Crime tax on Tuesday's ballot is crucial to Fort Worth patrol program

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By MIKE LEE

mikelee@star-telegram.com

FORT WORTH — For eight years, officer J.R. Byford has worked one beat on the south side.

He’s the neighborhood patrol officer for the South Hills area, a mixed-income area of small homes and apartment complexes bounded by McCart Avenue, Seminary Drive and Granbury Road.

He wears a uniform and drives a patrol car, but he doesn’t necessarily answer radio calls. Fort Worth’s 83 NPOs serve as community liaisons, passing information back and forth with residents and volunteers from the Citizens on Patrol program.

"We’re usually the, you might say, reconnaissance unit," he said. "If there’s a gang house, we usually get the heads-up first."

The NPOs were crucial to the Police Department’s crime prevention plan in the early 1990s, along with COPs, beefed-up gang enforcement, after-school programs and zero-tolerance squads. The whole program was credited with driving down Fort Worth’s crime rate by 32 percent in 15 years. The number of slayings fell even further, from 108 in 1995 to 49 in 2008, even while the city’s population grew.

The program is funded by a half-cent sales tax that brings in $50 million a year for police and crime prevention programs. The crime tax, officially known as the Crime Control and Prevention District, was adopted in 1995 and renewed in 2000 and 2005. It’s up for another five-year renewal Tuesday.

A typical day for Byford includes scanning his beat for graffiti, swapping phone calls and e-mail with his 25 COPs volunteers, and checking reports for crime trends. The hours depend on whether he’s looking for daytime break-ins or midnight car thefts.

The relationships with the COPs volunteers and other residents are crucial, because they know the neighborhoods better than the police can, he said. A burglar walking to the door of a house can look innocent.

"The neighbor next door might say, 'Well, Fred’s not home and I’ve never seen that guy before, and now he’s going around the back,’ " Byford said.

That happened last Christmas.

Two neighbors noticed someone approaching a home. They knew that the owner wasn’t home and called police. Their efforts helped solve a string of burglaries in south Fort Worth.

The crime tax was renewed with 90 percent of the vote in 2005, but city officials aren’t taking any chances this year.

Public safety "is something that needs to be planned, and it needs to be funded," Mayor Mike Moncrief said Thursday. "The Crime Control and Prevention District in Fort Worth is not broke and it does not need fixing. It needs to be renewed."

MIKE LEE, 817-390-7539

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