Making an impact
Police, building inspection launching enforcement blitz in the blocks around Washburn and Genesee streets
By Joyce M. MilesLockport Union-Sun & Journal
Lockport Union-Sun & Journal — Officials announced the first law enforcement “impact zone” in Lockport on Friday, promising an all-out effort to uproot the criminal element that lurks in the heart of the city.
The impact zone, an area roughly bounded by Transit, Walnut, Erie and High streets, will be the subject of stepped-up police patrolling, unannounced road blocks and a building code enforcement blitz, Mayor Michael Tucker and Lockport Police Chief Lawrence Eggert said.
The Niagara County Sheriff’s Department and New York State Police will be sending patrol cars into the zone routinely as well, spokesmen for those agencies confirmed at a Friday press conference. The city’s state Legislature representatives will look for funding to help the city purchase video cameras that can be placed at key intersections.
“We have a message for the criminals: We may not be a big city ... but that doesn’t mean we’re going to sit here and take it,” Tucker declared. “We want to know who’s in our city (and) if you’re up to no good, we don’t want you here.”
The declaration follows a spate of unusually violent crimes and police encounters with unstable suspects in the past month or so. Officers have responded to two shootings, one Jan. 3 near Walnut and Washburn Streets and another Dec. 24 on Genesee Street.
On Dec. 31, Eggert himself disarmed a knife-wielding woman who stabbed the man that allegedly tried to kill her 7-year-old daughter in lowertown.
Two weeks ago a routine traffic stop on Cottage Street yielded a woman hiding a large quantity of prescription drug pills, a couple chunks of suspected cocaine — and a large butcher knife in the back seat of her vehicle. The woman, described by the patrol officer as “irate” and “acting strangely,” ate some of the cocaine and had to be medically treated for a possible overdose.
On Thursday, police busted a pair of suspected drug dealers after a routine traffic stop at Washburn near South street. Both suspects fled the vehicle and struggled physically with officers trying to stop them; one got away and both officers suffered minor injuries, Eggert said.
In some but not all of those cited incidents, police note, the aggressors are from outside the Lockport area.
Eggert asserted “most major crimes” in the city are being committed by outsiders, who come from Niagara Falls, Buffalo and Rochester, often to sell drugs then go home.
Technically, Tucker announced creation of an inter-agency “project impact team” that will hit selected geographic areas of the city based on reported rates of criminal activity.
The Transit-High-Erie-Walnut area is the “first” declared impact zone but it won’t be the only one, he promised.
The Transit-High-Erie-Walnut zone is first because it’s where police are seeing the biggest increase in service calls. According to Eggert, from 2011 through 2012, the department saw a 27 percent increase in calls for service, meaning every thing officers do from writing parking tickets and fielding nuisance complaints to investigating a shooting.
“It’s a pretty significant increase,” Eggert said. “It means the neighbors are starting to notice” bad acts by others.
On the city map, the impact zone is the center of Lockport, and the Washburn-Genesee streets intersection is the center of the zone.
A stone’s throw from two major real estate developments, the $8.6 million Lockport Canal Homes rental housing project by Housing Visions and a $4 million project to remake a section of Harrison Place for Trek Inc., “Washburn-Genesee” also has been code for “bad neighborhood” for at least the past couple of decades.
The Jan. 3 non-fatal shooting of a city resident occurred within one city block of the Housing Visions and Trek projects. The shooter fired at least two shots, one of which traveled across Washburn Street and struck a window at Harrison Place.
Learning that was the last straw for Tucker. Project Impact was born a little more than a week later.
“We’re putting serious money into this area and we’re not going backward,” he said.
Tucker said city officials will make sure all arrest reports generated from the zone and any court documents that follow, are marked “Impact Zone” — and he called on the Niagara County District Attorney’s office, the city prosecutor and city court judges to grant fewer “favorable” plea deals in those cases.
D.A. Michael Violante, who attended the press conference, wouldn’t make any blanket promises about no pleas, but he pledged his office “will focus on the City of Lockport a little more” when handling its criminal cases.
Project Impact calls for increased law enforcement to be complemented with increased building code enforcement. City inspectors will be looking most closely at boarded-up properties and “problem” rental houses, Tucker said, “but all property is in play.”
With the enforcement moves, Eggert said police officials will be “reaching out” to residents in the impact zone to let them know the effort is meant to help, not target, them. Officials will seek meetings with neighborhood groups throughout the zone, he said.
Lockport Union-Sun & Journal Online
January 22, 2013Reaction to 'impact zone' is mixed
Staff reportsLockport Union-Sun & Journal
Lockport Union-Sun & Journal — Public opinion of the city's newly announced "Impact Team Project" is a mixed bag weighed down with skepticism.
Last week, Mayor Michael Tucker announced creation of a multi-agency impact team and "impact zones," specific geographic areas that are targeted for increased police patrol and building code enforcement. The Niagara County Sheriff's Department and New York State Police are participating and sent representatives to the Friday press conference at City Hall, which drew TV news cameras as well as print reporters.
The first impact zone consists of twenty-five or so residential blocks roughly bounded by Erie, High, Transit and Walnut streets, Police Chief Lawrence Eggert said. Increased patrolling by multiple police agencies was to begin immediately, with an emphasis on Vehicle and Traffic Law enforcement by means including unannounced road blocks.
Within the zone, city building inspectors will be inspecting exteriors on 1,100 parcels looking for building code violations. All property types, single- as well as multiple-unit residential dwellings and commercial properties, are said to be in their sights.
