Beryl Moore walks the Parkside Village property most every day.

As the new manager of Parkside Village Apartments in North Waco, she watches for non-residents hanging out, shooting dice or causing trouble. Sometimes she has a Waco police officer at her side, and sometimes she goes it alone, approaching loiterers, asking them to leave.

“I’m not going to say I’m not scared,” Moore said. “As I’m walking, I’m praying.”

Parkside Village apartments are separated from The Villages by only a fence, but the complexes are worlds apart when it comes to crime activity and tenants' perception of the two places.

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Parkside Village manager Beryl Moore (front) and assistant manager Danielle Duffey, regularly patrol the complex, often with a police officer, to keep unwanted visitors and trouble out of the area. (Duane A. Laverty photo)

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(Duane A. Laverty photo)

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Shootings, drug deals, fights and gambling have long been a part of life at the complex at Ninth Street and Colcord Avenue. An effort is mounting to change that, but the obstacles are daunting and the tenants are doubtful that their home can ever be crime-free.

Folks in the neighborhood say they can see crime dwindling at Parkside, crediting the group effort and Moore’s attentiveness. They hope becoming part of the Waco Police Department’s crime-fighting program will make an even bigger difference.

In the meantime, when night falls, Moore goes home and doesn’t come back on the property. She admits it’s just too dangerous.

“I don’t come over here after-hours because I don’t want to get caught in something I can’t get out of,” she said.

But Parkside tenants, such as Tiffany and Jenn, say they don’t have a choice. Neither of the women will allow their real names to be used in this article, out of concern for their safety.

“They read the paper,” Tiffany said. When something criminal happens in Parkside, criminals check the paper to see what was printed and who might have talked, she said. Both women say they choose protecting their families over ratting out the bad guys. There are certain rules they follow. You never call 9-1-1, Tiffany said, because then police will have your address, so she calls the police office number, 750-7500, instead. And even then, you never use a land line. Tiffany laughs, recounting how the dispatchers will ask if they can send an officer by the apartment.

“Are you crazy?” she says.

Crime in the open

In her six years at Parkside, Jenn has seen people playing cops and robbers with real guns around the complex, while children were outside playing. She has huddled in her hallway with her three children as bullets tore through almost every one of her neighbors’ windows.

“It’s been very, very bad. Crime is a major problem there,” Waco Police Department Sgt. Jared Wallace said. “It was to a point that the department was committed that we were going to resolve things one way or another.”

It seems that 2007 was especially bad for Parkside Village, with daytime shootings, one of them right in front of a police officer on patrol. Even residents talk about how bad things were that year. That same year, three women, including Jenn, decided they had had enough and banded together to try to resolve things at Parkside. Walker Moore, community organizer at the Waco Community Development Corp., said they got a nearby “trap” house, or crack house, shut down. They also got the apartment owners to put up some additional lighting and held a school supply drive for children.

Walker Moore heaps praises on Jenn and the residents council, but Jenn dismisses it. For her, what they accomplished wasn’t enough. The other two women got fed up with the problems at Parkside and moved their families, Walker Moore said, and the council sort of died.

Cooperation with police

In 2008, some Parkside residents, Jenn included, started talking about change again.

Residents started going to Brook Oaks Neighborhood Association meetings and sharing the raw stories of what goes on inside Parkside. Neighbors listened, local ministers listened and so did Parkside Village management.

“We’ve never had this much cooperation before with Parkside management,” Walker Moore said, adding that management may never before have had such a cooperative relationship with Waco police.

Waco police are working with Parkside on its Crime-Free Multi-Housing Program certification. The volunteer program brings together police and rental property owners and managers in a three-phase program to curb crime. Managers learn how to work with police, how to recognize criminal and drug activity and about landlord/tenant law.

Sometimes there are things management can do when police can’t, Wallace said.

“We can put people in jail; they can bond out and go right back to where they were,” he said. But police can notify management that a crime has been committed, and the landlord can do something from that end. Beryl Moore said if she finds out there’s illegal activity going on at a unit or on the grounds by a resident, she will try to get them out of the apartment within three days. The management runs a credit and criminal background check on tenants when they move in and tells them there is no tolerance for illegal activities.

The second phase of the crime prevention program includes meeting standards for lighting and having three-inch screws in apartment door frames, so doors can’t be kicked in as easily. If it passes this point, the property is certified.

By the third phase, residents are brought into the program. They are encouraged to look out for each other and be smart and report things to police or the apartment manager.

“Trust is huge,” said Beryl Moore, Parkside manager. “I make the residents feel comfortable. I let the residents know you can come in and talk to me about anything.”

