Stepping towards safer streets

The  Lyndale Walkers have been purposely walking along their neighborhood streets to discourage crime for the last 30 years.

On Sunday, May 21, 2023, the Lyndale Walkers met at the home of Michael and Shirley Montrose for their 30th anniversary celebration. 

Member Luther Krueger said the group organized to discourage open drug dealing in the neighborhood. 

They started out walking every day for about a week and saw dealing in their neighborhood go down. In 1998, they had about 70 volunteers. Recently, as dealing has dropped, smaller groups patrol on a less frequent schedule.

Michael Montrose shared a bit about the last 30 years.

 

Montrose: When my wife, Shirley Ramsay-Montrose, and I moved into the Lyndale neighborhood in 1987, it was an “at risk” neighborhood with crime, drugs, and gangs. When a cab driver was killed in 1990 or 1991, it was decided that something had to be done. Luther Krueger, who was chairing the LNA Crime & Safety committee at the time, came up with the idea of starting a citizens’ patrol for the neighborhood with the premise we would make our presence known at trouble areas and report activity to the 5th Precinct. Luther acquired yellow hats, while Shirley and I made LNA Walker badges with photos and kept signed rules and schedules of walks. The rules consisted of no weapons, minimum of two walkers, no alcohol, and the patrols would start and end at our house. Our primary objective was to get people out of their houses and be seen with the idea that where people were, crime wasn’t.

In 1993, we started the Walker pot-luck as a recruitment tool and a celebration for us die-hards and have continued this for the past 30 years.

 

Montrose: We have witnessed a great change from being an “at risk neighborhood” to premium place to live. With the help of the city, the police, and LNA committees, we were able to identify crack houses, slumlords, and gang members and thereby tackling the issues of our neighborhood. Our benchmark was thereduction of nightly gunshots per week in the early 90s to a few per week and then to none in the early 2000s.

While, it has been a long road, it has been a good outcome and the Walkers are now mostly ambassadors for the Lyndale Neighborhood Association to get residents involved and informed.