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Murder week in the housing projects
09/22/2011 8:40 AM by John M
A man with an apparent gunshot wound was found shortly before daybreak in the 1300 block of Coalter Street, near the Little Page Street intersection.
This is the 9th killing in the East End and #26 for Richmond so far in 2011. This is also the 3rd killing in the public housing projects in the East End THIS WEEK.
Who opened the floodgates?
Look at how close this is MLK Middle School!
@JD, Well, if the last comment thread is any indication, apparently it’s the “snitches” that have caused this unfortunate spree.
If this is teaching us anything it’s that the city needs to prioritize a plan to decentralize and abolish its housing projects. There are several models to follow from around the country for mixed-income developments. Get on it Richmond or the East End will go through another generation of this crap.
The Richmond Police Department is asking for the public’s help with a homicide investigation.
Maurquan D. Brown, 19, of the 300 block of Airport Drive, was found shot to death this morning in the 1300 block of Littlepage Street.
Officers were dispatched to that location after a call was received about 6:30 a.m. of shots being fired. They discovered Brown lying on the ground outside of one of the apartment buildings.
A positive identification as been made and next of kin have been notified.
Forensics investigators have processed the crime scene and detectives are canvassing the area asking residents what they may have seen or heard.
Anyone with information about this incident is asked to call Crime Stoppers at 780-1000 or text Crime Stoppers at 274637, using the key word “ITip” followed by your tip. Both methods are anonymous.
Apparently a few people woke up this week and forgot it’s not 1994 anymore.
I’ll be keeping the families and friends in my prayers. No matter how often it happens, it’s still a tragedy when a life is taken.
http://www.wric.com/story/15524709/teen-shot-killed-in-mosby-court
Wouldn’t that actually be 11 murders this year in our area? Regardless of what the RPD classifies them as, the other two that got removed on technicality being a “manslaughter” and “death investigation” were pretty clearly the same type of killings.
Are there any lawyers reading this blog?
I wonder whether we as neighboring residents would have standing to sue RRHA for maintaining the housing projects as a public nuisance? We can prove they have knowledge of the social ills and danger of concentrated poverty …. but instead of tearing them down and redeveloping them, they take Stimulus money to refresh them. The damage the projects do to innocent residents and neighbors outside the projects is easy to quantify.
What we need to do is find a victim of crime that clearly stems from violence bred in the housing projects and have them be the named plaintiff. The plaintiff would preferably be a housing project resident or someone just alongside. I’d pay to support those legal fees and I know many others who would too.
Any ambitious lawyer takers out there?
@wrs you couldn’t be more correct. Consolidating all the public housing into one spot creates a NEVER ending cycle of poor conditions and subsequent violence. Those who live there have little to no vested interest in their neighborhood and more importantly no way to improve it on their own. It takes pride in your community and a vision and hope for the future to make it better. Depressing physical environments, especially those that appear permanent and that cannot be changed make for depressed people. Let’s get rid of these concentrated projects, spread out the units through out the city and let the residents pay rent towards owning the apartments….then there’s a vested interest, and hope for improving their environment. Oh and maybe, juuuuuust maybe not having them all crammed into one spot will put a damper on the violence. It’s not rocket science City of Richmond! These projects create a never ending cycle of poverty with NO hope for improvement. There are so many examples of low income neighborhoods (traditional ones where people owned their homes) that are great places to live and were improved by long time residents working their butts off. But why, they’re poor?? It has nothing to do with income and everything to do with pride…
@3&9 i hear ya. but unfortunately, mayor jonz and the marsh machine have a vested interest in keeping the east end down…and that means keeping the projects on this side of town, fuevah (or atleast as long as they’re in power.)
have you ever sat in a meeting with leadership of rrha, economic/community development, and city admin? lord have mercy, it’s atrocious. you’d be shocked by the giant sucking sound caused by the vacuum where their brains should be.
hizzonor jonz has succeeded in populating city hall with a bunch of over-paid know-nothings with no imagination or guts to really do the right thing. rva will continue to be in this downward spiral of leadership (i.e., lack there of) till marsh/jonz are defeated.
