Monday, July 22, 1996

Texas Poll: Safety-conscious Texans opt for cheap safety measures

By ANNA M. TINSLEY
Harte-Hanks Texas Poll Syndicate
Copyright 1996 Harte-Hanks Communications

Safety-conscious Texans also tend to be cost-conscious, preferring old fashioned safety tools such as deadbolts and window grates to more expensive protection such as alarms, according to a Harte-Hanks Texas Poll released today.

The simpler and cheaper safety measures, such as locking car doors, often are the best, law enforcement officials say.

"These basic steps are the message that officers have been teaching for 20 years," said Will Rykert, director of the National Crime Prevention Institute in Louisville, Ky. "It's encouraging that people are actually doing this."

But more than one-third of Texans have taken measures other than installing deadbolts or grates and locking car doors. They bought guns, installed door chains and avoided going out at night or alone.
A slightly smaller number of Texans have refused to answer their door at home (32 percent) or buy a dog for protection (31 percent).

There's no such thing as too much protection, said Mark Clark, spokesman for the Combined Law Enforcement Associations of Texas.

"I don't know if there is such a thing as doing enough to protect yourself," said Clark, whose group is the largest law enforcement organization in the state. "If you put a suit of armor on and never left the house, that's the safest thing. "But we don't want people to do that."

The numbers of almost all major crimes in Texas - murders, robberies, rapes, burglaries, car thefts and aggravated assaults - decreased in 1995, according to the Texas Department of Public Safety's most recent reports. Overall, major crimes decreased 1.4 percent from 1994 to 1995.
Fear of crime, though, hasn't necessarily decreased.

"In urban areas, very heinous crimes that people have never heard about before seem to be occurring frequently," Clark said. "I think that just scares the hell out of people, and rightfully so.
"People think, 'That could happen in our neighborhood.' They are scared something happened. And that drives the perception of fear up."

Steps most Texans have taken to protect themselves and their property include locking car doors while driving (83 percent), installing dead bolts (74 percent) and installing window locks or grates (54 percent).

But some Texans also have installed door chains (37 percent), avoided going out at night (37 percent), bought a firearm for protection (34 percent), avoided going out alone (34 percent) and installed an alarm system (32 percent).

And at least one-fifth of Texans have installed a security fence, joined a community crime watch program or carried a weapon, including chemical sprays, outside the house.

"Virtually everybody takes certain basic home precautions - they lock their doors, they leave their lights on," said Mark Warr, a criminologist with the University of Texas. "The more serious the precautionary measure, the fewer people who take it.

"The simpler it is to do, the more people are going to do it," Warr said. "It's easy to lock doors. It takes much more to install a burglar alarm system. The more inexpensive, the more people do it."

Officers with police departments, sheriff's departments and the Texas chapter of the Crime Prevention Institute have been telling Texans for years that individuals should be their own first line of defense against crime.

The crime prevention institute trains police officers to teach Texans to protect themselves. Each year, as many as 1,500 officers attend a two-week course that touches on everything from locks and alarms to personal safety issues and rural crime prevention.

Those officers then go out into Texas neighborhoods and can reach millions of people, said George Landry, director of the Institute of Criminal Justice studies at Southwest Texas State University, which includes the crime prevention institute.

"Texas has been a leader in the country in promoting crime prevention," he said. "We were one of the first states to start investing money to teach people about crime prevention.
"Police can't do it alone. People have to help themselves."

Twenty-five percent of Texans have carried a weapon, including chemical sprays, outside their house. And 34 percent have bought a firearm for protection.

Men are more likely than women to buy guns, 42 percent to 26 percent. But that could be because men are trying to protect family members, UT's Warr said.

"It's in response to making their households safe," Warr said. Some disturbing results of the poll, Warr said, are those that show Texans going so far as to adjust their social behavior - not going out alone or at night, refusing to answer their door at home.

"If large portions of people are afraid to go out, or open their door," Warr said, "what kind of society do we live in?" Most Texans who say they take such measures are women.

Fifty-three percent of women have avoided going out at night, compared with 21 percent of men. Forty-four percent of women refuse to answer their door at home, compared with 19 percent of men. And 49 percent of women compared with 17 percent of men avoid going out alone.

Texans in rural areas are least likely to take any safety precautions. They were the least likely to install deadbolts, door chains, security fences, window locks or alarm systems, or join crime watch programs, according to the poll.

They also were the least likely to lock their doors or refuse to answer doors.

"People in rural areas don't perceive crime as much of a problem," said Rykert, of the National Crime Prevention Institute. "And there's a certain truth to that. Those areas aren't like in some downtown inner cities, where people sleep in bathtubs so bullets don't come into where they are sleeping.

"The perception in rural areas is (there is) less (crime). Either that or people think, 'I've got my shotgun by my bed and I'll take care of the problem.' That's a possibility. But we know that when they wake up in the middle of night, they might not be fully aware of who they're shooting."

The poll, conducted June 17-27, has a margin of error of plus or minus 3 percentage points. The Office of Survey Research of the University of Texas surveyed 1,006 adult Texans for Harte-Hanks Communications Inc.