Anyone who thought that rejuvenating Baltimore County's older neighborhoods would be easy should consider places like the Villages of Tall Trees in Essex.
For the first 11 months of 1994, 36 percent of all drug arrests in the Essex police precinct were made in the apartment complex near Eastern Boulevard and Back River Neck Road, Capt. James W. Johnson, the precinct commander, told a committee of high-ranking county officials, planners and citizens yesterday.
Essex precinct contains 65,000 people, and ranges from Back River to Harford County and from U.S. 40 to the Chesapeake Bay.
But police answer 4,000 calls a year from Tall Trees, Captain Johnson said. "We're in there constantly."
Add nearby Riverdale Village and Kingsley Park, also older apartment complexes, and you account for 55 percent of the precinct's drug arrests, Captain Johnson said.
The crime and decay at Tall Trees have come despite an intense effort by county agencies, judges and some of the more than 40 landlords in the 108-building complex to stop drug dealing and prostitution.
For instance, the police helped obtain $200,000 in federal block grant money to buy one building for conversion into a community center that's to open in June. They have discouraged businesses such as amusement arcades from locating nearby, repeatedly have swept the complex for illegally registered or uninsured vehicles, arrested people for trespassing and encouraged landlords to hire private security.
And now the county's developing Community Conservation team is gearing up for action, with Eastside coordinator Mary Emerick preparing to open an office in the basement of the Essex Library in the nearby Middlesex Shopping Center.
The police also want fencing erected within Tall Trees to control foot traffic and perhaps close Rickenbacker Road as a through street to keep outside drug and sex customers from cruising. Lately, officers have been posing as dealers to catch drug buyers and scare them off.
Yesterday's monthly meeting in Towson of the county's nTC Strategic Management Group included County Administrative Officer Merreen E. Kelly; Jennifer Macek, County Executive C. A. Dutch Ruppersberger III's executive secretary; and directors of public works, fire, health, community development and planning. The group is laying groundwork for a top county priority -- preventing older areas from succumbing to blight.
They all got details of the kind of intractable problems that a few poorly maintained, low-rent sections can create for a basically stable area like Essex-Middle River.
Senior planner Jack Dillon said the homeowning population in Essex-Middle River is aging, meaning that well-maintained homes could become rental units in greater numbers over the next few years. The area is struggling from the loss of high-paying industrial jobs and the flight of young middle-class families to White Marsh and Harford County.
At Mars Estates Elementary School, six of every 10 children who start the school year are gone by June, Mr. Dillon said.
With rents as low as $225 a month at Tall Trees and some landlords willing to accept partial payments, the apartments in the 40-year-old complex don't always attract the best tenants. Police sometimes find that a low-level drug dealer or prostitute kicked out of one Tall Trees building just moves on to another in the complex.
However, all problems at Tall Trees are not from residents. In fact, only 24 percent of people arrested there from January 1994 to November were residents, Captain Johnson said.
During one recent eight-hour period, he said, only six of 106 vehicles surveyed in Tall Trees were registered to people who live there.
And to add to the other problems, Captain Johnson said that lately Essex has gotten a reputation among drug users for "burners" -- fake crack cocaine substituted for the real thing. Customers cheated that way represent a greater potential for violence, he said.
Despite the woes of Tall Trees, Tom Meredith, who owns 19 buildings in the complex, sees some signs of things "getting better," not worse.
A first offender arrested for trespassing recently was sentenced to 30 days by a judge who was aware of the situation, Mr. Meredith said.
Tall Trees owners have a five-member board of directors to try to coordinate their efforts, he said, and identification cards soon will be issued to residents. The police proposal of one-way streets to cut down on cruising is a good idea, he said.
"Right now the word is out," Mr. Meredith said. "The hammer is down. It's a place to end up in jail."