A Safer Downtown-
From Jason Smith- local entrepreneur and former mayoral candidate:
Operation: Play It SafeProposal to Curb Restaurant Row-Related CrimeObserving that illegal parking, insufficient proactive policing, and inadequate sharing of information with the public has allowed crime to flourish on Restaurant Row, I propose the following six actions.1. Extend hours of downtown meters to 7PM. Extend hours to include weekends. Use increased revenues for police.2. Tow illegally parked cars on sidewalks in alleyways on first offense. Create after-hours surcharge for late night towing (Midnight-6 AM)3. Increase foot patrols on secondary alleyways and main thoroughfares. Consider use of Segways (cheaper than horses, more immediate than cars, pedestrian friendly). This proactive response would work in concert with with car-based, reactive response.4. Enforce drunk driving laws before somebody gets killed.5. Place large trash cans on Restaurant Row. Sell advertising on the cans and also use the ad space to promote Operation: Play It Safe (described next).6. Initiate public information campaign to let public know about trends and how to “Play it Safe” downtown. Encourage use of parking garages, warn of stiff penalties for illegal parking on side-streets, warn of random DUI stops and encourage designated drivers.Funding for this program could likely be generated from the program itself.Finally, we must as a city ensure that increased revenues through a thriving downtown find their way to enhance policing city-wide. Said policing to include proactive policing including a network of substations. In this way, investment in downtown will have a positive effect on under-serviced neighborhoods.
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sorry, jason and everyone else, i’m not feeling this proposal at all.
less parking downtown (can there be less?) would increase revenue for everyone who is willing to venture downtown between the hours of 5 to 7; everyone else will continue to go downtown at night. also, wouldn’t a fee for parking make happy hour crowds go elsewhere? as far as illegal parking goes, i wasn’t aware that there was any spaces left after the perpetual police bags and cones are set up (have you ever wondered why the aide to the secretary to the chief of a government office i’ve never heard of has a full time spot on state street? i have.). what options do we have? park in the bus stop for a bus line that is not running or park in the shooting gallery that is river street parking garage. i know it doesn’t take 45 minutes to get out of one of those…
in regard to segway scooters, anyone can book it faster than a segway going forward, much less backward or any direction in which it’s pointed. segways are for mailmen, the reason police have horses is because its intimidating. everyone has seen ‘roots’, you know that someone mounted on a horse can fuck you up. i’m sure there is an animal that police can use to sniff out drugs more efficiently, but none are as intimidating as a police dog. as an aside, i haven’t seen a horse mounted officer in over a year and i’m downtown all the time.
i’m with you on more trash cans, perhaps ones that are emptied in some interval, but just because they are there doesn’t mean the road will be littered with grease covered paper plates in front of second street pizza. i think the city does a more than adequate job of cleaning the streets after a weekend night.
instead of straight criticism, i would like to submit these ideas. i’ll refer to them as the ‘be REAL campaign’. REAL is not an acronym for anything:
1. don’t walk around the block. let me explain; when you are at a bar, there are only a handful of reasons that you’ll go out and walk around the block. these reasons are:
* you are leaving and you are going to your car parked around the block.
* you are propositioning a prostitute and cannot afford a hotel room (i’ve seen this on the corner of green and cumberland at 3am. you are too cheap to get a hotel room? well, the prostitute was too cheap to buy aids medicine this week. circle of life).
* you are going out of a bar to do something you are not allowed to do in a bar (or get away with doing off of the top of a toilet fixture).
let’s be REAL for a second, there is no way to make yourself an easier mark than going around the block to get faded. what are you going to tell the police when you are robbed while high? a whole lot of gobblygook – and that’s in the instance that you even approach police in that state. i’m not saying the band was taking a WALK around the block, but they were around the block from where they were suppossed to be – i won’t speculate how they got there.
if you don’t want to get robbed, don’t make yourself an easy target. taking a walk around the block is not unlike flashing a wad of bills in a crowd.
2. parking garages milk anyone who takes a cab home.
picture: you are out drinking with friends you haven’t seen in a minute, rounds go around, the bartender puts one on the house, you decide you need a chaser, and before you know it – you are flat out, legless drunk. you are parked in a parking garage, but you decide to take a taxi back home. when you go to pick up your car the next day, you’ve been fined for leaving your car in the garage overnight.
most people would just be angry at being punished for doing the right thing, but this type of overnight fee disuades a good chunk of people from parking in the garage of leaving their car in a garage. these things happen, so let’s be REAL.
allow amnesty for people who have taken a taxi home the night before at parking garages. don’t want to risk getting shot at a garage? take a taxi. don’t want to drive drunk to avoid a penalty? take a taxi. too exhausted to drive home tonight (easily as bad as driving drunk)? take a taxi. a receipt from the taxi driver should prove that an overnight stay at the garage is warranted and should not be punished.
3. REAL information.
of course the police are not going to announce their failures on a daily basis. admittedly, what goes unreported or underreported is absurd; but what is reported through anecdote and word-of-mouth is just as questionable.
a citizen or group of citizens, without political motiviation, should organize an informative website of the crimes and areas of crime downtown. quick descriptions like ‘OMFG. Sumone got robbed dwntwn!!!’ do not help anyone; a location, time, and description of the incident do help. it could act as a ‘where not to be’ account of harrisburg rather than the blanket statement that harrisburg is not safe (has anyone who says downtown harrisburg is not safe ever been to another major city?). let’s be REAL, disinformation is as bad as no information.
we have to stop this childish shit, harrisburg is not a city of 3 year olds – people should have some amount of responsibility. when you get robbed for being a target, think about who you should be pointing a finger at. police can’t be around you every day; believe it or not, you may have to fend for yourself sometimes.