‘STAY IN THE HOUSE’ Reed Street batteries and burglaries raise crime numbers (w/documents)
Editor’s Note: Last year, The Red & Black began compiling crime data to create an online crime map. For this semester-long Tuesday series we took that crime data and found 10 of the more crime-ridden residential streets in Athens-Clarke County. With Jan. 1 as our starting date, we tallied the crimes on the streets of the University’s home county to create our list. We continue with Reed and Firewood streets.
Quamesha Shack doesn’t leave her house much.
Outside her house, after all, are two streets that have been the sites of at least 55 crimes since January.
“I know there’s a big crime rate,” Shack, 31, said, “but I knew if I just stayed to myself and don’t try to get involved in this and that, I knew I’d be OK.”
Larry Gray, a resident of Reed Street, said rocks have been thrown at his house, but it hasn’t been broken into. He said he feels safe overall. Photo by WES BLANKENSHIP
The crime rate is due primarily to battery and burglary — there are 17 battery-related and 14 burglary-related charges on Reed and Firewood streets, located off Lexington Road near Wal-Mart.
Shack said she’s heard about robberies and break-ins around the neighborhood, though she hasn’t been a victim since moving to Reed Street in February.
One resident of an adjoining cul-de-sac was not as fortunate.
The Reed Court residence of Deantwone Tabias McDowell was burglarized Oct. 2 when he wasn’t home.
The burglar made off with McDowell’s Playstation 3, Xbox 360, cell phone and some cash — all worth more than $600.
Reed Street resident Larry Gray, 60, is a maintenance worker for 10 area homes.
He said his neighbor’s house was burglarized, but neighborhood criminals have given him a break because they know him and think twice about messing with him.
“I’m that big, tall, long-haired, hippie-lookin’ dude,” he said.
But when he moved there a few years ago, his home was christened with flying rocks, he said.
Gray said those stones were thrown at his house because he is a white man in a black neighborhood.
He said about eight months ago, neighborhood boys as young as 8 years old tore shingles off his roof.
But he feels safe overall. He said his house has never been broken into.
“Knock on wood,” he added.
Quamesha Shack, a Reed Street resident, said she keeps to herself and doesn’t leave her house much. She said she hasn’t been a crime victim. WES BLANKENSHIP Photos from Crime Streets: Reed Street Photo by Wes Blankenship
Plus, he’s got a pit bull out back.
Thursday afternoon, a police car drove down Reed Street.
Young women chatted outside, men congregated across the street and young children crowded around adults while they walked the intersection of Reed and Firewood.
That intersection was the site of an aggravated assault in July.
Jermaine Steven Fortson, 29, said on the night of July 10 he argued with a man, and the man cut him with a knife.
The officer who wrote the incident report said he saw a laceration under Fortson’s armpit.
Athens-Clarke County Police Lt. Mike McKeel said increases in crime usually occur in areas of low socioeconomic living conditions such as Reed and Firewood.
McKeel, who investigates property crimes, said the streets’ crimes of theft and burglary could be attributed to something basic: “low morals.”
“If you don’t care about the people you live around or anybody else, probably the only way to get something is to steal it,” he said.
Shack said she worries about her four young children.
“At the same time I teach them to stay away from certain people, bad crowds, so they know better than that,” she said.
But she tries not to worry too much. Nothing bad has happened to her on Reed Street.
“I feel it’s much better,” she said, “for me to stay in the house than come and communicate with anybody else.”
