INC NEWS - reality based on perceptions

[RW Pickle]

It was Halloween last night. Five times after dark I heard police sirens.
You couldn't help but wonder if kids had been hit by traffic. And this
thought wore on me all evening.

Today, it was still on my mind. When we hear sirens, we typically think of
crime. Perception of Durham is that it is unsafe. All these sirens tend to
reinforce that feeling. We never know when we hear one what has happened.
It could have been a B&E in progress, a car accident, or a murder. But the
sirens always tell us something is wrong.

Today I went to the District 3 substation to find out under what
circumstances sirens are used. Turns out there is a State law that says
they go hand-in-hand; if  they're lights go on, so do their sirens. And it
turns out, there is a lot of discretion when they can be used (by the
officers in the cars). This makes no sense to me. It would seem that if we
cut out all of the siren noise, we'd all believe and feel like there was
less crime. The sirens tend to reinforce the perception of a crime problem
others think we have. You hear sirens, you think crime. I'm not talking
about fire trucks. You know every time you hear them (because they have a
different siren noise) that they are on the way to a fire. And I don't
hear them as often as I do police sirens.

When I was in SLC for the Olympics, I had been there 5 days when I ran
into an off-duty policeman working in a grocery store I had stopped by. I
took the time to ask him about crime there because during the entire time
I had been there I had not heard any sirens. He said they did have crime
just like any large city, but there were only a few instances when they
could turn them on. Perhaps as a City, we could institute a concrete plan
as to when sirens have to be used and cut out the discretion that
currently exists. I think if we heard less sirens, we'd feel safer (not
that I feel unsafe or anything, but I think they lend credence to the
thought at least, that Durham has a lot of crime). I know that if I didn't
hear as many sirens, I'd think we were all safer.

RWP
27 Beverly