For Tenants, Threats Lurk in The Unknown

By Sudarsan Raghavan
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, April 2, 2006; A01



Sakinah Thompson moved into Southview Apartments after college, drawn to the Washington area by its abundance of young professionals and diverse social life. At $600 a month, her one-bedroom apartment was a bargain in a region with skyrocketing rents.

She had lived in the Prince George's County complex two years when, on a spring night in 2003, a man in a ski mask hid in her bathroom, a hammer tucked in his belt. Minutes after she arrived home, he raped her.

After learning of the attack, Southview manager Odell Moon visited Thompson in her apartment. She remembers asking him whether he was going to post notices to warn other residents. Moon said it was the first time he was aware of a sexual assault there.

Then he asked whether she would like to move to another apartment on the property.

"Are you kidding me'" she recalled telling him. She moved out of Southview the next week.

A year later, after five more women reported being attacked, Thompson learned she was hardly the first victim at the sprawling complex near the District border. Dozens of other sex offenses had been previously reported to the Prince George's police. In the past decade, 63 incidents have been reported, including assaults, fondling and attempted sex crimes. The victims were as young as 8 and as old as 72.

Moon and other Southview officials say they were not aware of most sex offenses and for years posted no warnings about the assaults. The managers sent out general safety cautions and supplemented a team of resident "courtesy officers" by hiring off-duty county police. But the off-duty officers were absent many days -- in three of the five days immediately after Thompson's rape, they did not patrol, payroll records show.

Infuriated by what she learned, Thompson sued Southern Management Corp., the property's owner, contending that it had a responsibility to provide more protection. The complex, which is spread over 60 acres and has 1,406 apartments, has no security cameras or alarm systems.

"Sexual assaults or not, we never heard anything about any crimes," Thompson said in a recent interview. "It was very disturbing, very upsetting."

The Washington Post generally does not name victims of sex assaults without their permission and is not using Thompson's entire name at her request.

Six other tenants who were sexually assaulted at Southview have filed similar lawsuits in the past five years. The company has settled four of the suits, and the others are pending.

The lawsuits underscore the pervasive crime problem around garden apartments, which former Prince George's executive and Maryland governor Parris N. Glendening (D) once called "breeding grounds for trouble."

Unlike some of the other complexes that have been cited as crime magnets, Southview -- a tan-brick collection of 63 garden and mid-rise apartment buildings in Oxon Hill -- is neither run-down nor graffiti-sprayed. Crime in the immediate area is common but not the worst in the county.

Still, many residents say the property's managers and Prince George's police have not done enough to protect them.

While tenants such as Thompson blame their landlords, Southern Management blames the county for assigning what it considers inadequate police resources to the area. Ronald T. Frank, Southern Management's president, said his company could not pay off-duty officers for 24-hour patrols and keep rents affordable.

"It's not my responsibility" to do the job of the police, Frank said. For their part, police officials say they cannot be expected to be a constant presence in every apartment building.

The relationship between the police and Southview is a tangled one because securing the property falls heavily on a rotating group of 10 Prince George's officers who moonlight there. Crime victims suing the company have questioned in court documents whether there is a conflict for the officers, some of whom have testified for Southview.

In one instance, an officer in the police sexual assaults unit, who was hired by Southern Management to patrol the complex while off duty, was working at his police job when a call came in that an elderly woman had been assaulted there. He responded to the call and visited her in the hospital. But when she sued her landlord, the officer testified in a deposition on Southview's behalf, disputing the lead police investigator's testimony.

Frank said his company has made many recent improvements and has tried to be as open as possible, including notifying residents in periodic newsletters that they should be careful about crime.

"I don't think anyone moving in . . . is blindsided, like they're coming from another planet. What goes on at Southview is not unusual. In fact, it's better than in the area," he said. "It's no secret that you have to be on guard for your personal safety and be on guard for your personal property."

Police have made 12 arrests in the 63 reported incidents at Southview, all in cases in which the victims knew their attackers. In most of the violent incidents, no one has been arrested.

The number of reported sex offenses at the complex -- seven occurred last year -- partly reflects its size, said Lt Col. Vincent C. ---, head of the county police Investigative Services Bureau. Still, he said, "it's a number that concerns us. We've committed a tremendous amount of investigative hours there. . . . Every incident reported there was thoroughly investigated."