Project Impact's aim is to weed out scofflaws and encourage property upkeep in sections of the city that struggle most with crime and blight. Tucker said it's also intended as a message to "outsiders," particularly non-residents engaged in drug trade, that order will be defended here.
The declaration followed a series of unusually violent and/or alarming criminal incidents in the city since November, including two shootings, the physical assault of a child and several significant drug busts.
Impact zones will be declared one at a time, based on spikes in local crime rates, Tucker said.
The Erie-High-Transit-Walnut zone is first after police noted a 27 percent increase in year-over-year police service calls in that area, Eggert said. Police service calls are anything police do, from writing parking tickets to fielding nuisance complaints to investigating a robbery. A sudden spike in the rate suggests the area could use extra policing, to "nip (problems) in the bud" before they're considered a normal part of the landscape, Eggert said.
In Facebook postings and interviews with a US&J reporter this week, some residents seemed less than appreciative of the impact zone declaration.
John and Linda Rosenberg of Genesee Street dislike the way it mischaracterizes, even maligns, their neighborhood. They've lived on the block between Washburn and Locust streets for 35 years, expanded the family business, Prudden & Kandt Funeral Home, encouraged their children to buy homes close by, and they say it's not nearly as bad as police and city officials have made it out to be.
"We have wonderful, caring neighbors ... and a few pigs who ruin things. That's true all over this city," Mrs. Rosenberg said, "but it's always Genesee Street that gets labeled "the red zone, the war zone, the ghetto. ... They target when they really need to clean up everything. The whole city needs a good scrubbing."
A few writers on Facebook suggested the city going for "impact" now is like closing the barn door well after the horse bolted. Blight and crime have been dragging down the targeted area for decades while "complacent" city officials, landlords and residents watched, Kenny Allore wrote on the US&J Facebook page.
Others suspect the city's true interest isn't in aiding long-beseiged residents, it's in protecting the "money," that is, new investors in the zone — Housing Visions, which put almost $9 million into a rental housing development on Genesee, Locust and Pine streets, and Trek Inc., a manufacturing company that's poised to sink $5 million into relocating to Harrison Place.
"Only reasoning for this 'step up' is because Tucker wants a business to move into the Harrisons plant!" Kelly Hall wrote.
"You didn't care til you got money," Bethany Coley wrote.
"Tucker is thumping his political chest," Spalding Street rental property owner Stephen Walsh said in a Tuesday interview. "I laughed when I read about this (impact zone). ... Government exists to protect government. To the extent that people buy into the notion that this is for them, well, we get what we deserve. ... Police officers will remain employed, that's the only 'impact' I foresee."
Walsh, who bought up and rehabilitated several residential properties around the city, says rental property owners struggle to recruit the kinds of tenants who'd make good neighbors. High property taxes and the threat of reassessment discourage housing improvement, he said; and even nice housing commands relatively low rent in this market.
City officials tend to act as though blight is the fault of landlords, but simple things the officials could do to improve neighborhoods — like add street lighting in dark areas — they won't do without badgering, if at all, Walsh added.
He's been asking, intermittently and unsuccessfully the past four years, for a street light at the end of Seidhoff Alley, an abandoned dead-end street off Spalding that a number of residents have ended up using for parking or back-yard access. The dark alley also draws drug users and vandals and blemishes an otherwise "safe, clean" neighborhood, he said.
"I can't increase the quality of tenants without a light," Walsh said. "I'm not going to have any more luck recruiting (good tenants) when the neighborhood becomes known as a place where people's liberty is infringed on (as) they're ticketed for dumb stuff like driving 5 miles over the speed limit."
Other residents see the impact zone declaration as a positive for the area.
Lewis Street homeowner Kevin Vincent thinks it's "very good news," especially the building code enforcement side of the project.
"I've always said our little neighborhood was like an oasis in the desert ... but we have definitely seen a downturn (here) the last five to seven years," he said. "I agree that the trouble seems to come from outside the city," especially when rental properties are held by non-local owners.
If increased code enforcement "sends a message .... that there are repercussions for not keeping things up, I welcome that," Vincent said. "At the very least, they should make their properties as presentable as the people who've been here a long time."
On Facebook, Lisa Rutherford suggested "better late than never," while Denise Rich, who identified herself as an ex-zone and city resident, encouraged a greater police presence in all the "bad" parts of Lockport.
Once the again the Mayor has shone his true colors! It seems that the only time anything gets done in the City is when it benefits himself! If he truly cared about the City and making it making it a great place to live, he would have supported the many groups that have sprung up over the past 9 years of his time in the Office of Mayor! Instead, he has taken an adverserial role with the various block clubs and community organizations interested in improving the quality of life throughout the City. Only when a stray bullet goes through the window of his beloved 210 Walnut Street, does he decide to take action! He says he is worried about the residence of that neighborhood, what a load of crap! He is only concerned about the commercial interests of his friends. His actions speak louder than his words.Where was he when stray bullets were flying in the all residential neighborhood of Waterman and Pine Streets? Nowhere!I agree with some of the FB posters that at least something may get done now, but where was he 20 years ago?
On a somewhat lighter note, I did get a kick out of Stephen Walsh's comments. Here is a person that like Tucker only looks out for himself. Walsh is a slumlord, and that is all he is! He does not care how his rental units impact the neighborhood they're in as long as he can make a quick buck! He is only one of many in the City.
The City needs more people like the Rosenbergs, people who truly care about the City and show it through their actions!
What about the rest of the City, Mayor? Oh yeah, not until it impacts you directly! What a joke!
