2007. All Rights Reserved. Format differs from original publication.

Safe City: Cruising for criminals

STEPHEN HOLMAN / Tulsa World
Bill Jenkins (left) and Keith Osterdyk, Tulsa police officers with the Safe City Initiative, drive through a parking lot at a Tulsa shopping mall Thursday evening.

STEPHEN HOLMAN / Tulsa World

Safe City task force officers will be patrolling shopping areas in marked cars, as they are shown doing here Thursday night, but undercover officers also will use unmarked cars as they watch for robbers and car burglars during the holiday season.

By NICOLE MARSHALL World Staff Writer
11/10/2007

Task force to ring in 2008

The Tulsa Police Department will extend the Safe City Initiative -- a citywide task force that targets crime by geographic area -- through the end of the year.

While the unit will continue to focus on violent criminals and crime hotspots, one of the main objectives for Safe City officers in the coming weeks will be cracking down on people who prey on holiday shoppers.

''Keeping the unit in place is not adversely impacting calls for service. It is actually supporting calls for service,'' Police Chief Ron Palmer said of the assistance Safe City officers provide to patrol officers.

''We think we are still getting benefits from the Safe City Initiative, so we are going to continue with it for a while.''

Since it began Aug. 26, the unit has made about 200 arrests, including about 150 for felony crimes. Its officers have arrested about 50 career criminals and about 20 people on robbery warrants or for robberies that had just occurred.

The officers have also arrested five shooting suspects and one homicide suspect and seized at least 30 guns, Capt. Matt Kirkland said.

Palmer said it makes sense to keep the unit in place through the holidays to support officers in the field.

While final plans are still in the works, Kirkland said Safe City officers will be patrolling shopping areas in marked police cars but that undercover officers also will be there.

The unit will also use decoy cars to catch car burglars, he said.

''We will use the cars to entice people who are out casing parking lots. If someone at tempts to burglarize the vehicles, we will be able to take them down in the act,'' Kirkland said.

The Safe City officers will work with uniformed officers and other units to ensure the safety of shoppers and other people who are out during the busy holiday season, Kirkland said. The department may even use bicycle and foot pa trols, he said.

''It is going to be a combined effort on the part of the whole department,'' Kirkland said.

Catching robbers has been one of the unit's main goals, but its officers have realized that violent criminals are committing crossover crimes.

''As we learned more about the individuals involved, we have begun putting more of a focus on burglaries, as well, because we are seeing that a lot of the robbers are out there committing burglaries,'' Kirkland said.

Earlier this week, undercover Safe City officers arrested two armed robbery suspects believed by police to have just committed two robberies, including one of a pizza delivery worker.

The Safe City officers maintained surveillance on an apartment where the robbers were believed to live. When the suspects showed up, the officers took an 18-year-old and a juvenile into custody. The juvenile had an ankle monitor on because he was on probation for shooting with intent to kill, according to police.

After the end of the year, the department's administration will consider whether the task force will continue, Kirkland said.

Nicole Marshall 581-8459
nicole.marshall@tulsaworld.com

Copyright Tulsa World 2007. All Rights Reserved. Format differs from original publication.

Crime analysis vital to Safe City unit

By NICOLE MARSHALL World Staff Writer
11/4/2007

Tulsans may wonder what makes one police task force different from another.

But police say the answer is clear when it comes to the Safe City Initiative -- the reliance on real-time police data in an effort to prevent crime.

When coordinators set out to develop the unit, they decided to emphasize targeting crime hot spots throughout the city and criminals who frequently commit violent offenses.

The unit's supervisor, Capt. Matt Kirkland, said Safe City Initiative officers meet weekly with crime analysis officers, who identify crime trends and hot spots with advanced mapping technology.

Capt. Travis Yates said, "By using real-time data and providing that data to officers working the Safe City Initiative, it gives them direction and focus that no doubt has made a positive impact in our community."

Yates is the supervisor of the department's Crime Analysis, Planning, Evaluation and Research Section.

Intelligence-led policing involves the collection and analysis of information in an effort to inform police decision-making at both the tactical and management levels, he said.

"This style of law enforcement is predicated on the notion that a principal task of the police is to prevent and detect crime rather than simply to react to it," he said.

Pre-Emptive Strike

TPD's pro-active Safe City Initiative trawls for, nets big fish

BY BRIAN ERVIN
Urban Tulsa Weekly

This year in the City of Tulsa, 51 people have died as a result of violence inflicted on them by another human being. The highest total number of homicides recorded in Tulsa's modern history is 56.

For all anyone knows, homicide no. 52 was averted one night last week by the sharp eyes and hard efforts of two officers who are part of the Tulsa Police Department's "Safe City Initiative."

"This guy was a career criminal. He'll probably be going away for the rest of his life now," Officer Jerad Lindsey of TPD's Uniform Division East told UTW when the arrest was made.

As a part of the task force's focus on certain "hot spots" in the city where violent crime is known to happen most frequently, Officers Cal Kaiser and Eric Hill's trained instincts told them to pull the man over, and they quickly discovered his concealed firearm, the two outstanding warrants for his arrest on drug-related charges and the numerous felony charges on his record.

