Greer police say crime is down

By Charles Sowell  

APRIL 2, 2010 8:30 a.m. (0)

Three people showed up for Greer Police Department’s meeting on crime and issues Tuesday night, which was probably more a testament to the standing of longtime city Councilwoman Sandra Anderson than apathy.

She died Tuesday.

“A lot of the folks who would normally be at an event like this are probably dealing with her death,” said Dan Reynolds, chief of police.

Anderson was a fixture in Victor Mill and lived a short distance from the city’s Victor Park and a few blocks from the gutted hulk of the old textile mill that has become symbolic of the problems faced by residents of the mill village.

Greer police say District 4, the area east of Main Street, state Route 14, and south of Poinsett Street, state Route 290, has the lowest crime numbers in the city.

But it wasn’t always that way, said Sgt. Marcus Kelley who supervises five officers and two trainees to cover the sprawling district with a population of about 1,400.

The patrol area takes in the old Victor Mill neighborhood which was, at one time, one of the toughest areas in Greer, Kelley said.

The transformation of Victor Mill from rough-neck mill village to something kinder and gentler hasn’t been easy, Kelley said.

“But our proactive policing policy has helped,” he said.

It was an assessment largely shared by those who turned out for a public meeting on community issues in the district.

“I’ve seen the numbers of people loitering and the overall crime rate drop a great deal since David and I moved here,” said George Wilbanks who lives on 4th Street in Victor Mill.

He attributed the drop in crime to good policing and to more homeowners moving into the old mill village, displacing renters.

Too, there is a lot of largely rural land within the city limits along state Route 101 going out to BMW and beyond Interstate 85, Kelley said.

Wilbanks and David Adkins are co-owners of a mill house at the corner of 4th and Moore Street. “Just recently we had a wreck at our intersection and a car ended up in our yard,” Adkins said.

The intersection is a three-way stop with the fourth corner of the crossway taken up by a rail crossing.

Traffic issues make up the largest portion of District 4’s police calls, Kelley said.

District 4 had 75 calls overall, as of Tuesday, in the last quarter, Kelley said. Overall the other districts accounted for 380 calls, police statistics show.

Serious crime was fairly rare in the district, Kelley said.

Greer police reported four burglaries, three auto thefts, two auto break-ins, two rapes, six drug cases and one robbery. By comparison there were 22 traffic violations in which citations were issued.

“I think, overall, most of us are quite satisfied with the level of policing that we get around Victor Mill,” said Linda Batson, who represented the Victor Mill Association at police headquarters.

A meeting on plans for the gutted hulk of Victor Mill is set for Tuesday at 7 p.m. at Victor United Methodist Church, she said.

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