Dr. Michael Lauderdale of the UT School of Social Work says:
The Command had just concluded a successful effort on Brownie Drive and developed an approach called Restore Hope that combined rigorous police efforts to control crime, address environmental disorder and involve community members toward efforts to improve the quality of life. Restore Hope is a direct application of the “Fixing Broken Windows” theory offered twenty years ago by Wilson and Kelling and undergirds many of the concepts associated with community policing.
I had an interest in addressing such activities as the work with the Longhorn Leaders suggested that we needed much more detailed information about community and family characteristics as we sought to improve school success of middle school aged youth. After meetings with Commander Gross, we had meetings with the Austin Chief of Police, Stanley Knee, Assistant Chief of Police Robert Dahlstrom and Police Researcher Dr. Ronnelle Paulsen. They as I were interested in the North Central Command as it had the most complex neighborhoods in terms of cultural diversity and also had the most rapidly increasing crime rate of any Austin Police Command. We agreed that we would have a joint effort between my class and the officers of the North Central Command to create a community assessment of forces that have serve to determine much of the probabilities associated with youth success.
My class was divided into 5 Teams, Demography, Neighborhoods, Police, Public Housing and Schools with the assignment of securing as much information as possible about each of these domains to more fully describe the forces that have such an important determinant for youth success of failure in this area of Austin.
North Lamar/Georgian Acres neighborhoods 