Crime Scene Victimized By Lawbreakers, Edgecliff Neighborhood Organizes Resistance

It took a 9-year-old with a meat cleaver just minutes to break every window in Roy Zeller’s beloved antique Austin Healey. Shattered glass - and dreams - lay scattered on the garage floor when Josie Zeller arrived home that afternoon. The boy was still there, banging on the car her elderly husband had worked so hard to restore. Their home of 42 years had been spray-painted inside and out.

The Zellers had become statistics.

Crime statistics are grim in the Valley’s Edgecliff neighborhood, located south of Sprague Avenue between Eastern and Park roads. In an area smaller than one square mile, burglars have hit 75 homes, churches and businesses since April of 1996. Juvenile and drug crimes are on the rise. The neighborhood is deteriorating.

But with a $140,000 federal grant - and lots of community involvement - the Spokane County Sheriff’s Department hopes to turn things around in Edgecliff.

With the help of Washington State University, the Sheriff’s Department will spend about four months analyzing the neighborhood, its residents and its crime problems. After completing a scientific study of residents’ crime concerns, the Sheriff’s Department will use the results to prioritize its crime-fighting efforts.

Instead of focusing on specific crimes and individual crime reports, detectives will take an overall look at restoring the neighborhood, which has been deteriorating for several years.

The grant money will be used to hire a deputy county prosecutor to work directly in the neighborhood. It will buy computer equipment and software to allow better tracking of crime there. And some of it will be used, one year from now, to evaluate whether the effort has succeeded in reducing crime and fear in Edgecliff.

The pilot project will be based in the SCOPE Edgecliff station, and will use the help of SCOPE volunteers. Neighborhood residents will tell the Sheriff’s Department what crimes to focus its efforts on.

Residents will also participate in the community study and final evaluation.

If the Edgecliff effort is successful, the program could be implemented throughout Spokane County. The Valley has several other SCOPE stations, some with detectives stationed in them. But none has yet made as comprehensive an effort to study a neighborhood and solve its overall crime problems.

“I think it’s the greatest change there ever was,” said Bob Jessie, who volunteers with Josie Zeller at the Edgecliff SCOPE station. “It’s a good community here and we want to get it back to where it was.”

When the Sheriff’s Department applied for the $140,000 federal community policing grant, it targeted Edgecliff because of its serious burglary problem and visible neighborhood deterioration. Edgecliff is a neighborhood in decline, but it still has a good chance of being cleaned up, said Det. Steve Barbieri, who works out of the SCOPE Edgecliff station at 7206 E. First.

Rows of modest houses, once neat and tidy, have slowly begun to go downhill. Weeds are growing up and fences falling down. Yards are cluttered with old cars and furniture. Residents talk casually about suspected drug houses.

“It just looks junky. Not every place, but a lot of yards are just jam-packed with junk,” said Jessie, who patrols the neighborhood with other volunteers, paints over graffiti and collects fingerprints on cars that have been prowled.

A deteriorating neighborhood attracts crime, said Ricky Gutierrez, a researcher with WSU’s Institute for Community Oriented Policing. Crime then further deteriorates the neighborhood.

With Gutierrez’s assistance, Barbieri has launched a study of the neighborhood’s problems and priorities.

With the help of volunteers, Barbieri and Gutierrez recently hand-delivered 500 neighborhood surveys to Edgecliff households. The 9-page questionnaire asked residents what crimes they’re most concerned about, which they’ve been victims of themselves, and how they feel about local law enforcement. So far, traffic, unruly youth, burglaries and physical decay have found way their to the top of the list.

Crime victims are the next focus. Barbieri and Gutierrez will interview about 100 of them from Edgecliff, looking for connections and clues about why they were victimized. They’ll also interview convicted criminals. They want to find out why the criminals targeted Edgecliff and certain residents residing there.

Using the information, Barbieri will work with the community to find and implement crime-fighting solutions. It could be anything from installing lights in Edgecliff Park to bugging property owners to clean up their yards.

It’s not a traditional approach, said sheriff’s Capt. Doug Silver. But, he said, the status quo just hasn’t worked.

The goals are numerous. The Sheriff’s Department wants to reduce residential burglaries by 40 percent the first year, and 60 percent the second. It wants to clean up the neighborhood and restore pride. Officials also want to help residents feel safer, and more connected to each other.

Barbieri hopes to get 70 percent of Edgecliff households involved in a block watch or other crime-reduction program by the end of next year. He wants to make the SCOPE station a neighborhood gathering place where people stop to share information, discuss concerns and report crimes.

Ironically, it was crime that gave Edgecliff its SCOPE station. The small grey house had been a drug-seized property. Volunteers ripped out the dirty carpets, replaced the windows and doors and sandblasted off the old, pink paint.

Rebuilding the house was a big job, but restoring the Edgecliff neighborhood will be an even bigger challenge.

Unless the community bands together, officials say, Edgecliff isn’t likely to quell its crime problem.

“It’s at a point where it can be turned around,” said Silver, who hopes to see this comprehensive approach to crime-fighting succeed, and be repeated throughout the county.

“I think it’s very exciting,” Silver said. “This is what law enforcement is going to be in the future.”

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: 2 Photos (1 Color)

MEMO: This sidebar appeared with the story: Help wanted SCOPE Edgecliff is in need of more volunteers to help clean up the neighborhood and reduce crime. Anyone interested can stop by the SCOPE Edgecliff station, 7206 E. First, or call 891-7559.