For James Saulsbury, neither those reassurances nor Southview's amenities -- the pool, playgrounds, landscaping, shuttle bus service and bright yellow billboard that says: "First Class Service. A Five Star Community" -- have allayed his concern about crime.

Saulsbury, who has lived in the complex for eight years, said he rarely comes home late and never lets his 8-year-old daughter out of his sight when she visits. He said he has stayed because of his $699 monthly rent and his faith.

"I definitely pray," he said, glancing at the leatherette Bible on his coffee table.

A Symbol of Progress, Then Crime

Garden apartments were built in Prince George's to house families leaving the District in the 1950s and '60s, part of an early wave of suburbanization sweeping the nation.

Since then, the county has become a hub for middle-class families and young professionals such as Thompson. National Harbor, a $2 billion retail and residential project being built near Southview, is the newest symbol of progress.

But that success has been muted by the enduring presence of crime, particularly around apartment complexes.

Glendening promised to hold landlords accountable for safety when he was county executive in the 1980s. His successor, Wayne K. Curry (D), stepped up inspections a decade later. Now, County Executive Jack B. Johnson (D) is focusing attention on the problem, saying recently that he would create legislation requiring owners to submit security plans.

Johnson released a list of 22 crime-ridden complexes last year and vowed to shut them down if owners didn't comply with safety codes.

His list, based largely on the volume of police calls and the size of properties, included two Southern Management buildings but not Southview. Still, police are called frequently to investigate incidents at Southview: 1,117 calls for reported break-ins, 1,465 for car thefts, 490 for assaults and 45 for shootings in the past decade.

Thompson knew none of this when she moved into the complex in 2001. After she was attacked, she was outraged.

"If this was any other type of building, completely upper class, there would have been notices and notifications all the time," she said.

Moon, Southview's manager, said in a recent interview that he does not recall the specifics of his conversation with Thompson. But he reiterated that, at the time, he believed Thompson's case was unique. "That was the first sexual assault" he was aware of at the property, he said.

Other complex employees had taken reports from three victims before Thompson, and one victim had sued, records show. Sitting in police records were 40 other reported cases since 1995.

Thompson remembers the chokehold, the kicking, the screaming, the iron her attacker smashed on her head.

"I promise I won't look if you just leave," she begged the man, who had pried open her apartment window.

After her attacker fled, she plugged her phone back into the socket and dialed 911. Two police officers arrived minutes later. They told her that they had been in the area searching for a peeping Tom who had been preying on a teenage girl.

As the police investigated inside her apartment, she sat outside the door and wept.

Officers took her to Prince George's Hospital Center, where nurses found samples of her attacker's DNA underneath her fingernails, according to Thompson and police files. No one has been arrested.

Today, Thompson, 27, lives in Alexandria in a Southern Management building where security is more visible. But she still feels uncomfortable entering her apartment, she said. She checks every closet, every room, always with her cellphone a quick reach away. Every time she hears a noise, she checks the window locks again.

Owner, Officer Defend Security

Since buying Southview in 1985, Southern Management has taken steps to improve the complex and its neighborhood.

The company, which bills itself as the mid-Atlantic's largest private property management business, owns 25,000 apartment units in the Washington area, nearly half of them in Prince George's.

At Southview, it has started an after-school children's study program and donated millions of dollars to health and education causes. A community police officer ran a Boy Scout troop at the complex. Local groups have given the company awards for its efforts.

"We've been a model corporate citizen" for decades, said Frank, the company president. "I try to provide the best environment possible for the residents' well-being."

Frank said his managers are quick to correct security problems in common areas, the complex is well lighted and the buildings are secure. Given its size, he said, Southview is safer than other complexes in communities where "crime is a way of life."

At the same time, employees and tenants of the complex have reported that some doors wouldn't lock, elevators were broken and hallway lights were out, according to in-house reports subpoenaed in suits against Southern Management.

Other internal reports document crimes. Trespassers, including masked men, have entered the property, according to the reports. Doors and windows have been pried or kicked open. In other cases, there were no signs of forced entry, suggesting that the intruders had keys.

A February 2001 report read, "Elevators need cleaning because elevator has dried-up blood in it."