Who knew thugs read or listened to the news… couldn’t let us have a low rate… 🙁
#3, #9, and #10,
Sadly, this will never change as long as the city leaders remain the same. The government in this city is just as #10 said and is very sad indeed.
I never thought I would say this but I’m glad to be moving to another area soon. While I will miss my neighbors terribly, this kind of shit I can do without.
Hey, guys! The mayor’s getting us a new jail in the East end so what’s all the fussing about? The situation in our neighborhood’s reminiscent of the plot in Luc Besson’s movie “Banlieue 13″…but without the heroes or the good stunts. When the wall construction begins it’s time to run: “In 2010 social problems such as violence, drugs …have overrun the poorer suburbs of Paris….”
Houdon, I feel much the same way as you do as far as the schools go. Instead of building a new middle school NOT in the projects, they want to refurbish the existing school. No one wants their 11 year old to go to school in the projects! Not even the people in the projects. I would rather my money and Federal be spent relocating the school to a safer area.
I feel particularly bad for Church Hill, a great neighborhood that can never be up to its potential since it is directly accessible to mosby/fairfield etc… Its a shame, there are so many good people, incredible homes, but so long as these projects remain so close by, it will always have problems. When i was shopping for my first City home, looking for that special historic charm and lively neighborhood, it was this very reason why I did not choose CH…even though the physical homes on my short list were more desirable. Years later i am raising young kids and am happy about walking my historic neighborhood at night…its not crime free, but some level of petty theft or drunken shananigans should be expected…the thug murder nature that wanders around the mosby/fairfield area is frightening. CH residents should be fired up about this, as should all Richmond residents.
Fairfield and Mosby are not representative of Church Hill. The heart of CH (N. 25th Street/E. Broad Street/Chimbo) is a fine place to live. The fringes of the neighborhood generally experience more crime…the same is true in The Fan.
I noted several comments regarding the decentralization of public housing units and blame on RRHA for harboring criminals. Many people have come to the conclusion that the project apartment complexes must be destroyed and revitalized as mixed use/ mixed income neighborhoods. They are partially correct. Public housing is absolutely rife with fraud, drugs, ignorance, and more than average # of residents with criminal records. However the problem they have identified and the solution proposed is terribly wrong. The way projects are decentralized is typically via the section 8 program, which issues vouchers to welfare candidates which may then be used in market rate neighborhoods through private landlords. Take it from a professional property manager who has been shot at, attacked several times, regularly repairs bullet holes in buildings, knows most of the drug dealers in the city by first name, and even today chased a burglar out of my section 8 building – SECTION 8 VOUCHERS WILL DESTROY THE REST OF YOUR NEIGHBORHOOD!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! SECTION 8 IS LIKE INTENTIONALLY SPREADING THE CANCER. For the record, not all HCV/Section 8 tenants are horrible, just most of them….
Think that’s just scaremongering? Do you have any idea what RRHA & section 8 will pay for a 3, 4 bedroom house? It’s over $1400/ month for a 4 bedroom unit and its guaranteed money. Lots of idiot landlords have made the mistake of getting googly eyed for the RRHA money, especially in a tough real estate sales market where for sale homes are turning into rentals (like right now…). Where does that $1400+/mo. put our poor, oppressed project dwellers moving with her 5 wild ass kids and drug dealing baby daddy? TRY NEXT DOOR TO YOU. Want to see areas like south of broad look like they did in the 1970’s again? Decentralize and widen section 8, and watch white (or just middle class) flight re-occur in an amazingly short period of time. The projects keep the thugs contained!
The projects SHOULD be torn down as currently constructed. The “cuts” make them nearly unpolice-able. However they should not be rebuilt as some $503 million tax dollar (real numbers, that’s just Gilpin..) mixed income fantasy land that will last for about 5-10 years until the thug life drives the decent folk away again, but as the tallest cinderblock tower money can buy and located where its acceptable to have a 1 mile radius of destruction surrounding them, not in somebody’s neighborhood. Hyper concentration would be far more successful in reducing the burdens on the Taxpayer than a section 8 blowout. It would allow the rest of the neighborhoods in the city to heal from the public housing bomb that nuked the possibility of re-investment for a 15 block radius surrounding the things.
