James W. Rouse's planned community of Columbia, by most accounts, is a vision of upscale order -- a place where the streets and neighborhoods are named with Emily Dickinson or Henry Wadsworth Longfellow in mind, and $200,000 houses come complete with meticulously mowed lawns.
Less than a mile, though, from the 18-hole Hobbit's Glen Golf Course, the site of a prestigious PGA Seniors tournament this summer, is a different kind of Columbia -- a place where, police say, drugs are regularly sold and crime is commonplace.
Here, one weekend last month, a 17-year-old boy was robbed of $100 and nearly shot to death on a footpath near the 5400 block of Harpers Farm Road; 24 hours later, a 38-year-old man was shot twice, in the arm and chest, just a block and a half away.
In the Village of Harper's Choice, the two shootings -- unusual in a county that has had just three homicides this year -- mark a heating up of what has become a simmering problem, largely unnoticed elsewhere in Columbia. Recent police statistics show that Harper's Choice has become one of the most crime-stricken villages in Rouse's 31-year-old planned community.
From January to June, police data show, Harper's Choice was the village with the most calls for drug violations, 59; break-ins, 32; disorderly conduct, 195; noise, 75; intoxication, 14; liquor violations, 24; and robberies, eight.
The 59 drug complaints was just six less than in all of last year.
By contrast, the newest of the 10 villages, River Hill, which is less populous, had 53 calls for service between January and June -- for all categories combined.
Crime in Columbia, or even Howard County, hardly compares with that of Baltimore. But what's at stake in Columbia, some residents say, is not just the safety of those who live there. It's the ideal of Rouse's planned community itself. Columbia, which has quickly grown to nearly 90,000 residents, was supposed to be a self-contained suburban hamlet, a kind of real-life Mayberry.
'A sea change'
"I think there's been a sea change over the last several years" concerning Rouse's vision, said Tom Snyder, vice chairman of the Long Reach Village Board. "Suddenly, there has been this explosion into Columbia of people from much worse situations."
The two suspects arrested in connection with the shootings have criminal records. One, 21-year-old Maurice Green, was given a two-year suspended sentence in 1995 for drug possession. The other, 18-year-old Robert Joseph Manning, has been charged with drug violations; his trial is scheduled in January. Green has an address in Baltimore; Manning had an address in Baltimore until recently.
Howard County Police Chief Wayne Livesay acknowledges that the ostensibly idyllic community, about halfway between Baltimore and Washington, has drug connections to both cities.
Police and community officials say they have taken steps in Harper's Choice to address the problem of crime, including loitering and burglary, particularly in the village center.
Howard County State's Attorney Marna McLendon has a new campaign commercial touting her efforts to deal with "vandalism and other crimes" in Harper's Choice and neighboring Wilde Lake village.
"We're working very hard on this," said Nicki Stenzler, chair of the Harper's Choice Village Board.
Asked whether police should do more, Capt. Mike Kessler, the Southern District commander, replied, "We're doing all we can."
'Nice and quiet'
Gary Blake, a 33-year-old resident of Fall River Terrace apartments in the 5500 block of Harpers Farm Road, near where the second shooting took place, doesn't think that's the case.
He moved to Columbia from Los Angeles about two years ago because his cousin, who lives in Ellicott City, told him the community was "nice and quiet."
For him, it has been neither.
More than a month before the shooting, on Aug. 15, according to court documents, Blake was hit over the head from behind with a bottle and beaten unconscious by as many as 15 people after an argument outside his front door. Although few in the neighborhood would talk to police for fear of retaliation, one witness later said she heard one of the subjects say, "We killed that [expletive] from L.A."
The owner and manager of Fall River Terrace, the Columbia Housing Corp., went door-to-door with police Sept. 3 to distribute fliers addressing residents' complaints about loiterers, among other things, a few weeks after the beating.
Eighteen days later, just outside the complex, John Gordon Jackson, 38, of Harper's Choice was shot and nearly died.
