By MELINDA J. OVERSTREET
for Glasgow News 1
A particular Glasgow apartment complex has been at the center of growing concerns with regard to general living conditions for its tenants and violent criminal activity – two issues that at least some city officials say are related.
Identifying the issues – crime and quality of life
Glasgow Police Department Chief Guy Howie, who took over that role in early April, told Glasgow News 1, “When I came, I was informed that we had been having problems at Adams Place apartments and that we had responded to numerous calls, to the tune of about 75 from January until my arrival in April. So we did some research into the type of calls and what was going on and looked at the quality-of-life issues there. We’ve had overdoses. We’ve had shootings. We’ve had fight calls over there.”
He and Capt. Ashley Jones, almost simultaneously answered a question, saying the types of fights were both domestic disputes and other types of conflicts.
Adams Place is the former name of the apartment complex but also still the name of the street that loops from and back to Park Avenue around what is now the Arbors of Glasgow.
Two shooting incidents took place there barely more than a week apart earlier this year – one on March 8 and another on the 16th.
GPD Maj. Terry Flatt, in a separate exchange, estimated that an uptick in the crime rate at Adams Place started over the past two to three years, particularly with violent crimes, and the shootings and then an incident on Father’s Day have sort of brought circumstances to a head.
Howie visited the complex in the spring after listening to officers’ concerns.
“When I drove through over there, the buildings were, to say the least – they looked terrible. Siding was missing; it wasn’t even laying on the ground, it was just missing. The eaves were falling down, were just left hanging. Windows were broken out, had not been replaced. There was trash all over the place. Dumpsters were overflowing with debris. I mean, it was bad,” Howie said.
“The officers, when I got here and I had a departmentwide meeting, were complaining about Adams Place and that, if they responded over there, sometimes people would come out of their apartments and surrounded officers and just made them feel uneasy,” he continued. “This past Father’s Day weekend, we got a call to a domestic. The officers went over there, and during their investigation, people started coming out of their apartments and came down and got in with the officers. The officers went to make an arrest; several people got in front of the officers and shuffled the person they went to arrest back into the crowd and into an apartment. At that point, the officers started making arrests for the people that were interfering, causing a disturbance, and made three arrests that night.”
Sgt. Wesley Hicks and Officer Jeffery Childress were able to identify other people in the crowd; they knew them on sight, and they petitioned to the county attorney and the courts to have warrants issued, Jones said. Warrants were issued for five other individuals, and a few days later, the police department located three of those individuals at Arbors and made the arrests. Later that afternoon, they found another of the individuals, James E. Morrison, who is not a resident of Arbors and is a registered sex offender, Howie said, was found and arrested at his apartment, which, according to the criminal complaint, is along Shalimar Drive. The fifth person, Willie Pope, turned himself in, Jones said.
“I have instructed our officers, that they need to make sure that they protect themselves. They are not to be intimidated, that the citizens of Glasgow expect them to do their jobs and expect them to provide a safe community and to act accordingly, and they did just that. And they will do that again in the future,” the chief said.
Your police officers are not going to be intimidated or be kept from performing their duties, he added.
With regard to the original domestic complaint that day, Jones said a warrant was issued for the man against whom the complaint was made, but he and the complainant were not the ones causing the disturbance.
She pointed out that two of the three people arrested initially were also charged with alcohol intoxication. According to their citations, they were Monique L. Curry and Bryant L. Shobe. The other of those three is Latavia Long.
Those picked up on warrants later, aside from Morrison, were Heather Puckett, Avante S. Parks and Ralph S. McCandless.
All eight were charged with second-degree disorderly conduct, failure to disperse and inciting a riot.
Howie said he’d sent an email out to all patrol officers congratulating those involved on their work with the situation there and telling them he was proud of them.
“The incident and the names of the individuals have been turned over to the management company to determine if there’s a violation of their lease agreement,” the police chief said.
The negative activities along Adams Place have also had some reported impact on residents who live or lived along the opposite side of Park Avenue in duplex apartments owned by the Housing Authority of Glasgow. Sheri Lee, director of the authority, said when asked by GN1 about this that a family moved out of one of the Park Avenue units in April specifically citing the trouble at the neighboring apartment complex as the reason, and one of her staff members recalled that people from a couple of different households there commenting on it, but that person wasn’t sure whether the people moved. Lee said she knows the office has received calls from their tenants asking them to try to do something about the circumstances there, but as Arbors of Glasgow is not a property of the housing authority, its staff has no say so there.
“When there’s disturbances or disruptions over across the street, it does affect the safety and well-being of the residents that live on our property,” she said.
What became the Arbors complex, with 17 apartment buildings plus a standalone office building, was constructed in 1966, according to records at the property valuation administrator’s office. The property was purchased from Robert A. and Mary Lessenberry in 2000 by Parkview Apartments of Glasgow LLC of Cleveland, Ohio, which uses a property management company also based there.
Glasgow’s code enforcement officer, Sheryl Peña, said she has seen property maintenance issues, couches on front porches, gutters and siding that came off during a storm and not fixed, open storage around the apartments, and “a lot of trash problems with the dumpsters.” She said she’s been told they have people who don’t live there dumping items, including large ones like mattresses. When the dumpsters are overflowing, the company that collects them only takes what was actually in them, so it remains there loose.
“I’ve heard some real horror stories about some of the stuff inside,” she said, listing some of the issues, but she hasn’t been able to verify them.
Peña can initiate a complaint on anything she sees on the outside, but complaints on issues inside the structures would need to be initiated and signed by someone living there. She would have to have permission from the owner or a renter to go inside the premises. She said she does get calls on those sometimes, but the tenants generally don’t take the next necessary step, although a few have.
“I don’t know if they’re afraid to get kicked out, evicted, or not, but they won’t come up here [to City Hall] to make a formal complaint, fill out a form,” she said.
She also has to know they have first let the landlord know of the issue and that the landlord has had “sufficient time” to fix it. Peña said that can help cut down on calls people may make out of anger or revenge for being evicted, for example. How much time is “sufficient” depends on the urgency of the situation, she said.
She said she’s been told by the local property manager that she’s had trouble keeping maintenance personnel.
“Evidently, they go through them pretty quickly,” Peña said.
Glasgow News 1 contacted the site manager to discuss the happenings at the complex and was referred to her regional supervisor in Paducah. A call to that person was not returned within 24 hours.
NOTE: This report is in two parts, with the latter, which explores some possible solutions to the issues identified here.
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