When I declined comment about the incident here, I did not know you would also include comments that were unnecessary in your article. Although you did mention that the code violations did not have anything to do with the man’s unfortunate death, you didn’t need to mention them at all. I want to go on record about the code violations. Firstly, they weren’t there when the two men rented the apartment. The peeling paint was a result of all the bad storms this year. Once the roof was repaired and tuckpointing on the east wall done, the tenants said they would fix the ceilings. They never did. There are smoke detectors, but the batteries I gave the tenants to replace the old ones were never installed, and they even removed the detector in the hallway. The other code violations were caused by tenants and their “guests” unbeknownst to me. I trusted the tenants to live up to their word, and obviously that was naive on my part. Lesson learned. Detective O’Connor of the Crime Free Multi-Housing Unit of the Forest Park Police have been most helpful to me, and I am attending one of his classes this evening. You should also know that as soon as Chief Glinke informed me of the problems, I took action. Within two days I had a contractor working on the apartment. He will be done with that part of the refinishing in the next couple of days. Then we will redo the whole apartment and get it ready for new tenants who will be screened properly for safety and security’s sake.
-Patricia Littlecreek