Of course, since he was caught before he had a chance to put that gun to use, one can only speculate on what his plans were that night, and what gruesome headline his activities might have inspired in the next day's news.

"The impact is immeasurable. Since we can only measure the crimes that do happen, we can never know what crimes we've prevented," said Lindsey.

That particular arrest was among many to result as part of the Safe City Initiative, he said.

Capt. Matt Kirkland and Deputy Chief Mark McCrory conceived the operation, in collaboration with Mayor Kathy Taylor's office, Lindsey said.

It was an outgrowth of the "highly successful" Operation: Bullet Trap, which was a focused "warrant roundup," Lindsey said, targeting violent offenders with gang affiliations.

He said the Safe City Initiative expands on that strategy by pairing the efforts of patrol officers with those of undercover officers in unmarked cars.

For the same reason he wouldn't divulge where those "hot spots" are (even though we drove to several of them, but I'm not talking), lest he scare the fish, so to speak, Lindsey also wouldn't say how many officers are involved, except that half are in unmarked cars, half in marked, and all are drawn from TPD's three Uniform Divisions to create a sort of "mini-police force within the department" as "a more specialized tool to fight a specific problem."

The officers on special assignment for the Safe City Initiative are addressing that problem of violent crime by being "proactive instead of reactive" by, instead of "running from call to call to call" and going to the scene after a crime has already occurred, they're going where violent crimes can most be expected to occur and preventing them before they happen, he explained.

"We're not going after some 20-year-old with a joint--we're going after gang members and gun crimes," said Lindsey.

"We're going after that one percent of the population that we're usually spending 90 percent of our time on," he added.

On top of the crime-fighting activities of the operation, Lindsey said it also works as a mentoring program.

Teaching How to Fish

The undercover officers share their training and experience in tracking and catching career criminals with patrol officers, who will then take that knowledge back with them to share with colleagues when their special assignments are over.

Since the operation began on Aug. 26, 115 arrests have been made, 77 of which were for felony charges.

While that may or may not seem like a lot of bad elements off the street, Lindsey said these weren't small fish.

The total past convictions in those career criminals' collective record numbers around 10,000, he said, ranging from misdemeanors to violent crimes.

One of most recent of those arrests was a 16-year-old charged with armed robbery, among other offenses.

Police believe he is one of the four people involved in a recent rash of armed robberies committed in rapid succession over the past few weeks.

The modus operandi of these robbers is to threaten victims at gunpoint and/or pistol whip them, grab their belongings and flee in what police believe are stolen vehicles, and then repeat the process with some other hapless victim(s) a few blocks away.

At the time of this writing, though, the juvenile's partners in crime were still at large and, while the efforts of the Safe City Initiative are focused squarely on catching them, TPD spokesman Officer Leland Ashley said citizen involvement can also help, both to prevent being victimized and to catch the serial robbers.

"Remain alert, and call 911 if you see anything suspicious," he said.

"If a person has a gun pointed at you, give them whatever they want," Ashley also advised, adding, "But, try to be the best possible witness: pay attention to distinguishing characteristics like tattoos or earrings."

He also encourages anyone with information about the at-large robbers to call 596-COPS. Callers will remain anonymous, and rewards between $200-1,000 are available for information that might lead to their arrest.

Copyright Urban Tulsa Weekly 2007. Format differs from original publication.

Teen sees dangers of night life

By NICOLE MARSHALL World Staff Writer

10/14/2007

View behind police car windshield offers new perspective

Amanda Parker, 18, recently rode along with Tulsa Police Cpl. Mike Fitzgerald one night after asking her parents’ permission to go to a club with friends. It was an eye-opening experience for the Jenks High School senior

When Amanda Parker, 18, asked her parents whether she could go to a nightclub with friends, they called the police.

To show her the dangers she might face if she were out late at night, they arranged to have her ride along with Cpl. Mike Fitzgerald, a member of the Safe City Initiative task force that started work Aug. 26.

"My parents wanted to show me what the real world was like," Parker said.

Capt. Matt Kirkland, the supervisor of the Safe City Initiative, said the unit was targeting certain clubs because at least five homicides and several shootings have taken place this year at clubs or after confrontations that started in their parking lots.

He thought it was a great idea to have Parker ride with an officer.

"A lot of times people who are her age don't get the opportunity to find out what is really going on in the city behind the scenes," Kirkland said.

"They only see fun to be had and don't realize there are some dangerous situations they could easily fall into, even if they are not going out with the intent of getting in trouble or with the intent of hanging out with bad people."

Parker, a senior at Jenks High School, said she thought she might want to go to a club because "it was just something to do -- dance, have fun."

She said she leads a sheltered life but that she saw a whole other world when she rode with Fitzgerald on a recent Saturday night.

They left the police station about 5 p.m., and the ride-along lasted until 3 a.m., she said.

Within the first few minutes, Fitzgerald had to answer a call about a first-degree burglary in progress. Parker had to stay in the car for her safety while Fitzgerald took the sus pected burglar -- who fought with the officer -- into custody.

