Nick Coleman: Lowry Hill's rash of crime almost had it up in arms

Sometimes, news is made by something that didn't happen. Last week, residents of Lowry Hill didn't decide to get guns.

How they came to threaten to take up arms is worth pondering.

In the end, they dropped the threat, which was more rhetorical than real.

But they did not back down from the worry and fear that has afflicted the neighborhood in the wake of several crimes.

I wrote about one on Feb. 3:

The beating of an autistic man named Robert Anderson, 27. He suffered traumatic brain injuries when he was beaten and robbed at 22nd and Dupont at 8:30 p.m. on a Friday.

That happened Jan. 25. The next Friday, Feb. 1, a woman was abducted at gunpoint, raped and had her apartment burglarized on Humboldt Avenue, in the East Isles neighborhood, a few blocks from Lowry Hill.

Three men have been arrested in the case, and the Lowry Hill neighborhood group has urged the county attorney to prosecute "to the fullest extent of the law."

The neighborhood group, Lowry Hill Residents., Inc., took that stance a week ago after removing a threat to take self-protection into residents' hands.

The defendants should "receive long sentences to ensure the safety of all," said the resolution.

Originally, the resolution said residents might feel it necessary to protect themselves with weapons.

It should be noted that the victim of the home invasion owned a gun - which was stolen by his attackers. Still, it is jarring when guns are talked about in a neighborhood considered one of the city's safest.

But bad guys don't play nice, police are stretched, and residents wonder what help they can expect from the city. That's a question that has been asked in many neighborhoods much farther from Lake of the Isles.

"The neighborhood is changing, and it's getting scary," one resident said at last week's meeting. "My neighbors don't bother to call the police when stuff happens. They think, 'What good will it do? Nobody will do anything.'"

Robert Anderson was on his way to a coffee shop when he was knocked down from behind and kicked by attackers. Although he is still recuperating, and will miss a month of work, he attended last week's meeting accompanied by his sister, Kate. She said she doesn't think police will solve the crime against her brother.

"I don't think anything's going to happen," she said. "We moved here because we knew the neighborhood was safe. But something bad can happen, and there's no repercussions."

(A fund has been started to help Robert Anderson at the Lowry Hill branch of Mainstreet Bank, 2120 Hennepin Ave., S., Minneapolis, 55405.)

Over the past year, residents said, a smattering of violent crimes, plus a rising number of break-ins and thefts, have raised awareness, and worries.

"I've been hearing about some crimes that have scared me," said Kate Lynch, vice president of the East Isles Residents Association, who attended the meeting in adjacent Lowry Hill. "Crime is a hard, long term issue. You have to think of it holistically - both my little back yard and my whole community."

Lynch traces rising concerns to an attack on a doctor who was walking home from the Lund's store in Uptown when she was robbed and knifed in December of 2006. She has not recovered full function in her stabbed hand, despite two surgeries.

"We have a perception problem," Lowry Hill board member Bill Kell said. "We need to get beyond that. We need assurance [the recent crimes] are just passing incidents."

But, as Lynch pointed out, there are three ways of looking at neighborhood crime: Perceptions, statistics, and "the truth." The truth, as much as it can be known, ends up as a reflection of how safe people feel in their neighborhood, and how able they feel to do anything about it, with help from police.

An "All-Neighborhood Crime Meeting" will be held at 7 p.m. Thursday at the Kenwood Community Center, 2101 W. Franklin Ave. All residents of Lowry Hill and adjacent neighborhoods are invited.