Communities try design to improve public safety

State dollars aim to prevent crime with environmental changes

BY BRITTANY FREEMAN AND CULLEN PURSER

MOUNTAIN PBS

Mike Burns bought a home right on the river near Delta, Colorado, with plans to spend the summers shing outdoors with his grandkids. But those kinds of excursions haven’t always felt safe, since the family learned more about what had been happening in their new neighborhood.

“Crime, drugs, theft, things like that,” he said. “Because of the things that are going on, it’s created some anxiety in us.”

It turns out the Burns family had moved to a 2,000-foot stretch of dirt road that is at the epicenter of roughly 10 percent of every call the small local sheri ’s o ce receives. e sheri sent more deputies to patrol the area but that has left some neighbors even more unnerved.

“You’ve got four or ve sheri ’s vehicles parked next to your yard,” neighbor Steve Martinez said. “What are people going to think about what kind of neighborhood it is that you’re living in?”

But there’s a new sense of hope on this rural Delta County road these