Jenn said Beryl Moore seems to care and treats the residents with respect.

The crime-free program has been successful for several years at The Villages, a neighboring complex on Sixth Street, Wallace said.

Only a fence separates the complexes, but listen to people talk about the two places and they sound worlds apart.

“People in Parkside view the Villages as the promised land, and people in the Villages thank their lucky stars to be in the Villages,” Walker Moore said.

Jenn said she hopes to get her family out of Parkside, even if it’s just across the fence to The Villages.

“I want to make changes, but I want to get out,” Jenn said.

Sgt. Wallace said the police effort at The Villages includes running background checks on tenants. Officers also tell Villages management every time they have to go on the property, so management is aware of any criminal activity.

“He’s being armed with information in so many different ways,” Wallace said about Villages manager, Joseph Campbell. “There isn’t anything that goes on there that’s missed.”

Beryl Moore also has a good relationship with Villages management. If she sends a loiterer packing, she’ll call Campbell and tell him to watch for the person, who may just jump the fence to the Villages.

Neighborhood interest

The neighborhood outside of Parkside’s wrought iron gates also is taking an interest in the complex.

“Our role is to bring people together to try to get this problem solved,” said Robert Jackson president of the Brook Oaks Neighborhood Association. Parkside has been on the neighborhood group’s agenda every month since January.

Jackson said a cleaned-up Parkside Village could be a boon to the neighborhood, which he said already enjoys good schools and new homes, courtesy of Waco CDC.

“A crime-free Parkside, it brings about everything,” he said.

Jackson, Walker Moore and Beryl Moore say they’re beginning to see a glimmer of hope for change at Parkside.

Walker Moore can drive the streets bordering Parkside and point out change. It’s not so much what you see, as what you don’t see. There are no people loitering around the “red wall,” a formerly red retaining wall at the apartments. Walker said that area used to be nearly a “drive-through” for drug transactions. The west corners of Ninth and Colcord, where dealers used to gather in the middle of the afternoon, also are empty.

“The drug activity has slowed down tremendously,” Beryl Moore said.

Wallace said the problems at Parkside aren’t fixed, but they are headed in the right direction.

Culture of fear

But some major obstacles remain, maybe the most intimidating being fear.

Parkside resident Tiffany can tell you about fear. The fights that break out around Parkside seem to scare Tiffany the most.

“I saw a guy jumped, and he came back with a vengeance; he came back with a gun,” she said.

Tiffany’s youngest sons, 3 and 4 years old, are constant balls of energy, moving around the dark, sparse apartment, the younger on the heels of his brother. Obsessed with wrestling, they get the couch cushions in headlocks, the three year old’s diaper peeking from beneath his jeans as he dominates and growls at a throw pillow. She worries for their well-being.

“They do this all day,” Tiffany said. “But they’ve got to do something. My kids don’t go outside.”

Jenn has come face-to-face with the kind of opposition that arises against anyone trying to stomp out the crime at Parkside. She faced down an angry crowd waiting to jump her as she went to a resident’s council meeting in 2007.

Both young women say things won’t change around Parkside unless there is more of a security presence. Because Parkside Village is divided into three sections, three security patrols are needed to cover the area, Jenn and Tiffany said.

“Until you can get security over here to enforce the no-sell policy, they’re still gonna sell (drugs),” Jenn said.

Financial troubles

Another threat to Parkside’s momentum to become crime free may be the serious financial trouble facing American Housing Foundation, the company that owns it. When company CEO Steve Sterquell committed suicide via a fiery car crash in Amarillo in April, it turned attention on the finances of his Amarillo-based company.

AHF has filed for bankruptcy and there are several lawsuits pending in federal bankruptcy court regarding either AHF or Sterquell’s family. Hearings on those cases could begin this month.

A call to Alvin Johnson, a co-developer with American Housing Foundation, was not returned.

Walker Moore said the scandal has already taken a toll on the complex. With assets frozen, Parkside management has had a harder time doing some maintenance, including fixing air conditioners.

“Our attitude has been, let’s just wait and see because we can’t control the situation,” he said.

And in the meantime, the checklist toward reaching Parkside’s crime-free multi-housing status slowly moves forward.

“I tell my residents, the problem didn’t happen overnight, so we’re not going to fix it overnight,” Beryl Moore said. “But some of the residents say they see the difference. That makes me feel good and keeps me hopeful.”

“Hope,” Tiffany said, with some question in her voice. “Sure, there’s always hope.”

wgragg@wacotrib.com

757-6901