"The rest of the night we kind of followed up on calls. We went to some clubs, and he showed me the kind of people that hang out there," Parker said.

Fitzgerald took her through the parking lots of some clubs and pointed out some people who he said were gang members, she said.

"They were all dressed the same, and they were waiting outside for someone," she said.

"The officer said it is not uncommon for someone in the parking lots to have guns."

Also during the shift, Fitzgerald took her to the Tulsa Jail to show her a holding cell and the 911 call center.

"It was very interesting," she said. "I am not used to seeing that part of town."

Parker said she learned that it is not very safe to be out after about midnight.

Now she is sharing her experiences with her friends.

"I told them about the reality of the world . . . the stuff that really goes on at night," she said.

TPD's Safe City Initiative is making headway

By NICOLE MARSHALL World Staff Writer

10/5/2007

A month into a citywide crackdown on violent crime, police have arrested 113 people, 30 of whom are classified as career criminals.

Within one month, the Tulsa Police Department's Safe City Initiative officers have arrested 113 people and seized 11 guns, authorities announced Thursday.

The citywide effort, launched Aug. 26, uses officers from each of the Police Department's uniform divisions to target violent crime by sharing information, analyzing data and saturating high-crime areas.

The effort already has made a difference, city officials said Thursday.

Mayor Kathy Taylor congratulated the Police Department and thanked the officers for their efforts on the task force.

"The strategy is really about working together to gather that data, working with the officers on the beat and working with the neighborhoods and making sure our city is safe, one neighborhood at time," Taylor said.

Department heads developed the Safe City Initiative before Police Chief Ron Palmer returned last month to lead the department after retiring five years ago, but "since then I have learned to appreciate what it means to us," he said Thursday.

The unit has seen success by addressing geographical areas with crime problems, Palmer said.

"What we see -- and we have seen it in all neighborhoods across the city -- is really a recognition of both citizen appreciation of what we are doing and the criminal element recognizing that we are there, as well," he said.

The unit will continue its efforts for 30 more days and then be evaluated again, he said.

Capt. Matt Kirkland said supervising the Safe City Initiative has been one of the most fulfilling things he has done in his 10 years on the police force.

At the beginning of the effort, Safe City officers compiled a list of the 30 most-wanted people who were sought on charges or to be interviewed in connection with violent crimes.

In the last month, the officers have found 10 of those people, and five of them remain in the Tulsa Jail on felony warrants, Kirkland said.

Officers arrested one of those targets -- Cedric Way -- on two robbery warrants late Wednesday.

Task force officers met with Robbery Unit Sgt. Dave Walker earlier that day and received updates on the rash of armed robberies that have been committed recently by groups of people.

The officers were looking for Way and found his car near 10800 E. 31st St., records show. When they approached Way, he got out of the car and fled into an apartment complex, police allege.

A K-9 officer and her police dog found him hiding on an apartment's covered porch.

"It just goes to show that every day, we are trying to address the problem of armed robberies," Kirkland said.

Of the 113 people who were arrested in the last month, 30 were classified by police as "career criminals," their records show.

"So I think you can say that the officers who are working in the Safe City Initiative are really hitting the target population of violent criminals," Kirkland said.

"I am very happy with what they have done."

Nicole Marshall 581-8459

nicole.marshall@tulsaworld.com

Copyright Tulsa World 2007. Format differs from original publication.

Armed robberies a top priority

By NICOLE MARSHALL World Staff Writer

9/30/2007

Tulsa's Safe City Initiative task force aims to reduce violent crime.

A spate of armed robberies in Tulsa has made capturing violent bandits a top priority for Safe City Initiative officers.

The task force hit the streets Aug. 26 with the goal of reducing violent crime. Since then, they have made 110 arrests and seized 10 guns, Capt. Matt Kirkland said.

They have also assisted detectives in their investigations and patrol officers on violent crime calls throughout the city.

Within the last week there have been numerous armed robberies -- including nine in one day. A few of the robberies have been home invasions, and in several cases victims were pistol-whipped.

Robbery Unit Sgt. Dave Walker said several of the heists may be related, so the department has stepped up efforts to catch the crooks.

Safe City officers start their shifts by reviewing tips from Robbery Unit detectives and then take to the streets to look for the potential robbers, Sgt. Glen Moore and Cpl. Quentin Houck said.

''We get daily updates from them on who is hot, any suspects they know, . . . any vehicles that have been seen, . . . and we just take it and run with their information to try and locate their suspects,'' Moore said.

''If they don't have any specific suspects or information, we just look at the areas that have been hit the hardest,'' he said.

Safe City Initiative Planning Session

This morning a planning session was held with Crime Analysis and the commander of Safe City, Capt. Matt Kirkland.

Captain Yates, Off Carl Weddington, Off Charles Wulff, Sgt Richard Alexander, and Kathy Bridges help identify crime trends and hot spots throughout the city with advanced mapping technology.

Capt. Kirkland delivers this information directly to the supervisors and officers assigned to the Initiative.

These sessions will continue weekly.