Despite good intentions there is no architectural solution to a black project criminal culture. The civil rights movement, desegregation, integrated schools, free housing and welfare money did not improve the standard of citizens located in the Projects, and I promise you that new siding, energy efficient windows, and roofing and moving in next door to you are definitely not going to convince the hood rats to change their lifestyle.
RRHA deals with the toughest crowd in town, and while I have no love for RRHA, I’m sure as hell glad they’re the ones putting up with the majority of our entitlement tax spending.
Wow.
I know that the correct PC response is to blast you for saying that and ignore the arguments you made but I’ll let everyone else handle that. Despite some racist stuff that doesn’t help your case, you do make some good points otherwise and your solution would be worthy of debate if you presented it better. The hyperconcentration argument does raise some questions and would make for an interesting alternative.
The downside would be that the innocent residents would be screwed over even worse than today and the cycle would be that much harder to break with no positive role models around. That said, it does spare the community from the not-so-innocent who are all too prevalent. It may also force some responsibility on the community and encourage them to stop tolerating bad behavior from their neighbors. Controlling access to the projects an printing weapons from coming in might help mitigate the risks to the innocents.
Typo in my earlier post (thank you iPhone autocorrect) – “an printing” should have been “and prohibiting”
Whatever happened to CHANGE WE CAN BELIEVE IN?
Until the sense of entitlement and victimhood is removed you will never see change. For every person who is genuinely willing to work hard there are a hundred others who are more than happy to accept handouts and whine that “the Man” is keeping them down. This attitude has been encouraged, ironically, by the very organizations who claim to want to help by claiming these people to be victims of poverty and surroundings.
#17…you are clearly a troll so I won’t feed your ignorance but to say that they have tried your little suggestion. It was called Cabrini Green. Look it up.
Trish..stop listening to Rush and actually research your misinformed opinion. Just another way we continue to criminalize poverty.
(Just, I usually find you one of the more interesting posters even if I disagree with a lot of your points. Your last post is disappointing in its lack of positive contributions to the discussion. I was hoping for better from you as you seem to have some interesting perspectives if you can stay out of the name calling mode. Just to help you realize how unhelpful posts like this are, here’s my tongue in cheek response…)
#22… since I find your perspective offensive, go google Cabrini Green (the lessons from this can be interpreted two ways).
Stop listening to Maddow and go read the news. Just more evidence of coddling criminals.
(Was that productive? Are we all now more enlightened?)
I think the age old disconnect that occurs between the two most widely held perspectives on these debates stems from the fact that one side places no value on the folks that can be helped with a break and fresh start, the other completely overlooks the fact that there are actually folks taking advantage of the system. Until people realize that there aren’t simple answers to a complex problem, nothing will improve. I don’t claim to have any simple answers of my own but I believe if we can get some diverse perspectives actually having productive discussions, we may find some complex ones.
One thing to consider is the Least Common Denominator problem with communities. A neighborhood is measured not by its most productive or positive elements but by its least. No matter how small the problem may be, people will notice the one broken down house or loud neighbor.
Part of the argument for centralizing poverty is that there are some issues that occur with greater frequency in poor populations (not that all poor are to blame by any means). If you pull those issues out of the general community, you end up with more problem free communities.
On the flip side, you have now condemned a lot of poor folks to a helpless situation by doing so. A lack of positive role models makes it very hard for future generations to have any hope of improving their lot. Many folks feel this is ok since the poor aren’t paying for what they are getting (‘beggars can’t be choosers’).
What seems to be needed is a way to segregate out the problems that would otherwise ruin a neighborhood, correct these problems and do this in a way that minimizes damage to those who could be helped.
Reply to “Property Manager:” I love that you wrote a politically incorrect, but honest post! Let’s face it Richmonders: The reason our fair city continues to have a reputation as crime infested (although thankfully it has gotten a LOT better) is because of the infamous “Courts.” It amazes me the stark contrast between the nice areas of Church Hill, and the Northern, project areas.
