Police see high concentration of crime on Washington Ave.

Police are seeing a high concentration of increased crime on one street in central Columbia.

The Columbia police dispatch shows police were called to Washington Avenue more than 100 times over the last year.

Those calls range from shots fired down to traffic stops. Eighteen of the calls were reports of disturbances, and 15 calls were 911 checks.

Wednesday, Abc 17 News reported police were called to one house on Washington Avenue early in the morning after a man fired multiple shots at the home. A few hours later, police were called to the same street for a report of child abuse.

Jim Hayden has lived on Washington Avenue for about two years and said he is not concerned.

“I feel completely safe,” Hayden said. “I’ve never had a problem. Anybody that I’ve talked to on the street they’re completely friendly.”

But not everyone on the street feels safe. A woman who lives a few houses down from Hayden said she does not feel safe at all. Three months ago, she saw a man killed in her backyard.

You may remember, Anthony Shegog was arrested for the death of Walter Lige after stabbing him near the intersection of Washington Avenue and Pecan Street.

The woman said she has considered moving, but can’t because she is renting and cannot get out of her lease.

John Clark is on the neighborhood association for north central Columbia. He said one reason the area is seeing a high level of crime is because a community action team no longer exists.

“In the early 2000s, we had a community action team because we didn’t have enough officers, but it was five or six people that trained with landlords and neighborhood associations about crime prevention,” Clark said.

Clark said the area also no longer has a neighborhood crime watch.

He said the North Central Neighborhood Association used to work closer with law enforcement. Police officers would come to each meeting to discuss what problems they were seeing and what the association thought needed attention. But that is no longer the case.

Clark said he hopes to see the neighborhood association include law enforcement in their meetings again. He said several things need to be changed, but it is a problem that will take several years to fix.