CRIME REPORT ‘The Wire’ — Lake Highlands version

Isit possible that “The Wire” was based on Lake Highlands apartments? Well, it wasn’t, but there are some striking similarities between early 2000s Forest-Audelia area apartment communities and the Baltimore projects, which provide the setting for the acclaimed HBO crime drama, “The Wire”.

Today, the apartments of Lake Highlands aren’t exactly bastions of wholesome or violence-free living. But conditions have improved, at least according to Dallas Police statistics, which show the area dropping to No. 5 on the city’s violent crime hotspots list (it topped out at No. 2 a few years ago).

Crime is still a problem, but it clearly was worse in the early 2000s. In 2004 Dallas was one of the nation’s deadliest cities, and Lake Highlands criminals played a significant role in that violence.

A 10-year-old Dallas Morning News article (Michael Grabell, Tanya Eiserer and Holly Yan; Jan. 2005) blamed the bloodshed, in large part, on Dallas’ drug trade. Apartment complexes, the reporters noted, were “killing fields.”

“In 2003 elements of Dallas’ murder machine made the move from Pleasant Grove, up Buckner Boulevard and into the Lake Highlands area,” the article reads, “[where] six men were shot and killed and another six were wounded.”

In 2009 Sr. Cpl. Tracy Glenn told the Advocate that Bent Creek was our neighborhood’s absolute worst apartments, but that it had improved ever so slightly by then thanks to lasting effects of a concentrated police effort a few years before. Inside the Bent Tree gates (incidentally, just a mile from some of Lake Highlands’ nicest $450k-plus homes) existed another world — a very dense community suffering the obvious effects of poverty and all the bad things that come with it.

Here is what was happening there in the early ’00s, according to the aforementioned report:

Drive into Bent Creek on Forest Lane near Audelia Road. Pass through the mechanical gate. Turn right and follow the patchwork wooden fence, where gaps that allowed people to cut through between complexes are repeat- edly covered up with boards. Go to the back of the complex where a pushers’ paradise thrived. The back parking lot dead-ends into woods, allowing dealers a view of who’s coming and going … Just minutes from Interstate 635, Bent Creek was convenient for customers not only in Dallas but also in Garland and Richardson The dealers’ clientele included customers from all walks of life. The dealers’ “good-eyes” perched in the front, watching the main gate, sometimes alerting others over walkie-talkies. “Runners” transported money and drugs through the breezeways between clients and dealers. But these dealers were just middlemen in a larger Dallas drug trade. With stash houses in Pleasant Grove and Oak Cliff, they were just providing supply for demand.

Similar to plotlines in “The Wire.” It was within these and similar nearby environs that several young black men were violently killed or wounded by gun.

A glut of tony apartments built for young singles of the ’80s and ’90s transformed to dens of drugs, violence and gang activity as years and zoning changes that prohibited singles-only apartments took their toll.

“Several of the murders bore witness to an odd juxtaposition,” the 2004 article notes. “At Providence Apartment Homes, an apartment that overlooked formerly well-maintained tennis courts became a murder scene. At Bent Creek Apartments, a shooting broke out in a parking lot divided by carports and lined with sculpted shrubbery.”

In just 33 days, the Autumn Ridge Apartments saw three murders —“Corey Wooten, 24, known to his friends as ‘Kinfolk,’ Corey ‘Hook’ Clark, 16, and Howard ‘Pee Wee’ Simon, 19, all were gunned down. Only Simon survived. Police believed all were gang and drug related,” according to the 2004 piece, which describes several more incidents of “murderous violence”: the near-death of rapper Mr. Pookie, a Berkner alum.

More murders in Lake Highlands were not tied to drugs but to egos and antisocial behavior. Like the guy nicknamed “Pooh Bear” who became engaged in a shoot-out at a birthday party and lost his life.

Help arrived in December of that year, in the form of Dallas Police Department’s Operation Kitchen Sink (OKS). Here is how northeast division commander David Brown (now he’s police chief) at the time described the name of the project:

“Because I’ve been at this station for four years, and I was thinking that we had done everything but throw the kitchen sink at the problem,” Brown says. “And now we’re doing that, too.” By the end of the month-long sweep, police had netted 1,188 citations and 197 arrests, 50 for felonies. A tip from a Providence resident helped solve one of the shootings.

Resident crime activists recently invited Brown, now the head honcho of the Dallas Police Department, to a special breakfast and presented him with the “Kitchen Sink” award. “Operation Kitchen

Sink resulted in a newfound pride in our neighborhood police force and a throweverything-you’ve-got-at-it approach to police work,” says Bill Vandivort III, who presented to the police chief a symbolic kitchen sink. He explains that Brown’s example back then led to present day success, including the 2013 capture of a serial rapist in Lake Highlands.

OKS — with its month-long 24/7 surveillance of troubled apartment communities — brought about a significant decrease in crime. But it was not entirely sustainable, Brown says.

Did the effort at least provide some lasting effects? “At the time we made our point, and it did result in some positive changes,” Brown says.

Experts at the time suggested that apartment owners needed to take more accountability for their tenants — back- ground checks, zero tolerance on drug dealing, evictions for criminal behaviors. Today Councilman Jerry Allen and Dallas Police representatives meet regularly with dozens of apartment owners who are willing to implement practices that will improve safety and quality of life for their tenants and surrounding Lake Highlands neighborhoods.

Experts back in the OKS days also stressed the need to focus on children from poor and broken homes whose only role models are adults engaging in criminal behavior; they need mentors and an opportunity to take a different path.

Lake Highlanders have advanced in this area as well — see Forerunner Mentoring, Kids-U, Hamilton Park youth football and The New Room community center — all available on the advocatemag. com archives — for just a few examples.

The Advocate’s ongoing series about efforts to end poverty and related problems. To read more stories from the series, search “solutions series” at lakehighlands.advocatemag.com.