Crimes citywide dropping

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   Crimes citywide dropping, but Sherman still a hotbed
City has designated neighborhood ‘high stress’; residents say police presence needed.
By Jessica Heffner, Staff Writer 11:11 PM Saturday, October 9, 2010 
MIDDLETOWN — It’s not that Renee Hamm feels unsafe on her street, but she says there’s something wrong when she can sit on her porch and watch a drug deal go down in broad daylight.
The Crawford Street resident said she has never received a threat since she moved into the Sherman neighborhood five years ago. But during that time, she and her boyfriend, Calvin Ellis, have seen houses broken into and an increase in vandalism.
Hamm has added locks to the gate in her backyard to protect her two young children, not so much for fear of them trying to go out, but more for who might try to get in.
“You can sit and watch a drug deal go down right in front of you, and you’ve got prostitutes walking right down the street making calls, and no one stops them,” Hamm said.
Thanks to some new efforts by police to prevent crime, such as the Drug Market Intervention Program and the summer downtown police task force that resulted in more than 100 arrests, Sgt. Jim Cunningham said citywide crimes are on track to decrease in 2010. But neighborhoods like Sherman are still hotbeds for crimes, especially drugs, vandalism and thefts.
“The same neighborhoods are getting the same crimes and the same problems,” he said.
Sherman has been designated as a “high stress” neighborhood by the city for its crime, dilapidated houses, streets in need of repair and density of subsidized housing. It’s also one of the top neighborhoods for Section 8 housing.
Cunningham acknowledged that all cities with subsidized housing struggle with crime in high-density neighborhoods. But in his experience, the majority of Section 8 residents in Middletown don’t cause problems. Only about 10 percent of voucher holders cause problems, making up about 20 percent of all the calls for service police make in Middletown, he said.
With the recent termination of the city’s Section 8 program administrator, Columbus-based Consoc Housing Consultants, Cunningham said he hopes the next company will take a more active role in kicking criminals out of the program as required, and thereby help reduce the overall crime.
“There are a lot of people on Section 8 that are actively or have committed crime that are in violation of the public housing law, and they should be eliminated from the program,” he said. “We were not seeing that all the time, that follow-up effort on crime from (Consoc).”
Resident Billy Malicote said he believes the problem could be fixed by more police presence — and a better attitude by officers when they do respond to a call.
“There is a distrust of the police. They treat the victim like they are a criminal when they get here,” he said. “If they want to step up their game here, that doesn’t mean intimidating the people who called them.”

Trouble neighborhoods 'not getting any better’
Angela Hammond and her husband, Robert, only need to look out their front window to know there are gang and drug problems on their street. The shoes dangling on the power lines say it all.
“That’s how they mark their territory,” Robert Hammond said, gesturing to the white sneakers hanging on power lines that cross the street. A blue kerchief dangles from the shoes, the color indicating whose gang dominates on Crawford Street.
“Every once in awhile a new gang-banger shows up and its a new color. Another group is taking over,” he said.
And the criminals aren’t afraid, Angela Hammond said. In the four years she has lived on Crawford in the Sherman neighborhood, she has seen how they’ll perform a drug deal in the middle of the day in front of people sitting on the front porch. She said it’s because they know it will take police several hours to respond to a call.
“You see them (the police) go up and down the street sometime, but when a drug deal goes down, it will take them two and a half hours to come, and by then, everyone is gone,” she said.
Her family has already been victim to some of the milder crimes. Angela Hammond said she’s had to replace flowers in her gardens too many times to count because of vandals, and recently, her husband’s bike was stolen from their locked garage.
With two teenage kids, the Hammonds said they’re afraid they’ll be influenced by the bad crowd that has taken over their street.
“It’s not getting any better and we are thinking about moving. It is not safe for my kids,” Angela Hammond said.
Overall crime down
According to a recent report by Middletown police, crimes are on track to decrease in 2010. This is especially true of certain crimes — homicides, rapes, burglaries, robberies, thefts, felonious assaults and auto thefts, said Sgt. Jim Cunningham.
He attributes the drop to more preventive programs — police launched a prostitution task force downtown and a new Drug Market intervention program.
While the statistics are good news overall , pockets of the city are still experiencing higher crime issues.
Cunningham said troubled neighborhoods like Sherman are still have higher crime rates than the rest of the city, especially with thefts, vandalism and assaults.
Last year there were two homicides. This year the only homicide victim in the city has been Randy Manies, a 40-year-old Middletown man who was killed during a robbery gone bad. Three people are now on trial for his death.
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Rob Smith said Manies was well known in the neighborhood and his death hit people hard, especially after police said he was killed while being robbed for less than $150.
“There ain’t enough employment about this part of town,” Smith said as he walked down Crawford . “But no one today wants to drag themselves out of here and help themselves.”
Resident Joshua Frazier said he thinks the problem on Crawford Street has gotten worse .
“This is a bad neighborhood. I wouldn’t raise my kids around here,” he said.
Taking action
How the high crime in neighborhoods like Sherman can be solved depends on who you talk to. Renee Hamm and her boyfriend, Calvin Ellis, said the vacant, dilapidated homes and “trashy yards” don’t help . They said they’d like to organize the neighborhood to clean up the streets.
“Maybe they’ll have more pride,” Hamm said.
Billy Malicote said he thinks police need to respond to calls quicker and be more respectful of the victims when they do call for help.
Cunningham said police hope a new Section 8 administrator will help crack down on program members that are in violation but have not been booted from the program.
A database was set up in January by the police and Community Revitalization departments to track calls for service in correlation with Section 8 tenants, landlords and properties.
While the city was able to forward violations found by the system to its Section 8 administrator, Consoc Housing Consultants, for action, Community Revitalization Director Doug Adkins said the company never set up a complaint tracking system to verify what happened with the violations. It’s one of the reasons City Council terminated the company’s contract.
Adkins said violators in the Section 8 program add to the crime problems, even for residents who are not causing problems.
“It goes both ways. Even if Section 8 people are not causing the crime they are living in neighborhoods that have high crime,” he said. “Whether they are victims of the crime or the one committing it, it is not a good situation for the city or the Section 8 program.”
In a recent report of neighborhoods targeted for improvements sent to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, Sherman was not listed — omitted in favor of neighborhoods at risk of slipping into the problems it already faces, Adkins said.
“Sherman is already highly distressed and it is going to take more resources and planning and thought to deal with that situation,” he said.
With a new Section 8 administrator proposed to start in six months coupled with program policy changes passed by City Council to improve the program, Adkins hopes the program will see improvements and help neighborhoods like Sherman.
Sherman residents agreed that something needs to be done, and soon.
“People are leaving this town,” Malicote said. “There are no jobs and a high crime rate and it won’t be long before no one wants to live here.”