Police, Residents, Management Work To Make Complex Safe

It may look like any other apartment complex in Charlotte, but Arbor Glen has both a secret and a miracle to share.

“It's nothing compared to what it used to be,” said resident James Byrd.

Byrd remembers the decades when what is now Arbor Glen was the notorious Dalton Village, a derelict public housing complex where drugs and crime were constant companions.

“The month I got here, it was just a real crime-ridden location,” said Officer Chris Lyon with the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department.

But in the 10 years since Lyon started patrolling the area, nearly everything has changed.

Dalton Village was torn down and built back up, and the crime rate began to plummet. The crime has dropped so drastically that this year aggravated assaults have dropped 100 percent and robberies are down 83 percent from the year before.

“Just riding through the neighborhood during the day and at night makes a lot of people feel safer and just overall deters crime,” Lyon said.

But as much as police presence has driven crime away, the actions of the people who live at Arbor Glen and the private management company that runs the complex have made a big difference, too.

The apartment managers are sticklers. They do background checks on every resident over 18 and take quick action at the first sign of trouble.

“We have zero tolerance for any criminal activity. Anything that's suspicious, we're coming in. We want to know what's going on,” said property manager Beverly Baucom.

“Do you evict people?” asked Eyewitness News reporter Jim Bradley.

“Oh, yes,” Baucom replied.

The complex even put up a fence to keep out troublemakers who'd been walking through from a nearby neighborhood.

Residents are buying in, too. They’re working with police instead of against them, which Capt. Stella Patterson said any neighborhood wanting to reduce any kind of crime should emulate.

“We feel the key for us is residents partnering with the police department, coming to us and helping us to be an advocate,” Patterson said.

Neighbors have helped build community at Arbor Glen by keeping an eye out for each other. Byrd said he's watched a peacefulness bloom there.

“I can sit out until midnight, until I decide to go in,” he said.

“You feel safe?” Bradley asked.

“Yeah, I feel safe,” he said.

And that's allowing Arbor Glen to focus on the future without its notorious past.