By MELISSA PEACOCK

RESERVE – Niasha King watched her two infant daughters play under the eave of a brick building in the Reserve Oak housing development, the faces of innocence amid scrawled graffiti, broken windows and littered streets.

King, who has lived in Reserve Oak for about eight years, said neighborhood crime has always been a problem but her safety was never a concern until she had her two daughters.

“It’s good (the presence of sheriff’s deputies in the neighborhood) because I have children – because of all the gunshots going on,” King said as she watched her 2- and 3-year-old daughters play with her keys on the pavement in front of her mother’s apartment.

Just one day later, King’s dream of a safer neighborhood for her kids suffered a serious setback when apartment 202, the future home of the St. John the Baptist Sheriff’s Office’s substation, caught fire and sustained extensive damage from the intense heat and thick smoke.

The St. John the Baptist Parish Housing Authority began renovations on apartment 202 for the substation about six weeks ago. The apartment had been vacant for nearly a year when it was selected to serve as a substation.

“The lavatories were pulled out of the floor, the sheetrock pulled off the walls – basically, the unit had been vandalized,” said Claudette Raphael, interim executive director of the Housing Authority about the condition the house. “We put cabinets in, prepared sheetrock, replaced the lavatories and we were about to put in floor tiles.”

Neighbors reported the apartment fire to the sheriff’s office around 2 a.m. Friday, said Captain Michael Tregre. No one was living in the building at the time and the power had not been turned on at the site.

Greg Greco, head of the arson division for the State Fire Marshal’s Office, said the blaze is under investigation and it could be weeks before any information about the cause of the fire is released by the state investigators.

Several neighbors said they suspect foul play.

“In April 2002 another apartment in the Reserve Oak housing development on East 13th Street was burned under similar circumstances,” said neighbor Faith Farlough. “Fourteen houses on East 14th Street burnt down under almost identical circumstances.

“Everywhere where you see a vacant lot – a vacant house use to be there. These young men would break in and just start tearing it down board by board.”

Farlough believes the once thriving East 14th Street, known to residents as Silvertown, and neighboring East 13th Street are “hot spots” for crime in the parish.

“When the (Reserve Oaks) apartments were erected they were basically a nice place for people who needed to get their start,” Farlough said. “Now Gunshots are always ringing out. There’s obscenity, gambling, drugs. It shouldn’t be a criminal enterprise.”

The solution, Farlough said, is for neighbors, city officials and law-enforcement to come together to “clean out” neighborhood crime – ridding the housing development and the surrounding community of individuals not complying with standards set by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, those living illegally within the complex, and those committing the crimes.

“We’re crying out for people to take action,” Farlough said. “A crisis plan needs to be put into effect.”

The sheriff’s office is continuing to work with the Housing Authority but there has been no official meeting yet to discuss whether plans for the substation will go forward, Tregre said.