Drive down 25th street starting at Main Street and see how it goes from gorgeous, historic and elegant to dirty and littered, with random groups of people just hanging out on corners. The FOUR isolated “courts” are a huge stain on, not only Church Hill, but the city in general. I’m 32 years old, and NOTHING has been done in my lifetime to change that. There has been talk of getting rid of the projects for decades, but it never happens. And I agree that new siding and windows will not solve the problems.
Go to the RRHA website and look at the statistics of the various projects. You will find that over 80-percent of the residents have NO income other than government assistance. That is inexcusable, and many of my friends who lived in such projects as children will tell you that many people have no desire to ever leave that lifestyle (not having to work for one’s livelihood). I mean, why bother to look for something better when your rent is $60 dollars a month (the average rent in the courts).
We need to stop being politically correct and accept the reality that the housing projects have been abject failures for decades, and do nothing but keep people locked in a cycle of dependency and laziness. Go to the Market at Tobacco Row the day food stamps are given out to see the results of these policies.
The people of Church Hill who pay top dollar for their historic homes (or high rents for the loft apartments) need to start demanding that the city do something about this.
There’s a reason why so many restaurants do not delivery to parts of our community, and that says it all doesn’t it?
Rush the band or Rush Limbaugh? Love the former, the latter can kiss my ass.
That being said, at one time in my life I was down on my luck enough that living in a project would have been a huge step up. I was there long enough to see for myself what most of you only know about in theory–that, again, for every person who genuinely wants to improve their lot in life, to get an education or job training or just a helping hand up, there’s a hundred others trading food stamps for cash for booze and cigarettes; ignored kids with creative names going hungry and getting abused by Mom’s latest boyfriend since they’re not cute little doll babies anymore; casual and cruel violence against women–there were places I “lived” where I’d bar the door with everything I had and still slept (or tried to, it’s hard to sleep with people screaming, playing music or pounding on your door) with a baseball bat in my hand, which I had to use a couple of times because guys would try to break in my room not for money, but for booty. I was considered stuck up because I wouldn’t join in the parties, which consisted of people getting drunk and getting into fights over who was with whom. Oh–and this was in Kentucky, these were all white people. The mentality is the same. Why should you want to better yourself when you’re told nothing is ever your fault, that you’re a victim of circumstances, that you have an “illness” that makes you pound forties or smoke meth or beat women? I have seen and heard this first hand, even had such said to me. No, sorry, I didn’t have a disease. I was lazy and irresponsible and did stupid things. Once I stopped being all that, life improved immeasurably. Human beings, when offered the choice, will always take the easy route. A friend of mine is a city parole officer here in Richmond, and it’s rare that one of her clients actually learns from his/her experience and straightens up. They get in trouble again, and never do they say “I made a bad decision.” Nope–they always blame it on something or someone else. ALWAYS.
If you genuinely want help, if you genuinely want to get out of your situation and realize that it’ll take some hard work and occasionally bruised pride, I’ll be the first one there with my hand out, because I’ve been there. It does happen, there are success stories and it’s great. But it takes time, and education, and a lot of times turning your back on those who would hold you back because education and ambition scares them. You want to know who’d benefit from such help? Go to Mosby or Gilpin or Fairmount and look for the kids who get picked on. As someone once said, it’s a curse to be born intelligent in the ghetto.
Wow. Just…wow.
I’ve been “in the system” and managed to get out. While you are there you just don’t know how you can possibly survive without the “assistance”. My wake up was when we were living in an area that had 54% unemployment. I went to apply for any other assistance I could get for my family. I am married with 3 children. The worker told me we were getting everything we could at that time but “start divorce proceedings against your husband and the state will take care of you and the children including medical care for the children, until they are grown.” I was not going to divorce my husband, we packed our belongings, took the money from his last paycheck and moved as far as that money would take us. Ended up in a town that had a 7% unemployment rate and thrived. We both found good jobs and left the “system” behind. For that I am very thankful.
