Downtown Oklahoma City sees low crime rates

“We hear gunshots about every other night,” Dickson said. “We used to get out of bed, but now we roll over and go back to sleep.”

She's seen a man wounded and bleeding in a neighbor's driveway. She lived next door to busy drug dealers until police shut down the operation last year. Her home has been burglarized once, but the houses across the street are hit regularly, she said.

It was no shock to Dickson that she lived in a ZIP code where more than 7 percent of the city's homicides have occurred in the past four years. Of the 266 homicides during that period, 19 took place in ZIP code 73129, where Cinderella Drive is located.

Using a ZIP code comparison, homicide numbers cover an Oklahoma City map in much the same pattern as a hurricane would. Downtown Oklahoma City, just northwest of where interstates 40, 35 and 235 come together, is the calm hurricane eye. The ZIP codes surrounding downtown show some of the greatest intensity in term of homicides, which lessen in number farther from the eye.

More homicides happened in Oklahoma City's 73119 ZIP code than in any other ZIP code in the city from 2007 through 2010. The ZIP code covers an area just northeast of Will Rogers World Airport and accounted for more than 9 percent of the homicides during that period.

Other high homicide ZIP codes include 73129 — an area from southeast of downtown to Del City and down to SE 89 — with more than 7 percent of the homicides during that time, and 73114 — which is bisected by the Broadway Extension from Memorial Road to Wilshire Boulevard — with more than 6.5 percent of the homicides.

Stephanie Virling, 42, lives at SW 44 and Shartel Ave., in ZIP code 73109, an area where more than 5 percent of the city's homicides occurred. She said she regrets not researching the crime statistics for the area before she moved there about three years ago.

In the street outside her front door there was a drive-by shooting last year, she said. It frightened Virling so much she wouldn't allow her son to watch television in their living room anymore for fear he might be injured by a stray bullet. Her young daughter doesn't play in the yard, she said.

Gunfire and police sirens are frequent background noise where she lives.

“I've gotten to the point where I try to convince myself it's a car backfiring and not gunshots,” Virling said.

Looking at the number of homicides compared to the number of people living within a ZIP code, the outlook changes a bit. Sixteen homicides were committed within the 73117 ZIP code, an area southeast of the state Capitol that includes Edwards, Washington and Douglas parks. With a population of just more than 5,000, there were 3.12 homicides per 1,000 people living in the area.

Next closest is the 73128 ZIP code, an area south of I-40 and west of I-44, which had four homicides among the more than 2,000 people living in the area, a rate of 1.87 homicides per 1,000 residents.