PORT ANGELES — Sara Lee O’Connor was fed up with the mess in Gales Addition.
For years, the Port Angeles real estate broker saw crime, code violations and “rampant” drug activity in what she described as “the lost, forgotten area of Clallam County.”
O’Connor owns two houses in the neighborhood just east of Port Angeles. She brought her concerns to the three county commissioners last month.
“You should really drive through there and see what a pathetic site it is in many respects,” O’Connor told them.
“Junk cars, garbage, lack of zoning — it’s a sad state of affairs. We should be embarrassed that in our beautiful county we have an area like that, which is not much above, in some areas, a slum area.”
Since that meeting on March 16, O’Connor’s frustration has turned into hope.
Community policing programs
She and about two dozen residents and property owners have joined a community policing program that was already in effect. It is overseen by Clallam County Sheriff’s Office and led by volunteer Block Watch Coordinator Al Camin.
“It’s been very encouraging,” O’Connor said earlier this month.
Community policing programs everywhere are helping cash-strapped law enforcement agencies by being the eyes and ears of the neighborhood.
The Gales Addition group meets regularly, communicates by e-mail and reports suspicious activity to the sheriff’s office.
The idea is to organize and educate the neighborhood and provide officers with specific information to help them zero in on crime and code violations.
“I don’t think that most people realize what a shortage there is in the sheriff’s department when you consider how large the county is,” O’Connor said, after meeting with county officials and joining the Gales Addition Community Oriented Policing program.
“It’s a big area they have to cover, and there really aren’t enough officers to handle all of it.”
Clallam County Sheriff Bill Benedict said neighborhood watches have already paid off in Clallam County. Crime is down and code compliance is up in places like Joyce and the West End.
County-led volunteer cleanup efforts have removed about 4,000 junk cars countywide since the crime watch program started when Benedict took office three years ago.
Making a difference
“Everywhere we’ve applied this, it’s made a huge difference,” Camin said.
Commissioner Mike Doherty said the community policing programs — composed of about 50 volunteers — have been effective in cracking down on nuisances properties, mostly on the West End of Clallam County.
In Gales Addition, where residents now have the option of hooking into a sewer line that extends through the East Port Angeles Urban Growth Area, community action is getting results through voluntary compliance.
“The progress we have made there is huge,” Benedict said.
Community policing in Gales Addition has slowly expanded since it started three years ago. Camin said the recent surge in neighborhood interest will only help.
“Now and then we’ll be going out, walking around and knocking on doors to get more people involved,” Camin said.
“Once we get communication with residents, we establish patterns.”
Camin described a “broken window theory” of rural areas where property rights and individual freedom trump county ordinances and codes.
It’s basically a snowball effect, he said, where one abandoned vehicle with a broken window leads to more junks cars and trash.
“Pretty soon there’s another broken window, then doors are gone,” Camin said.
“It becomes a magnet.”
Benedict said Community Oriented Policing is effective because it’s not a quick fix — it sets a pattern for the long term.
“You need to change people’s behaviors,” he said.
Neighborhood watches and neighborhood cleanups efforts are not funded by the taxpayer.
Owner’s problems
O’Connor had squatters living in and using her utilities at one of her Gales Addition houses. She said she couldn’t kick them out because of renter’s rights and government bureaucracy.
While she’s encouraged by the community policing program, O’Connor said, Gales Addition still has a long way to go.
“I intend to notify all of the real estate people and all the rental management companies and give the names of each of these people who have been really terrible renters,” said O’Connor, who owns Bell Hill Realty.
Another property in Gales Addition caused the county to rethink how it enforces codes.
The heads of several departments last week proposed a nuisance abatement process that would help the county enforce its codes where dilapidated properties are causing public health risks.
In rare cases where voluntary compliance doesn’t work — and a property is polluting the groundwater, for example — a nuisance abatement committee would recommend an enforceable cleanup to the Board of Health and Board of County Commissioners.
After a public hearing, the commissions could start an abatement process that could result in a visit from a sheriff’s deputy and a lawsuit.
Camin said proponents of the abatement strategy are not looking for money or trying to extend the arm of government.
“What we’re after is results,” Camin said.
The commissioners took no action on the proposal in an April 5 work session, and it has not been on the agenda since.
Benedict said Gales Addition isn’t as bad as some make it out to be.
“To me, one of the biggest problems with Gales Addition is that there are a large number of absentee land owners who are renting their property out to people who are of somewhat low economic status,” said Benedict, after O’Connor made her pitch to the commissioners last month.
He said the county is aware of small-scale drug dealers living in Gales Addition but said the drug dealing is not widespread there.
Suspicious activity in unincorporated Clallam County can be reported to the Sheriff’s Office on the neighborhood watch Web site at http://crimenet1.olypen.com/cnmaster-c/crimenet.php.
O’Connor hopes that community policing in Gales Addition will expand to the point that there’s a member on every block of every street.
“I’m hoping this is the beginning,” she said.
“We want this to be a beautiful, safe place in which to live.”
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Reporter Rob Ollikainen can be reached at 360-417-3537 or at rob.ollikainen@peninsuladailynews.com.