My cousin, who has MS, needs all the help she can get, is single, can’t get housing, has her rent increased and her food stamps decreased. Then is denied medicaid to go with her medicare for months on end, while her sister, who is a single mother (divorced her husband), is given a 2 bedroom apartment for $50.00 a month, utilities included, food stamps, a monthly income for herself and child support for her son, not to mention full medicaid for her son. She could work, but because her son has ADHD, he is considered special needs and she is allowed to stay home! WOW! I guess that is what is called working the system. Sure she needs housing for her and her son, but her sister needs housing too. One can work but chooses not to, the other one can’t, is in pain all the time and can’t even afford a place with a kitchen, all she has is a microwave, a toaster oven and a crockpot. Hmmmm…..
Good points. I have long believed that allowing the state to get involved in charity has resulted in some really poor allocations of money to folks who work the system, leaving less available for those truly in need. You can’t cure laziness with money but there are many who need our help. Let charities handle these folks so we can weed out the crap.
I also hate the fact that by trying to administer charity through bureaucracy, we have to set up rules that can often manage to simultaneously prevent deserving from getting the help they need and give to folks perfectly capable of helping themselves if they wanted. I don’t disagree that most of the time these rules are about as good as they can be but they will never beat a live person deciding. By making it all about rules, you also make it easy to game the system.
I fully believe in helping the less fortunate when life gives them bad luck. Bad decisions made are not bad luck. Your examples are great and I commend you for your motivation and values.
I currently (and unfortunately) live in Creighton Court and I despise this place!! I became sick and cant work so ended up here. Long story short, this place is pure hell on earth. These people have no self respect and no respect for others!! The so called “mothers” could care less for their children, hell, most of them are still children themselves. The bad ass children run around (unsupervised)terrorising the few good kids out here, so they can never play in peace. All day,all night, people walking around going nowhere. Pants hanging off their funky asses. Fussing, fighting eachother, loud ass music, fucking up peoples property cause they dont have shit. The “boyfriends” dont work, living off the mom’s welfare (and the guys cheating and kicking their ass) The few that do work and trying to better themselves get their shit broken into, vandalized. They stand in the fucking streets and look at u like u better not hit their ignorant asses, cause they will move when they ready. Why do they stand outside all day? Sit on the front porches drinking beer early in the morning? could go on and on, but u get the picture.
Sorry to hear that #30. You are proof that there are good decent people trapped in there. I hope things improve for you.
Thank u #31.
I’ll second James’s comment. God bless you for keeping your head high during whatever troubles you are facing. I hope things turn around for you soon.
By the way, if there is anything that I could do to help you find a way out of this hellhole, shoot me an email at sox45fan@hotmail.com. I’ve been through some rough patches in my life also and would be glad to do what I can to help get you an opportunity as you seem like someone who would appreciate and make good use of it.
Russell Lamont Johnson, 28, is a suspect in the Sept. 22 fatal shooting of Maurquan Brown in the 1300 block of Coalter Street.
Johnson is 5 feet 11 inches tall and weighs about 185 pounds. His last known address is in the 600 block of Hancock Street. He also goes by Jerrell Johnson.
Brown was found shot to death around 6:30 a.m. Sept. 22 outside an apartment building on Coalter Street.
Anyone with information about Johnson or this murder is asked to call Crime Stoppers at 780-1000 or text Crime Stoppers at 274637, using the key word “ITip” followed by your tip. Both methods are anonymous.
Richmond Police has arrested a suspect in the Sept. 22 murder of Maurquan Brown.
Russell Lamont Johnson, whom the Department listed as wanted yesterday, turned himself in at Richmond Police’s Third Precinct earlier this afternoon. He was taken into custody without incident.
Johnson, 28, is charged with murder in the Sept. 22 fatal shooting of Brown in the 1300 block of Coalter Street. Brown was found shot to death around 6:30 a.m. outside an apartment building.
Richmond Police thanks the media for publicizing Johnson as wanted and the area residents who contributed to Johnson peacefully turning himself in.