Frank said many sex offenses at Southview could not have been prevented because they were domestic incidents or involved acquaintances. And senior company officials, in two depositions filed in 2004, said they did not know about a rash of sexual assaults.

"I don't recall having any feeling that anything was unusually out of order," said Southern Management chief executive David Hillman in a deposition, referring to crime at Southview between 2000 and 2003.

Police files show that 19 sexual offenses were reported at the complex during those years.

Moon said in an interview that the first time managers put out a police notice warning residents of a sexual assault was after Thompson was attacked.

Like many apartment buildings across the county, Southview hires off-duty officers to patrol the grounds on foot and in their police cars. Members of this rotating squad, designed to be a high-profile crime deterrent, are paid $35 an hour.

Company officials said they had opted for hiring off-duty officers because the officers were better qualified than those in private security firms. They declined to say how many hours the officers work.

Unarmed "courtesy officers" with no law enforcement training are also hired and stationed, in uniform, in each mid-rise building to patrol and note security problems.

"I don't feel the need for 24 hours," said Stacey Gist, the county officer who heads Southview's off-duty police security, in a 2004 deposition. "I mean, it's not like there's something happening on the property." In a recent interview, Gist said he was referring to a lack of a severe crime problem.

One of Gist's duties has been to testify on behalf of Southview in lawsuits filed by crime victims. He and another officer who works at the complex, Robert Taylor, have served as Southern Management's main expert witnesses. They were paid for the time spent in legal proceedings, as is customary, and both have asserted that Southview's security was adequate.

In the elderly woman's case, Taylor was one of the officers who responded to the call. The woman's attorney said in court documents that Taylor, a supervisor in the sexual assaults unit, was the woman's main contact at the police department for weeks.

When she sued, Taylor testified as an expert witness for Southview, saying the landlords could not have foreseen the assault, the laundry room where she was attacked "was well lighted" and "I could see everything."

Gerard Lombardi, lead investigator on the case, described the laundry room in a deposition as "a dark place," like "a cave." He also said he updated Taylor regularly on the case.

Taylor said in a deposition that, after visiting the woman in the hospital, he was not directly involved in the investigation. The police department would not allow Taylor or other members of the sex assaults unit to be interviewed for this article.

Gist said he did not consider testifying for Southview to be a conflict of interest. And Mark Spencer, the police department's inspector general, said there are legal safeguards. "If there's a conflict of interest, it's up to the court to exclude their testimony as biased," he said.

Pointing Fingers Over Safety

For months, Prince George's County and Southern Management have battled in court papers over whether the police or the landlords are most responsible for safety.

In a suit filed after Johnson, the county executive, listed two of its buildings as crime-ridden, Southern Management alleged that the police had not done their part. "Rather than recognize the number of police on patrol as woefully inadequate to stem the wave of crime in the county or address any of the various root causes of crime, Johnson attacked multi-family property owners," the lawsuit said.

A federal judge dismissed the suit last month, ruling in part that the company had not proved that the county's actions had directly harmed its business. Frank said Southern Management plans to sue again in Circuit Court.

Michael Herman, Johnson's chief of staff, said in an interview that the police cannot be expected to patrol "the floors of an apartment complex." But county leaders agree that the police department has been understaffed.

Today, the force is budgeted for 1,470 sworn officers but has 1,348, well below the national per capita average for metropolitan counties, according to FBI statistics.

The shortage has been sharply felt inside the police sexual assaults unit. Former supervisor W. Bruce Evartt said the unit, which is budgeted for 12 officers, was not fully staffed for any of the dozen years he worked there.

Each of the unit's six investigators handles 50 to 70 cases a year, current and former officers say. In the District, the comparable police unit has twice as many investigators and handles fewer cases.

"I've asked and asked and asked for more men," said Evartt, who was a supervisor of the Prince George's unit for seven years before retiring in November. "I've jumped up and down and screamed. Nothing."

---, chief of the police Investigative Services Bureau, said that although the sexual assaults unit would benefit from more officers, it still does a good job.

"I'm not aware where staffing created any issue in terms of investigating a case," --- said.

In 2003, county police took the unusual step of getting DNA samples from 18 employees of the complex after three rapes were reported in a short period, but no suspects were identified.