'Not the first time'
Carole MacPhee, executive director for the nonprofit housing company, said she has no plans to take similar action in response to the recent violence.
"This is not the first time there has been a shooting on or around our properties," she said. "I'm not going to continue going door-to-door for everything that happens. What else would I want to do [for residents] at this point? Scare them?"
Some in the surrounding neighborhoods, several blocks from the Harper's Choice Village Center, are already scared. One resident of Abbott House, a 100-unit subsidized housing high-rise on Cedar Lane a few blocks from where the 17-year-old was shot, said she has become used to the sound of gunfire and makes sure no one is in the hall before taking out the trash.
A few years ago, said the resident, who asked not to be identified, she observed a drug deal in the lobby, before undercover police conducted drug raids there and management changed.
Abbott House has had at least 12 evictions -- for offenses including drug violations and disorderly conduct -- in the past 18 months.
4 The crime problem in Harper's Choice is not new.
"We've always received complaints about street-level drug dealing in the Harpers Farm Road area," said Sgt. Morris Carroll, a police spokesman. The recent violence "just heightens your awareness of the problem."
Some residents suggest that the pockets of crime may be linked to the low-income housing, which is more concentrated in Harper's Choice than any village in Colum- bia and was an integral part of Rouse's vision for a community with residents of all incomes.
The connection between crime and low-income housing is "not politically correct," said Snyder of Long Reach village, the only community in Howard County to participate in the state's anti-crime "hot spot" program. "Unfortunately, I think it's statistically correct."
Harper's Choice has nearly a quarter of Columbia's subsidized-housing units, with 404, according to the Howard County Department of Housing and Community Development's 1996 Rental Housing Survey.
The suspect in the second shooting, Manning, had been staying at Abbott House with his teen-age girlfriend and their 9-month-old daughter, though management had banned him from the property in April for several alleged violations. Manning was arrested after the ban and charged with trespassing. His girlfriend's family has been asked to leave.
Just east of the village center in an area that includes the site of Blake's beating and both recent shootings, new police statistics show that drug-related calls nearly doubled, from 35 to 61, from September 1997 to last month. This higher-crime area extends east to the border with Wilde Lake, north to Route 108 and south to Little Patuxent Parkway, and includes or is close to the village's subsidized housing.
Police say the increase may be because they have stepped up patrols there. Anywhere from one to 10 extra officers, working overtime, have been patrolling Harper's Choice during the last few months. "Will it sustain over time?" said Livesay. "That depends."
Stenzler, the Harper's Choice Village Board chair, dismissed the notion that low-income housing has attracted crime. So, too, did MacPhee, executive director of Columbia Housing Corp., which runs three subsidized-housing complexes in Harper's Choice and two in Wilde Lake.
"Ninety-nine percent of the folks living there are just trying to get by," she said. Her properties, MacPhee added, are unfairly "getting the stigma."
Earlier this year, county police and the national Community Policing Consortium chose Harper's Choice as a model community for a new policing effort. Several dozen village residents met in June for a two-day symposium, attended by the police chief, at which they decided to focus on "quality of life" issues in the village center -- the most public face of Harper's Choice.
Since that meeting, four work groups made up of residents, officers and community officials -- including one group called "Image, Perceptions and Environment" -- have tried to establish a "zero tolerance" policy for suspect or criminal behavior in the village center. But work remains to be done: About 1 a.m. Monday, a 24-year-old man pulled a gun on an acquaintance in the village center and tried to rob him, according to police.
Some village residents maintain that the perception of crime is worse than the reality. But even the perception of crime, they know, can drive down property values and deflate a community's sense of self.
Some residents of Long Reach, for example, are still offended that their village includes an area qualified to receive state funds as part of the "hot spot" program.
The Abbott House resident who asked not to be identified said she wishes police would visit the community more often.
When they're not around, she says, "I've pretty much trusted in God."
Pub Date: 10/04/98