Residents: Security Problems Continue at CH Village
Three weeks after the Denver, Colorado-based owners of the Chestnut Hill Village apartment complex on Stenton Avenue agreed to a list of property improvements aimed at thwarting a rash of break-ins there, residents say they have failed to keep them safe.
According to Tom Lind, president of Concerned Residents in need of Better Security (CRIBS), that action list included installing new locks on all the exterior doors of the apartment buildings by February 18. But when management failed to meet that deadline, he said, there were two burglaries and one attempt in the unaltered buildings on the very next day.
Victims from two of those break-ins attended the CRIBS meeting February 22 at the clubhouse at the complex.
“Yeah, that was my apartment,” said Krasmira Rozenova, one of the victims.
She and her roommate Rob Kern were aware of the 15 or so burglaries in the complex over the last year, and they were always careful to set the deadbolt – except this one time. There was at least one other attempt in the same building on that day, residents said.
By now, according to Lind, the residents of the complex are quite familiar with the M.O. of the burglars. They come in the daytime, make their way into an apartment building with an old lock (Lind claims there have been no robberies on recently re-keyed buildings) and they use a crow bar or some other heavy tool to force their way into the apartments. Once inside, they know exactly what to look for. Rozenova was impressed with the crooks’ apparent calm.
“Only items of value were taken,” she said. “Only things that can be sold … They really took their time, to open, to close again, to take computers.” She also lost cash, jewelry and small electronics, she said.
Over the last several months residents have thwarted at least one burglary in progress by themselves. The property owners, Apartment Investment and Management Company (AIMCO), sent a letter praising that action and encouraging residents to contact the police if they had any information about the crimes. But Lind and the 40 or so people who crowded into the clubhouse last Monday night thought the largest apartment management firm in the country should be doing something more.
“They are supposed to keep us safe,” Lind said.
Adding insult to injury, Lind and other residents claimed their fliers announcing the two CRIBS meetings held last week were systematically removed by management despite being located in approved posting areas on the huge campus.
“I find it incredibly insulting that we made a commitment with them to work with them to stop the burglaries and we gave them the opportunity to speak at the meeting and they had the audacity to tear [the signs] down,” Lind said.
John Serafin, the community manager at Chestnut Hill Village, told the residents last Monday that he spends a good deal of his day trying to complete the improvements on the action list, which include improved exterior lighting, new parking regulations and re-enforcement of individual apartment doors. He said he respected the residents and that he was committed to working with them to keep the community safe. But when residents asked why the signs were removed, and whether they were, in fact, located in the designated posting areas, Serafin did not have an answer.
“I will definitely find out,” he said. “No answer on that… I wasn’t prepared for Q and A points.” And he quickly left without answering a single question.
But if corporate headquarters was the place he was going for the answers, he might be out of luck.
“That’s definitely something that the on-site team would determine,” said Cindy Duffy, AIMCO’s director of corporate communications, about the signs.
Serafin also declined to answer follow up questions in a separate interview. But Duffy emphasized his openness to the residents and the good progress he was making on the safety action items. She said the new exterior building locks would be done this week, and the latch protectors to the several hundred apartments in Chestnut Hill Village would also be completed this week (that work started Monday), while the lighting upgrades would be done by the end of March.
And she stressed that AIMCO was committed to the safety of its residents.
“It’s in everyone’s best interest, certainly, to do what we can to minimize crime in the community,” she said.
Some residents at the CRIBS meeting said they were already doing what they could do about security, in spite of the policies at the complex. Aaron Palmer, a resident of the Town Homes at Chestnut Hill Village said he has long complained about the low quality of the exterior doors on the units, until he finally got fed up with the lack of response from management and took matters into his own hands.
“The doors, the screen doors are truly crappy,” he said. “I went out and purchased my own door for my safety and they said you had to do it yourself.”
Reinforcing the Town Home doors is also an item on the action list, Lind said.
And Tom Keenan, who supervises a group of college residents at Chestnut Hill Village, went even farther. According to him, more two of the apartments he is in charge of suffered burglaries over the last few months, and still he feels he has to do things for himself.
“I put in a back door, I put in an alarm system, and I have a gun,” he said.