Of the 63 sex offenses reported there, 28 remain under investigation, according to police records. In 12, the investigations were halted because the victim would not cooperate with the police or investigators lacked leads.

In one unsolved case, a 55-year-old woman told police that she was raped by someone who had keys to her apartment, according to police and court records.

She was sitting at her computer on a September night in 2002, she said, when she heard her front lock clicking open. She tried to shut the door, but her assailant, who was holding a handgun, broke the door chain and entered her apartment. He beat and raped her, then fled with money and an ATM card, according to police and court records.

Three weeks later, police obtained DNA samples from the two main suspects: the maintenance man who changed the victim's lock the morning of the attack and his roommate, records show. But police later told the victim that her injuries had made it impossible to obtain any of her attacker's DNA, and no arrests have been made.

During the six months after that attack, six other sexual offenses were reported at Southview, including the case of a 17-year-old girl raped at gunpoint by a man who pried open her bedroom door.

Reported rapes and sex offenses have remained relatively steady in the county -- rapes were up 3 percent last year -- but arrests fell from 28 for every 100 reported rapes in 1998 to 8.5 in 2004, according to the latest FBI Uniform Crime Reports data.

One victim, Doris Lopez, still battles the memories. She was raped at knifepoint eight years ago by a man who grabbed her in the Southview parking lot on her way to visit a friend with whom she was staying.

"He said he knew where I lived, and if I spoke to the police, he'd come and look for me," she recalled. As she walked to her friend's apartment after the attack, she feared the man would shoot her.

A few days later, after being released from a hospital, she became suicidal, she said.

Lopez's therapist told her to make copies of the police sketch of her attacker and do anything she wanted with it. She carried a copy in her car, along with a handgun.

"I was obsessed with finding him," Lopez said. "I used to drive and drive night and day trying to find him."

She and her daughter moved to Florida four years ago to be with her mother and sister. "I wanted a new beginning," she said. Recently, she became angry again when she learned that more women were attacked after her.

Now, whenever she sleeps alone, she leaves the lights on. She dreams her attacker is looking for her. She rarely goes out after dark.

"It will never be the same," she said. "He took something from me."

User Responses
From: sweet37	Date: 07/28/2008
Thank God we did not made Southview Apartments our first choose, but Oxon Villige Appartments is no better. I haven't heard of any raping but we do have alot car breakins and the roaches here are outrageous. It seem to me they know when you have ran out of roach spray. I spray and spray and we still see roaches, they are mostly behind the refrigator and the stove. We believe they are coming from the people who just moved in, and the people under us. I am think about telling both neighbors if they spray maybe this will help alleviate the roaches we are having. Right now, we are searching for apartments that are located in Waldorf, or Great Mills Maryland. We use to live in Charles County until we had finacial problem, now that we are back on track I told my husband we should move back. We only been living here for 9 months and we hate it here, the staff in the office treat certain tentants like section 8 better than those who work everyday. If you are late on your rent one week they will come in and inspected your apartment which I think is outrageous. I think you and your family made the right choice early, and thank you the info. And also you've mention about an article was posted in the Washington Post...can you please tell me when that was? Because I would love read about it, and warn friends and family members who looking for apartment to rent about Southview Apartment, so they won't go there.
From: Anonymous	Date: 12/05/2008
This article is two years old?!?!?? What are they doing now to combat crime
From: Anonymous	Date: 12/05/2008
WOW, how pressed are you? EVERYTHING ON SOUTHERN AVENUE IS THE HOOD! BEEN THAT WAY FOR YEARS...WHAT EXACTLY DID YOU EXPECT??? This article is 2 years old. Some things have changed in Southview since then. Get over it! You moved to the HOOD don't expect suburban-ish behavior!
From: yfmorris	Date: 12/05/2008
Pressed? I don't think so. I was asked by another person about this specific article. If you don't like it too bad. So, the article is 2 years old. I have the right to post whatever I like. Believe me, I know a lady who live in Southview today. She hates it and is scared for the safety of herself and her children. Southview wasn't always hood, it was the place to be years ago. It was clean, well-kept and the people made it their home. It's changed and needs to be gutted. If you don't like my response then move on.
From: ttw1	Date: 12/08/2008
I know that's right "yfmorris"!!! U Tell'em baby! Move On Loser, Move On! LOL, LOL, LOL

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