Comments on: Guest Column: Crime and economic growth — chicken or the egg?

By: Paul Gorski

Paul Gorski — Tue, 29 May 2012 20:30:51 +0000

Mr. Kleen recently posted a correction to his statement, which I quoted in the article above, “Winnebago County has been in the top five Illinois counties in terms of both crime and unemployment rates for more than a decade.” We’ve been in top five in those categories for the past three years, not decade. See his notes at: http://makleen.com/

By: Paul Gorski

Paul Gorski — Mon, 28 May 2012 23:21:52 +0000

Mr Kleen (Makleen): Aurora’s population increased, then the crime rate went down. Folks moved there because of lower cost of living, with easy access to work via train and highway. You might actually want to talk to folks outside the area about Rockford’s “reputation.” We both agree that crime is a problem, but more street cops isn’t the only solution. I suggest you subscribe to Crimemapping.com, and follow local crime. You’ll notice the pattern that local crime follows major roads, E. State St, 11th street, and others. You might also check out http://www.neighborhoodscout.com/il/rockford/crime/ for a map showing crime density.

By: Makleen

Makleen — Wed, 23 May 2012 14:47:05 +0000

I don’t think that being as safe and prosperous as Aurora is setting the bar too high. Rockford has the potential. The crime problem must be tackled first because there is little the city can do about the economy until crime is gotten under control. It can spend all the tax money on improvements it wants, but the point of my column was that as long as people feel unsafe, they won’t go out to spend their money. Moreover, people don’t want to move here, despite the low cost of housing, because of the city’s reputation for crime and its bad public schools. Aurora’s population, on the other hand, overtook Rockford’s in the past 10 years because they got tough on crime and turned around their image.