Police Have Control Of Winder Village, Says Acting Chief

The long-awaited, newly installed cameras in Winder Village are not a reactive measure, according to Bristol Township Acting Police Chief Ralph Johnson.

The cameras, which were installed March 16 and 17 in the neighborhood nestled between Veterans Highway and Bath Road, is a continuing effort to “maintain control”. Read more about the cameras.

While Johnson said the installation’s timing was sparked by the triple shooting that left two dead on Winder Drive last summer, cameras have been planned for the area ever since the technology and money became available.

According to Johnson, after the successful use of surveillance cameras in the Bloomsdale-Fleetwing section, cameras were next planned for Venice Ashby/Foster Avenue Circle and then Winder Village. The timing of the Winder Village cameras came sooner when two were shot fatally in the section last summer. According to Johnson, the case is still under investigation.  Read more about the triple shooting.

“The purpose of what drove us to getting cameras in the first place, was the end of an enforcement effort for over 20 years to stop the 24/7 drugs sales in the neighborhoods,” Johnson told LevittownNow.com on Wednesday. “The last 20 years we hammered it pretty hard. Bloomsdale was the last hotspot, and when the cameras went up, it was like a knife in the heart of it.”

To Johnson, the surveillance cameras are not an effort to get a handle on the crime in the neighborhood.

“We have gained control over the last 20 years,” he said. “The cameras are an effort to maintain that control and not backslide on two decades of police work.”

Johnson, who took LevittownNow.com in and out of the crime stricken neighborhoods in the lower end of the township on Wednesday, spoke highly of patrol and narcotic officers who helped turn the area into one you could finally drive and walk through, safely. According to Johnson, from 2004-2007 the area saw eight drug-related homicides, six of which have been successfully prosecuted.

Police in Bristol Township began beefing up their efforts in the area 21 years ago next month, when they were given a grant by Housing of Urban Development (HUD). The grant provided the money and services needed to supply two, and then four, officers on foot patrol in Bloomsdale and Venice Ashby.

Johnson told LevittownNow.com that when police started their “relentless” patrol in 1994, they found 60-80 people hanging in the parking lots along Foster Avenue Circle. “They actually had lawn chairs, and people would sit in these parking lots, they would just gather,” he said. “A lot of these public housing units were even being used as speakeasies – and the parking lots were always full, everybody had their own crowd.”

The illegal speakeasies of the day, Johnson said, served up a unique blend of food, drugs and malt liquor.

“[Venice Ashby] is part of public housing and 20 years ago, cars were harder to obtain, especially if you were struggling or had kids; it’s hard to maintain a car and insurance, having alcohol and food there, it was just a convenience,” he said. “If you’re making double your money by selling shots or 40’s, well that’s good business, for anybody.”

The HUD grant, Johnson said was a lifesaver for the area during a stricken time in the township’s history.

“We kept applying for extensions for the grant for five or six years,” he said. “And it worked so well at reducing crime in these neighborhoods, that HUD continued to pay the same amount they had been paying all those years to fund the officers.”

The grant has ended, and with that, Johnson says is another successful wave of policing. He doesn’t have statistics, but the cameras in Bloomsdale he says, have been part of that new wave.

“The cameras, they are a deterrent,” he said. “If people know their are cameras, that they are always on and always recording, they aren’t going to be doing the stuff they used to right out in the open.”

Each camera location installed in the Winder Village section, has four static cameras, providing police with a full view of the location through not only a remote desktop, but through their MDT patrol car computers. The cameras even have analytic capabilities, alerting police when crowds of more than a few people gather in a location. The planning of the system began in 2014 under the direction of Lt. John Godzieba and Township Manager Bill McCauley. Godzieba worked with police officials to pick a system that would fit the neighborhood and department.

According to Johnson, the effort has taken so many years for a very good reason.

“Our community is unique because although we get the occasional national gang members, we have our own indigenous drug gangs, people that grew up here, and have for many generations,” he said. “Any attempts by the national gangs to take over these neighborhoods has been put down very quickly.”

With the times changing and technology expanding, Bristol Township officers will be forced to adapt in order to maintain control.

“Social networking has changed the way people communicate, the way they hang out, and their ability to be in-the-know without actually being on scene,” Johnson said. “People used to have to come out to see everybody and now they don’t. You don’t see many people out on the streets anymore.”

Just like crime in Winder Village jumped when Bloomsdale and Venice Ashby saw foot patrol, crime may skyrocket in other areas with the installation of cameras.

“This area and the type of drug, 20 years ago, it was the opportunity to do business unchecked,” he said. “I’m not naive to think crime doesn’t happen, they meet at the 7-11’s and the Wawas, the Walmart parking lot. I just don’t think they are out here 24/7 like they used to be.”

The cameras, which have been paid for by a grant, have cost under $50,000.