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Sunday, September 29, 2002

Tainted by the criminal company they keep

By HENRY FREDERICK
NEWS-JOURNAL STAFF WRITER

DAYTONA BEACH -- Robert Bergeron watched in amusement on a recent morning as workers welded upper floor beams in place at the Ocean Walk construction site.

Bergeron, 74, sat hunched over on a sidewalk bench, his right hand shaking as he attempted to drink beer from a torn paper cup that scraped his cracked lips and tangled in his unkempt beard.

Tourists passing by weren't nearly so amused with the panhandler, averting their eyes and turning their noses away from the stench of alcohol and urine.

"I'm all by myself and that's the way I like it," said Bergeron, who sleeps in the woods after his $600 monthly Social Security check runs out.

Across the street, the luxury resort towers over Atlantic Avenue and stands even higher in the minds of civic leaders, who dream it will launch Daytona Beach into a more lucrative tourism market. For others, though, the city will remain anchored in the shallows of special events so long as the image of luxury condominiums is undermined by the reality of panhandlers, prostitutes and pushers.

The city's street people and criminal element have a negative bearing on economic growth, lifestyle and tourism, city officials and business leaders say.

"The national image we have is horrible," said City Commissioner Darlene Yordon, who believes economic development needs to supplant binge tourism if the city has any chance of competing for high-tech industry.

Jerry Fincke, a managing partner of the Ocean Walk development that is part of a $200 million redevelopment effort in the core tourism area, said the project's completion will serve as the catalyst for competing with other Florida cities for families and convention business.

He believes the redevelopment will have a second benefit. "I see it as a deterrent to bums hanging around -- it won't be attractive to them," Fincke said.

On the other side of Volusia County, Deltona wrestles with image problems of its own, rooted in a different crime personality.

Even as Deltona celebrated the opening earlier this year of its $7.7 million City Hall, it remains a community searching for an identity. Civic leaders see Deltona as an emerging model for integration. For some, though, the image of bizarre crimes and racially divided youth gangs lingers from a time before Deltona's incorporation.

Three nights before Christmas, T.J. Hoffman, a 44-year-old student and house painter, was severely beaten in the parking lot of an Elkcam Boulevard bar by three or four young men he described as Hispanics.

Hoffman, who had five teeth knocked out and his jaw broken in two places, lost his stamina, memory and faith.

"I don't want anything to do with this town," said Hoffman, who believes he might have been the victim of a gang initiation.

Volusia County sheriff's Investigator John Brown, who worked Hoffman's case, said there is no evidence of that. Brown called the attack on Hoffman an isolated event, the only such random assault he can recall in more than two years of detective work in Deltona.

However, there's no shortage of evidence -- from a pregnant wife buried in a back yard to messages of racial hatred on a family's living room wall -- that Deltona crime often involves strange domestic circumstances or reckless criminal youths.

Community and civic leaders say Deltona's reputation does not compare to the national reputation with which Daytona Beach is saddled.

"Daytona Beach is still a honky-tonk town, and it's probably getting worse, but Deltona is a residential community for families," said County Council Chairwoman Ann McFall, whose district includes Deltona where she lives.

Jim Lawrence, owner of ReMax Associates in Deltona, said crimes that have made headlines locally aren't chasing people out of an emerging bedroom city that is experiencing growing pains. "It's really no different than anywhere else," he said.

Deltona, like Daytona Beach, must find ways to praise the positive and overcome the negative. Beyond the brochures, economic plans, Web sites and pretty pictures, both cities rely on effective law enforcement as their first and best weapon against a harmful reputation for crime.

DELTONA: BORED YOUTH, BIZARRE CRIME

Deltona, established in the early 1960s as a retirement community and now a sprawling northern suburb of Orlando, has seen its population swell to become Volusia's largest city with nearly 70,000 residents.

With that growth came more crime and unusual incidents, often at odds with the serenity of suburban life.

Five years ago, a man buried his pregnant ex-wife under a concrete slab in back of his home after shooting her in the back of the head. They were embroiled in a child custody suit.

In 2000 and 2001, an arsonist torched several homes on Hope Avenue and other nearby streets.

Fifteen months ago, a 10-year-old Deltona boy and his grandmother disappeared without a trace. For weeks, camera crews parked vans along carefully cultivated lawns, shining bright lights, speculating about the possibilities: Murder? Kidnapping? Police investigators still don't know more than a year later.

Last year, an 81-year-old man killed his wife, but couldn't turn the gun on himself. In March, a 69-year-old man said to be suffering from mental illness was shot and killed inside his home after a day-long standoff with authorities.

In August, a family's house was wrecked and defiled with racial slurs.

Sheriff's Lt. Bob Matusick said such images are not the reality of everyday life in Deltona.

"Deltona is a bedroom community to Orlando and it has its share of problems, but we're on top of it," he said. Burglaries, for example, have an 80 percent clearance rate, he said, among the best in Volusia and Flagler counties.

With 63 deputies assigned to cover Deltona -- which does not have its own police force -- the main approach is to split the city up and cruise the roads night and day. Deputies in nine assigned zones cover 450 miles of roads in a strategy known as directed patrols.

Motorcycle units handle traffic and bicycle patrols supplement road patrols, Matusick said.

