CHARLOTTE, N.C.,None — Patt Fair likes where she lives.
"I'm real comfortable here," she said. "I like my apartment."
Not so long ago, she couldn't say that about the Elmsley Grove Apartments.
[ View Larger Map ]
The apartments, which were previously the Yorktown Apartments, had gone downhill and crime had hit too close to home.
"It seemed like we had a bad wave going through and I even had my apartment broken into," Fair said.
But a year and a half ago, all that changed when the complex's owners decided to step in and take over management.
"We just realized we had a very big crime problem here on the property and we needed to take control," said Katrina Trotter.
That was in the fall of 2009. The Trotters fired their management company and began working with police to tighten up on leases and hire more off-duty officers to patrol the property.
"They've taken every recommendation we made and the results have been astounding," said Sgt. Jackie Hulsey, who oversees that area of Charlotte for the police department's Westover Division.
The results have been so astounding that police decided to make the apartments the stage for their announcement Thursday that crime had dropped across Charlotte by double digits for the first three months of the year.
Police said they'd like to see other complexes follow the formula that has worked at Elmsley Grove. Trotter said it's simply giving people a safe placed to come home to.
"I feel like we've come a long way in achieving that goal," she said.