Annapolis Mayor Ellen Moyer said the city?s housing authority is not spending enough on safety and wants the city to take over police patrols to provide better protection.
“We have continually been berated by them for not helping them, yet of a $400,000 public safety fund, they?ve only spent $137,000,” Moyer said. “And yet they demand more from us.”
Moyer wants to pull $200,000 in grant funding the city provides aimed at policing the 10 communities in the Annapolis Housing Authority, a federally chartered group that runs low-income housing. The authority matches the amount as well, totaling $400,000.
The money would instead be used by the city to install security cameras, a police substation, undercover police officers and a community service program.
“I?ve been riding around with the police at night and I know those security cameras in some of the subsidized housing [are] working quite well,” said City Alderman Samuel Shropshire, D-Ward 7.
But these initiatives are nothing new to the housing authority, said Eric Brown, the authority?s director.
“We made offers to do these things on more than occasion, and we were flatly rejected,” Brown said. “And this day I don?t know why, and there were no sound reasons as to what I can see.”
Brown said the security issues are not the fault of the authority, which has had little success in hiring off-duty Annapolis police officers to patrol the streets.
“There is crime in some of our properties, but it also exists in other parts of the city,” Brown said. “When something happens in the public housing communities, there is a tendency to magnify it; and with that comes the perception of the public housing stereotype.”
Brown did not know of Moyer?s plan until an Examiner reporter contacted him Wednesday afternoon for more information. The two plan to meet in the future to discuss the issue.
