One Year Later: Is DPS South-Central Precinct Dettering Crime?
It’s been one year since Montgomery’s Public Safety Department opened its second precinct for the city’s police and fire units. So has it deterred crime in the area? And has it helped improve response time? Police and Fire officials at the Department of Public Safety’s South Central precinct say having their officers, firefighters and medics here in one place has definitely helped reduce crime and response times. It seems like it was only a year ago since the Department of Public Safety officially opened it’s newest precinct. Well, that’s because it was. “I can’t believe a year has gone by already! We love having this station here,” Said Lt. Craig Carr with the Montgomery Fire Department. Carr loves it, but has the precinct’s opening impacted the community? Carr says their response time has improved by 2 to 3 minutes. He says the biggest change can be seen with the addition of its new medic unit. “Before we moved over here we were making about 300 medical runs a month just in our fire truck. Since we moved over here and we added this new additional truck or medical run volume has gone down to about 50 a month which means there are more available for fires and stuff like that that were more suited to answer,” Said Carr. Right next door to them is the Montgomery Police precinct. Captain Wayne Gaskin says in the last year police reports are down 1% in the areas they cover, which are south and east Montgomery. He says the good news is there’s been an increase of .62% of misdemeanor and felony arrests in the last year. Response time is where the police precinct has seen its biggest improvement. “Coming from headquarter to get to district 18 would have taken 18 to 20 minutes. If it was 3 p.m. in the afternoon, school letting out, rush hour traffic, it could’ve easily taken 45 minutes,” Said Gaskin. Now, it takes about 5 minutes. He also says police visibility deters possible crimes from happening. “Constantly, there’s always cops around. They’re always driving by the station and they’re even sitting in the parking lot for a while,” Said Chastity Faysal who works at a nearby gas station. To continue deterring crime officials who work at the precinct say they are working on some projects that involve the community. Now, that they’ve got their feet wet in the last year, police officials hope year 2 will have an even bigger drop in crime. There are about 150 officers and firefighters at the South-Central precinct.
