Crime Scene Intensification

Fairmount residents say the violence continues.

by Dan Keashen

Though police say there has not been a statistically substantial spike in violent crime in Fairmount of late, residents remain on edge in the wake of several incidents. The neighborhood civic association has recently posted an advisory and mobilized its town watch to assist police.

In September, according to the Fairmount Civic Association's Web site, "some Fairmount neighbors have been assaulted in the street or sitting on their stoop, there was a purse snatching, and some neighbors were robbed." The group says police have made some headway in addressing the "upsurge in crime." Ninth District police Capt. Dennis Cullen says there have been arrests in several cases, including the spate of armed robberies committed by bicycling assailants [News, "Brake in the Case," Dan Keashen, Sept. 2, 2004]. Still, others have gone unsolved, or unreported.

Tom Barker, an Art Museum Restaurant delivery man, says he was recently called to an abandoned house near 29th and Harper streets where he noticed two men, one of whom was armed, approach from between parked cars. Barker, who didn't report the incident, sped off before anything happened. The pair—two black men in their late teens, one wearing a gray sweatsuit and the other a long white T-shirt with dark blue baggy jeans—matched the description of those who approached R.B. Buckley as he walked home with a friend from the American Legion Post 85 at Bucknell and Brown streets around 9 p.m. Sept. 21.

"We were rushed by one of the men and he thought he was going to strong-arm us," says Buckley, who didn't contact police after the confrontation. "We started making all kind of noise and some lights came on. That scared [them] away."

One week earlier, a woman in her early 30s was attacked while unloading groceries at her apartment near Ringgold and Brown streets. She reports that a black man in his late teens sneaked out from between two parked cars and held a gun to her back and tried to force her to go to an ATM machine. She says that the man fled after she screamed for help. These incidents come on the heels of a Sept. 16 murder at 19th and Brown streets, the district's second homicide of the year which, Cullen says, "does not typify our crime in the area."

"The past couple of years when it's happened, the community watch has stepped up and scared off these guys," says a longtime local who wished to remain nameless. "But lately, it seems the muggings and stuff seem to be on the rise."