Police lights are flashing. A search helicopter circles overhead. A corpse lies on the ground. Though this description sounds like a scene straight out of the popular television show “CSI,” some SMU students called this home for a few frantic hours in February.
Dallas area crime hit close to campus on Feb. 16, when a shooting in the Burger Street drive-thru on Mockingbird Lane left two men dead and The Phoenix apartment complex became part of the investigation area.
The Phoenix is a popular off-campus housing option for SMU students because of its proximity to the school.
The fatal shootings at Burger Street, which police described as drug-related, are just the most recent of violent crimes in the area. According to the crime data, Mockingbird Lane sees a steady flow of theft, burglary, assault and robbery.
SMU senior Dexter Hostetter, a three-year resident of The Phoenix, said that he still feels relatively safe.
“I never had any problems with crime or felt like I was ever personally in danger,” Hostetter said in an email interview. “I think that there were many pros and cons to living there. The central location right next to Mockingbird Station allows for easy transportation but also opens up the surrounding streets to some potentially dangerous activity.”
SMU journalism students have compiled 2009 crime data for Dallas and Univeristy Park in conjunction with The Daily Campus and the SMU Daily Mustang for the Light of Day Project. The Light of Day Project is a collaboration between statewide journalism students, The Texas Tribune and the Freedom of Information Foundation of Texas.
Students found that the overall crime rate in Dallas has declined over the past decade. According to the Dallas Police Department’s 2010 crime summary, overall crime in the city is down 10.2 percent from 2009. This is the seventh consecutive year of overall crime reduction. The crime summary also indicates a 48 percent reduction in violent crime over the past nine years.
The compiled data also shows that another popular area for students to live off-campus, Amesbury Park located near University Boulevard and Greenville Avenue, is also susceptible to crime, although most incidents in this area are theft or burglary related. Several assaults have also taken place in the area.
An SMU student was robbed at gunpoint in December in the parking lot of the apartment complex. SMU issued an off-campus crime alert for the incident.
“This was really scary to hear about, and since then I have been careful not to go outside by myself late at night,” sophomore Kellie Teague said. “But I do still feel safe living in this apartment complex. I do take precautions like making sure my car and the door to my apartment are always locked.”
According to the 2009 data, East Dallas is one of the most crime filled areas of the city.
A large number of these offenses are petty theft, but numerous cases of sexual assault, rape and murder have also been reported.
Monika Korra, a member of the SMU track team, was sexually assaulted in this area back in 2009. Korra was leaving a party in East Dallas when she was grabbed and forced into a vehicle at gunpoint. Two of her attackers have been convicted and given life sentences. One has pleaded guilty and is still awaiting his sentence.
Although The Daily Campus does not usually name sexual assault victims, Korra decided to go public with her identity and granted The Dallas Morning News permission to tell her story in April 2011.
Although surrounded by Dallas, the immediate area around SMU, University Park, does not fall in line with the occasionally violent trends found in the greater Dallas area. Most of the crime in University Park is residence theft or burglary related.
“I would say that the City of University Park is a safe place to live,” University Park Police Chief Gary Adams said. “Your own results show that our biggest crime problem is theft. We have few crimes against individuals here.”
