SOUTH SALT LAKE, Utah (ABC 4 News) - Police in one Utah city are winning the fight against crime, one street corner at a time. The latest victory – saving the liquor store.
ABC 4 news and abc4.com reported June 22, 2010 Utah’s Department of Beverage Control Board voted to reverse its proposal to close the South Salt Lake liquor store to cut the budget. One of the store’s champions – South Salt Lake’s police chief. He told the board the neighborhood needed the store to deter crime.
How does a liquor store fight crime?
"It's a business that brings people to the area,” says South Salt Lake Executive Officer Glen Keller. “That influx of people in and out of the area deters crime."
South Salt Lake needs all the help it can get.
"I don't like this area,” says former resident Tyrone Townsend. “There’s too much crime. I grew up here. I had to get out of here.”
"There was a point in time when we had high crime rates in South Salt Lake,” says Keller. “I won't deny that."
Things have changed. South Salt Lake police report a drop in overall crime of 19% in the past three years. Crime Tracker shows the trend continues. Within one mile of the state liquor store, three crimes in 30 days. CrimeReports.com statistics show South Salt Lake is one of the lowest crime areas of any metropolitan city in Utah.
"This was the source of a lot of problems for a number of years," says Keller, pointing out any empty lot on the corner of State Street and 3,700 South.
The building that used to be here housed one-room apartments occupied mostly by criminals who committed countless drug crimes. Now, it’s gone. Keller says South Salt Lake's Community Resources Division cleaned it up, eliminating a crime magnet.
Others remain - vacant buildings that attract the wrong people. A former department store is now empty, a problem spot that spans a city block.
“We’ve got to put extra patrols on that address,” says Keller. “Plenty of people can hide in there and on the roof and engage in all sorts of activity.”
Police call it the broken window syndrome. A building is abandoned. Someone throws a rock and breaks a window. That becomes an invitation to other vandals to move in. The crime begins.
Police say saving the liquor store saves the entire neighborhood.
"You have a good business base here,” says Keller as we walk Miller Avenue in front of the store. “People come in and out of here. They watch what’s going on. They're our eyes and ears on the street."
The only complaint about the liquor store comes from the veterinarian next door, who objects to empty whiskey bottles on his property. Other than that statistics and appearances seem to suggest crime is moving out of South Salt Lake - something not many people in this city have heard in a long time.
