It's called 'the most dangerous street' in Norfolk

NORFOLK

Alexander Street may have been safe once. Not now.

Two killings have occurred since April – a 22-year-old man shot on July 22 and a 21-year-old woman stabbed three months earlier.

Although Alexander Street in Norview is only three blocks long, with a mix of apartments and small houses, neighbors say something needs to be done. In the past year, police have investigated at least 15 assaults, 13 acts of vandalism, 18 thefts, five burglaries and two robberies, according to a PilotOnline database of Norfolk Police Department reports.

“It is the most dangerous street that we have in the city of Norfolk, bar none,” said Ulysses Turner, a former School Board chairman and Norfolk Redevelopment and Housing Authority board member who owns a gated condo community nearby. “I’m just disappointed that the city has not done more to eradicate the dangers.”

A woman who lives just off Alexander Street said the sound of gunfire is constant and that her front door was hit by a bullet around December.

“The gangs are getting ridiculous,” she said. “I hear people talk, and it’s kids that I’ve seen over the years that grew up and became gang members.”

The Virginian-Pilot is not naming the woman because she feared retaliation.

Police say more enforcement is planned and some city officials contacted this week said action is needed.

In the killings, Wayne Williams, 22, was shot outdoors. His sister said a neighbor told her two other men were fighting at the time. Tiffany Marie Green, 21, was stabbed April 20 in an apartment. Both cases remain unsolved.

Their deaths are just the latest for Alexander Street.

Brian Joyner, 24, died after he was shot eight times in an apartment building in June 2009. Police shot and injured a 17-year-old who brandished a gun during a foot chase in 2007. A 16-year-old boy fatally shot an 18-year-old man riding in a car in 2006.

A newly promoted captain commanding Second Precinct patrol officers has begun working with the vice and narcotics and gang units to put a focus on Alexander Street, police spokesman Chris Amos said in an e-mail.

City Councilman Paul R. Riddick, whose funeral home is just around the corner on Norview Avenue, said Alexander Street went bad around 1980 when a Virginia Beach couple named Donald and Maria Burrus, both drug dealers, were strangled in a house in the 6200 block. Another drug dealer, Henry L. Joyce, pleaded guilty after he led police to their bodies in a wooded area of Virginia Beach in 1984.

“The whole street needs to be redeveloped,” Riddick said . “The housing authority and the city need to recognize that this is one of the worst spots in Norfolk, and we need to go in, acquire properties and change the whole landscape.”

Although some officials, including Vice Mayor Anthony L. Burfoot, have brought up Alexander Street, “it has not been at the forefront,” Riddick said. Ulysses Turner said he’s questioned why the city doesn’t do more to penalize landlords who don’t properly maintain rental properties.

“Alexander Street has not had a direct impact on our condo complex because we have a fenced-in community and it’s gated and it’s well-lit, but for those who go to the Internet and look at crime in the community, that impacts our ability to get quality clients,” Turner said. “No street in our city should have the kind of problems that we have on Alexander Street.”

The street is in Ward 3, represented by Burfoot.

“I’ve been very frustrated,” he said Friday. “ I don’t feel politically I’ve gotten the support that I’ve needed to truly eradicate crime from that area.”

Specifically, Burfoot said, the city’s Project Focus anti-crime program, which uses surveillance cameras in three other dangerous neighborhoods, should have included Alexander Street. He said he’s asked the city attorney’s office to crack down on absentee landlords – to no avail.

“The Police Department has been out there working hard, but they’re only one part of it,” Burfoot said. The rundown buildings are “attracting the type of people that are coming in there and creating havoc.”

Looking for a vigil for Williams, the most recent homicide victim, two Virginian-Pilot reporters visited Alexander Street about 7 p.m. Wednesday .

A police officer was patrolling the street with a shotgun because, the department said later, someone had thrown a beer bottle at his cruiser.

A group of teenagers and young men, when asked about a vigil, said they hadn’t heard of anything. Some turned their backs to the reporters without speaking or pulled their shirts over their heads. Others laughed or grumbled and said not to take pictures.

Patrick Wilson, (757) 222-3893,patrick.wilson@pilotonline.com