6/3 column: Neighborhood offers more than crime

“Aren’t you scared?” people ask Terry Bilsland when they learn he lives in Wellington Heights.
They’ve got a mental image of his central Cedar Rapids neighborhood as a bullet-riddled war zone — not this tree-lined street where historic homes offer front porches like so many open arms.
“This is the majority of Wellington Heights,” Bilsland told me [...]

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Talkback: Coordinating human services

It seems I could have done a better job connecting the dots in my Saturday column about connecting human services in Cedar Rapids.
B.J. Smith writes:
Jennifer, I’m a little confused. What is the connection between the proposed human services campus, the ANCHOR Center and Wellington Heights, and what is it that’s a no-brainer? Can you explain a [...]

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5/6 Column: Readers fire back on guns

I expected a lot of feedback about last Wednesday’s column, and I wasn’t disappointed.
I also expected a degree of flack. No disappointment there, either.
Guns are one of those issues that set peoples’ alarms a-ringing. That started my phone along the same path after I said I was uneasy about the dramatic increase in folks getting [...]

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4/29 Column: Guns don’t translate to safety

Is it me, or are people acting pretty touchy lately?
Stormy weather, sinking economy, swine flu — I don’t know the cause, but people are on edge.
Which is one reason why I’m uneasy about the news that Eastern Iowans are packing heat in record numbers. 
Orlan Love’s article in today’s Gazette says there’s been a surge here [...]

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4/25 Column: Turning problem properties around

It isn’t easy to pull a problem rental property out of a nose-dive.
But it can be done.
Just ask Maz Baig.
In less than two years of managing Dolphin Lake Point Enclave (formerly the notorious Lakeside Apartments), Baig has spearheaded efforts to turn the 401-unit complex from a criminal refuge to a family-friendly neighborhood.
Last fall, I wrote [...]

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3/25 Column: Seeing shouldn’t always be believing

It’s not always enough to see something with your own two eyes.
Iowa State University psychology professor Gary Wells told me recently that mistaken eyewitness identification accounts for more convictions of innocent people in this country than all other causes combined.
He wants courts to put their foot down and set tighter restrictions on the witness identifications [...]

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Fry case clinches it: Iowa City bars have to say “when”

Iowa City bar staff aren’t to blame for Pat McEwen’s death.
But they share blame for Curtis Fry becoming so drunk he couldn’t tell whether he was inside or outside on a snowy and freezing February night.
 

Fry’s second-degree murder trial started Monday in Johnson County District Court. The 22-year-old Wilton man is accused of forcibly entering McEwen’s home, [...]

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FBI: Cedar Rapids crime down

It might not have felt like it, but preliminary FBI numbers show violent crimes were down in Cedar Rapids in the first six months of last year from the same period in 2007.
In keeping with a national downward trend, Cedar Rapids Police reported fewer robberies, murders and assaults in  the first half of 2008 than in [...]

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