Ignoring the Truth
Today, neighborhoods around Homestead Park have significantly higher crime rates than other suburban neighborhoods in Chapel Hill. Our proximity to I-40 and the North-South bus route line make access to our neighborhoods easy for those wanting to commit crimes. Higher crime rates are also evident at the public housing complexes in this area and at Freedom House and Homestart.
Whether these facilities contribute to crime in neighborhoods or not, data from the Chapel Hill Police Department shows crime to be higher in these neighborhoods. Building another homeless shelter in this area with it’s already high crime rates would be ignoring the truth of the matter – we already have high crime rates – adding another shelter to this area won’t benefit existing residents or shelter residents. See the bottom of this page for summarized crime in 19 Chapel Hill suburban neighborhoods.
Neighborhood Crime Data
The following charts display crime in suburban Chapel Hill neighborhoods.
Involuntary Commitments Chart - People in drug detoxification are often committed against their will. Those who leave for a typical ambulance call or who allow themselves to be voluntarily committed are not included in the chart. Those who escape show up in the crime reports as missing persons, automobile theft, and breaking and entering.
The IFC Talks About Crime
The IFC’s Executive Director has said the women’s shelter has had little impact on the neighborhoods. While the number of assaults, larcenies and disturbances listed at the 2501 Homestead Road address are smaller than at the men's shelter address, it should be pointed out that 90% of violent crime in the US is committed by men. Therefore, comparing a new facility with the women's facility, particularly a facility where the women risk losing housing for their children if they violate the rules, is not consistent. It’s the apple and orange comparisons like this that allow people to ignore the truth.
In response to our findings on nccrime.us, the IFC has authored its own crime statistics. There appear to be several major issues with the data and conclusions stated in the IFC papers. Our website www.nccrime.us is the only website which contains detailed crime records and a comparison of suburban neighborhood crime for Chapel Hill . It provides the ability to search criminal incidents and arrests and aggregates crime statistics by address or place to show problem areas. In addition, this site allows users to search all crime, arrests, and police incident histories back to 2003 by street name, incident description, arrest description, day, month, year, etc. Our data is supplied directly by the Chapel Hill Police department and a complete explanation of our methodology resides on www.nccrime.us.
To see all the issues with the Invalid IFC Crime Analysis click here
Dr. Kenneth Brown analyzes crime at the current men's shelter in his article IFC Crime and the Facts.
Historical summary of crime since 2003 in 19 Chapel Hill suburban neighborhoods. Crime is with-in one square mile of the center or each neighborhood.
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