Young men in tricked-out cars hard-stare as they creep by, and the neighborhood’s more curious residents walk to their fences to get a fix on this interloper who provides a break in their routine.
Like many neighborhoods in Albany, the routine for folks around Riley, Mitchell, Rood and Frotscher streets includes, residents say, home invasions, robbery, arson, prostitution and drugs ... lots of drugs.
Perkins, who works for a local paint contractor and for the Dougherty County School System, is a bona fide hero, having pulled a man from the house next door that was engulfed in flames. The narrative of an Albany Fire Department incident report says Perkins dragged the resident from the house to safety and administered CPR until EMS arrived.
The report also says that the fire was started intentionally.
Not long after that incident, a group of 10 or so young people tried to break in on Perkins and his wife Gloria. It was the second time their home had been hit, and Perkins said one of the culprits was a “nine-months pregnant girl” that he had given baby formula to days before.
“I came in on them and they thought I had a gun,” Perkins said. “I didn’t tell them any different, but that’s why I think they left without any trouble.”
That same night, next-door neighbor Machele Stice says, would-be intruders banged on the side of her house. She called her ex-husband to make sure it wasn’t him, but that was as far as the incident went.
“I guess my dogs did their job,” Stice says, indicating two fierce canines who bark and growl as visitors approach.
A couple of blocks over in the racially mixed neighborhood, Michael Holmes tells a visitor how would-be thieves tried to take a four-wheeler from his fenced-in backyard, and his mother, Florence Holmes, describes watching “dope dealers wait on the corners where the kids get off the bus so they can sell their drugs to the school kids.”
Stice says, and Michael Holmes later concurs, that “there’s shooting around here at all hours of the night.” Stice, who has 4- and 5-year-old children, has lived in the neighborhood “off and on since I was a toddler,” and the Holmes family moved in “around 1978.”
Perkins has not been on Riley as long as some of his neighbors, but he has an idea why the plagues of urban living have started to multiply in the neighborhood.
“It all starts up there at the Grand Motel,” Perkins says, indicating the seedy Radium Springs establishment whose better days are long past. “There’s people up there who are dope dealers and there are prostitutes trying to get some of that dope money.
“People who need money to give to the dealers or the prostitutes come down into our neighborhood and try to take our stuff to sell.”
Genny Bedel, who manages the Grand, speaks only broken English. He strains to understand the questions of a visitor.
“We don’t have that here ... no drugs, no prostitutes,” he says. “We have no problems here. If we do, police come.”
Leaving the motel around noon shortly after talking with Bedel, a Herald reporter and photographer notice a young girl waving down a vehicle as it enters the narrow strip that fronts the various bungalows of the motel complex.
Maj. Derrell Smith with the Albany-Dougherty Drug Unit confirms that his officers have worked a number of cases that originated at the Grand, but he says problems there “have not been insurmountable.”
“We’ve seen some things going on there, but that’s not really considered one of our hot spots,” Smith says. “If we get complaints, though, we’ll increase surveillance and maybe do some buys in the area. If we see a need, we’ll ramp up our efforts there.”
City Manager Alfred Lott reiterates Smith’s assessment.
“When citizens come to us with these kinds of complaints, we’ll focus a tactical unit in the neighborhood,” he says. “These are the kinds of things we want out of our neighborhoods.”
Perkins said he’s taken his and his neighbors’ complaints to the local NAACP chapter, and together they’ve put in calls to City Commissioner Jon Howard.
“I tried to talk with the people down at the hotel, to ask them not to bring these kinds of people into our neighborhood, but they basically said they don’t care,” Perkins said. “I was trying to let the owner know what was going on in his establishment, and they took a no trespassing warrant out against me.”
Residents say local law enforcement has usually responded to their calls when problems arise, but they worry that there is not a greater police presence.
“The drug task force says it’s watching our neighborhood, but they’ve been saying that for the last two years, and I haven’t seen any change,” Florence Holmes says. “The dealers sell the dope openly and they smoke it out on their front porches.
“I feel really bad for the kids who live in this neighborhood. People ride through here and never even slow down for the stop signs, and the kids aren’t safe in the streets. My son D.J. has muscular dystrophy, and some of these thugs came and pushed him out of his wheelchair. I filed a police report, and they said D.J. had no right to be out there on the streets.”
The question is asked around: What do you do in a situation like this?
“My wife and I are planning to move,” Perkins says. “She doesn’t feel safe being home alone while I’m working nights, and I hate leaving her there.”
Michael Holmes is also moving, but his mother defiantly says she’s staying put.
“I look at the things going on in this neighborhood and it makes me sick,” she says. “There’s crack girls trying to wave people down at all hours, all kinds of dope and dope dealers up there in that motel. But this has been my home for a long time. I paid for it, and I’m going to stay put.”
T.J. Williams has wandered by and he walks up to add his input as his neighbors ponder the visitor’s query.
“Those folks who come into our neighborhood need to know that we take care of each other down here,” he says ominously. “They need to be told that if they think they’re going to break in and steal our stuff, we’ll shoot first and ask questions later.”
