HARLINGEN — Downtown Harlingen property owners say the city barricades along the east side of the Baxter Building are creating an anything-goes attitude when it comes to vandalism.
The white and orange barricades, which block off the sidewalk and parking spots along South A Street, were put in place by the city more than six months ago for safety reasons as debris was cascading down from the vacant high-rise.
“A couple of times a week I walk down the sidewalk in front of the tower, even though it’s barricaded off, and pick up rocks,” Bill DeBrooke, a member of the Downtown Improvement District board, said last week.
“I pick up the rocks because those are the rocks that people are throwing at the windows in the tower and breaking the windows.
“You just pick up the rocks so at least they have to go find other rocks,” said DeBrooke, who characterized vandalism of the nearly 90-year-old Baxter Building and elsewhere in the historic district as an emerging “hobby.”
City officials and developer MRE Capital are awaiting a decision following a second attempt to secure federal tax credits to fund much of the construction cost of a proposed $4.5 million renovation of the Baxter Building.
The project would turn the city’s tallest building into 24 apartments, 19 of which would be low-income apartments.
The Texas Department of Housing and Community Affairs, which must approve the federal housing credits, is expected to reveal its decision any day.
A look at the historic, nine-floor Baxter Building reveals dozens of windows in the edifice are missing or have holes from rock strikes.
Members of the downtown board say the vandalism isn’t limited to the Baxter Building.
“This obviously spawns similar vandalism throughout the downtown,” said board member Lars Keim. “Because you have this big target down here, and if it’s not convenient, we’ll go to the next closest target or another target in the area.
“I can’t help but think that all those barricades out there just invite people over … because it’s a mess, it looks like a mess, and its right in the middle of downtown,” Keim added. “I think that invites these guys to come over and see the demolition site and throw rocks at it because it looks like a target.”
DeBrooke, Keim and others on the downtown board are concerned about the psychological effect such open vandalism has on a community. That echoes a policing philosophy known as the “broken windows theory” made popular by New York’s then-Mayor Rudy Giuliani.
The policing theory, in essence, holds that not dealing with people who break small laws emboldens them to break bigger laws.
DeBrooke said yesterday one of his tenants on Van Buren Street was a target of vandals the previous night.
“Last night they lost a glass door,” he said. “It’s been happening on a regular basis now, people are losing glass to rock-throwers.”
Harlingen Police Commander John Parrish said via email yesterday there has only been a single recent complaint filed with his department from the downtown district regarding vandalism.
Parrish said a criminal mischief case was reported May 30 about a broken glass window in the 600 block of West Van Buren Avenue.
“If it’s a safety issue of pieces falling from the Baxter Building, the last thing I want to do is remove those barriers,” said Javier Mendez, director of parks and recreation, which is responsible for the Baxter Building.
“We need to visit with the police department and step up patrols in that area if they think it’s the right thing to do.”
The vandalism at the Baxter Building isn’t necessarily only the long-range variety, dependent on how good a throwing arm a person owns.
Graffiti throughout the building, even at the top, indicates trespassers are gaining access everywhere.
“If you stand back … and look up at the top of the tower, you see all that graffiti that has started to show up there,” DeBrooke said. “I just stopped calling (the city), because what they’ll do is take a barricade, lean it up against the building, climb up it to get to the fire escape, and then they go into the building.
“And a lot of graffiti is appearing up there now,” DeBrooke added.
Part of the concern among members of the downtown board is the message the Baxter barricades are sending to downtown shoppers and others.
“It was supposed to be temporary, and it’s been going on for what, eight months?” Keim said of the block-long string of wooden barricades. “It was unsightly then, and it’s even more unsightly now.”
Broken Windows Theory
The broken windows theory is a criminological theory of the norm-setting and signaling effect of urban disorder and vandalism on additional crime and anti-social behavior.
The theory states that maintaining and monitoring urban environments to prevent small crimes such as vandalism, public drinking, and toll-jumping helps to create an atmosphere of order and lawfulness, thereby preventing more serious crimes from happening.
The theory was introduced in a 1982 article by social scientists James Q. Wilson and George L. Kelling. Since then it has been subject to great debate both within the social sciences and the public sphere.
The theory has been used as a motivation for several reforms in criminal policy, including the controversial mass use of “stop, question, and frisk” by the New York City Police Department under then-Mayor Rudy Giuliani.
Source: Wikipedia
