“I’d be crazy to sit here and tell you it’s alright,” said Mary. Mary’s is just one of many stories. She says the neighborhood’s sense of security has vanished as she and many of her neighbors now live in fear.
Behind the front porch flags and blooming magnolias of a South Jackson neighborhood is a list, a long one. It starts at the corner of Lakewood Drive and Woodburn Street, to the corner of Woodburn and Woody Drive, then down to the corner of Woody and Lakewood Drive. Within that triangle of just seven streets, from March 2011 to March 2012, there’s been nearly 1,100 calls to 911.
“It’s a lot of trouble, night and day,” said one resident.
The calls range from shootings, stabbings and burglaries to fights, assaults and vandalism, not to mention various disturbances.
“It’s hard to believe it’s come to this. It’s hard to believe it,” said a resident, who only wanted to be identified as Mary.
Mary made several of those calls, one of them back in February when she returned from the grocery store and found her home had been broken into.
“It was at twelve o’clock during the day and it happened in a 30 minute period,” said Mary. “I never believed it would happen to me until it did.”
Without a security system in place, thieves went through the house taking everything from jewelry and money, to canned food and clothing.
“I felt violated. I really felt violated when I walked through the house and saw the house was upside down,” said Mary.
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