"It becomes a challenge sometimes," Matusick said of the enormous territory of 46 square miles.

That's a lot of room for youths to roam, but Matusick stressed that while young people are bored, there is no gang activity. Boredom can be a dangerous thing, though. Five teenage Deltona boys were arrested earlier this month in connection with a string of home burglaries and car break-ins in the city.

Matusick said the recently opened skateboard park is a positive place for teens to go. But after the recent beating death of a teenager at a skate park in New Smyrna, even that statement is not a safe bet.

Still, a News-Journal analysis of crime statistics over the past six years shows Deltona is much safer than Volusia's second largest city, Daytona Beach, which has about 64,000 residents.

In Deltona, someone is murdered every 4 months. In Daytona Beach, a homicide occurs every 6 weeks.

Likewise, Daytona Beach leads Deltona in other violent categories including rape, robbery and aggravated assault. The same holds true with property crimes, including burglary, larceny and stolen cars.

DAYTONA BEACH: CRIME BREEDS IN POVERTY

The directed patrols primarily utilized in Deltona are not adequate to handle myriad crime problems in Daytona Beach, Police Chief Kenneth Small said.

Community policing and street crimes units target neighborhoods and business districts in an effort to isolate and attack crime problems. Bicycle patrols and specialized DUI units assist.

Small said deteriorating neighborhoods, shoddy motels and bars are breeding grounds for crime. Much of Daytona Beach's violent crime occurs in its most impoverished areas, Small said.

"We have a very poor core city," Small said. "The unfortunate part of that is the overwhelming (poor) population is African-American. Just drive through the city. It's pretty sad. Just because people are poor doesn't mean they are bad."

Daytona Beach's other crime centers are often side streets off U.S. 1 and State Road A1A.

A man standing in the dark on Segrave and North streets hisses "cop" at a motorist in a silver car that drives past.

A woman on the corner of Mulberry Street and Madison Avenue boldly flags down a car at midday and asks, "Want to hook up?"

A blonde with a pierced tongue leans through the open passenger window of a car at Atlantic and Phoenix avenues. "Are you a cop?" she asks.

On some streets in Daytona Beach, passing motorists who aren't customers or cops simply don't belong.

County Councilman Big John said Daytona Beach's image problems are obvious.

"We have a huge population of street people that makes people feel unsafe," he said, adding there's no real balance between the needs of the beachside and the poor areas where most of the city's African-American citizens live and endure the brunt of crime.

"I think the blacks have been sold out in Daytona," Big John said. "Where's the money go? It goes to redevelopment for the beachside Ocean Walk."

City Commissioner Charles Cherry has been making the same argument for years.

"There's all this redevelopment and beautification of Atlantic Avenue, but not the same initiative for Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard or Mary McLeod Bethune Boulevard," said Cherry. "This creates a feeling of neglect. There's a lack of respect for the black community."

Tucked primarily between Ridgewood Avenue and Nova Road, the core city area is seldom visited by outside residents such as Kathy Milthorpe, who conceded she's unfamiliar with the harsh realities of life there.

It's another world on the city's western fringe where Milthorpe works as senior vice president and chief financial officer of the Ladies Professional Golf Association. LPGA has its national headquarters in one of the more exclusive housing developments in the city off LPGA Boulevard. Three-thousand-square-foot houses seem like mansions compared to the core area's mish-mash of aging public-subsidized housing and cramped hovels with barred doors and windows.

"I'm not down there on a daily basis to recognize the issues," said Milthorpe, chairwoman-elect of The Chamber, Daytona Beach/Halifax Area.

Nevertheless, Milthorpe intends to place a focus on code enforcement and getting government and business to work closer to help blighted areas during her term as chamber chairwoman next year. She hopes that will reduce crime.

"The core area and parts of the beachside are not necessarily safe and the business community is taking note of it," said Milthorpe, who lives with her family in Ormond Beach. "People come here with their own stereotypes and that's unfortunate. We do have a lot of haves and have-nots and we need to help those who truly need it."

Other business and city leaders see that help as beneficial to all.

"The perception of most of the residents is the seedy image, but we're really working hard to get people to invest," said Suzanne Kuehn, the city's economic development administrator.

"It's not like that element doesn't exist in other Florida cities," Kuehn said of the drug peddlers and street people. "It's how aggressive the city continues in its efforts to beautify and make this a safe community."

Paul Politis, owner of a beachside store that sell T-shirts and other novelty items, said he has had more than his fill of rowdy teens, college kids and noisy bikers.

"The return on the investment into the redevelopment area will never reach its full potential until we deal with the criminal and sleaze that permeate our city," said Politis, who also chairs a beachside community policing program.

While 11th hour budget negotiations mean some salvaging of community policing programs citywide, Politis fears funding shortages in future years will doom progress made to this point. In Deltona, city leaders see their sense of community -- exemplified by the outpouring of support to the victims of the recent hate crime -- as the best antidote to crime.

"I think we're rich because of our community," Mayor John Masiarczyk said of his city. "You'll see whites, blacks, Hispanics and Asians living next door to each other every five or six houses, and that's what makes Deltona so great."

Staff Writers John Bozzo, Derek Catron, Autumn C. Giusti, Michael Giusti, Mark Harper, Claudia Moscoso and news research assistant Barbara Buttleman contributed to this report.

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