By Anton K. Nilsson

A new $3 million investment is hoped to improve security at the Parkside Housing Development on White Plains Road near the borough’s New York Botanical Garden. Residents have made repeated complaints about the lack of security in the complex.

Councilman Ritchie Torres (15th CD) announced the earmark in front of the troubled buildings, known for drug running and spats of violence. The monies, considered the biggest allocation for a housing complex in the city’s history, will go towards a so-called layered access system. That includes new surveillance cameras, intercoms, front doors, and electronic fob keys for residents.

The heightened security is intended to protect the right to live freely, said Torres. “If you are too afraid to leave your home, and to walk freely in your neighborhood… In a sense, you are no longer free.”

Lucy Williams has lived at 2910 Bronx Park East for 35 years. She says the security situation on her block has gone from bad, with rampant drug use and vandalism, to better, partly thanks to efforts in keeping loiterers from idling on the front steps. But in recent years, safety has plummeted again.

“There has been a huge turnover in the last five to ten years, and so we don’t know our neighbors like we used to,” said Williams. According to Williams, residents fear some large pitbulls that have been let loose in her building, and many are annoyed that the animals are allowed to defecate on the roof. Security cameras would help tremendously, she said. “They’re overdue.”

Gladys Alleyne, a neighbor who lives nearby on Wallace Avenue, said the situation has gotten better, but yearns for an improved quality of life. “People used to sit on the front steps, smoking grass. It was hard just to get by them and through the front door,” she said. She is a supporter of installing video cameras, something she says will help the security issues “cool off.”

Steve Govan, another local resident who has lived in the neighborhood for 52 years, was more pessimistic. “It’s getting worse instead of better. Cameras may help. It will make the old folks seem safer,” he said. “But for me, it doesn’t matter.”

Two years ago, federal investigators cracked down on a drug ring that was based in the Parkside Housing Developments, charging two dozen people with drug-related crimes. In January this year, a 20-year old man was fatally shot outside the housing project in what is believed to be a drug-related dispute.

For now, it remains unclear when the new security measures will be implemented.

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