From Staff Reports 

Residents of Asheville’s upscale — and decidedly politically ultra-liberal — Montford community are considering hiring off-duty police officers to deter crime in what is billed as “Asheville’s most historic neighborhood.”

The board of directors of the Montford Neighborhood Association “will continue its discussion about hiring off-duty officers to patrol the area, which could cost about $20,000 per year, and would have to be paid for by Montford residents,” Asheville television station WLOS (News 13) recently reported.

What’s more, News 13 noted that “a survey of 217 residents who live in Asheville’s Montford Area Historic District indicates a heightened sense of concern about violent crime.” 

Data from the Asheville Police Department shows violent crime has been climbing in the neighborhood since 2016, the station stated.

In September, local news media reported that a homeless man was arrested after being accused of stalking a number of women in the Montford area. 

“Additional recent reports include at least one random violent assault of a long-time Montford homeowner over the summer,” News 13 noted.

“The concerns, Montford residents said, prompted the survey that’s now opened discussions on possibly hiring off-duty APD officers to patrol Montford as a crime deterrent,” the TV station reported.

Meanwhile, Rondell Lance, president of the local Fraternal Order of Police (representing around 250 local law enforcement personnel), told the Daily Planet in an Oct. 22 telephone interview that he is not surprised by the crime problem in the generally posh Montford neighborhood. 

Specifically, Lance said, “So they’ve had it (extra officers) downtown (Asheville), but we’ve never ‘done’ a neighborhood like that — and the Asheville Police Department stepped up its downtown patrolling, while assessing those affected (downtown businesses) an extra tax to pay for the added service.

“At one time, we had a (police) resource center in Montford,” but that no longer exists, as the APD is experiencing a severe staffing crisis that shows no signs of ending into the foreseeable future, he said.

“But,” Lance added, “if a neighborhood feels it needs extra security, where the police are short-handed and (in a situation) where the DA’s office has been real lax on prosecuting crimes.... If that’s something they (the Montford Neighborhood Association) want to do,” it is feasible.

Off the cuff, he said one way for Montford to step up security is to hire “two (off-duty) officers in patrol cars” patrolling the neighborhood during the hours when most crime complaints have occurred.

With tongue firmly planted in cheek, Lance then quipped, “Well, you’ve got a City Council” that favors defunding the police, “so where are the case workers? Send them out onto the streets” to resolve the crime problems instead of the APD officers.

“I’m being facetious, but that’s the ‘ridiculousness’ you’re getting from City Council, especially Kim Roney,” who, he said, is widely considered the chief advocate for the local “defund the police” movement on council, with a plan of sending highly trained social workers, instead of police officers to deal with many crime problems.

“You get what you vote for,” Lance asserted. “So it’s OK to have these liberals ... until you see the results of it always being harmful to the communities. But when it comes ‘home’ to them, then it’s a different story.”

In returning to the FOP president’s thoughts on the revelation that Montford is considering hiring off-duty police officers to tamp down what appears to be a growing crime problem in the neighborhood, Lance said, “No surprise — because the downtown area’s” crime problem, especially involving the homeless/panhandlers, “has moved out to Enka-Candler and other areas (including Montford, which adjoins downtown Asheville) — and the police department is so short-handed.”

When pressed by the Daily Planet for Lance’s latest information on APD’s staffing crisis, he replied that, “about a month ago, I had a lady who wanted to order gift cards ‘for appreciation’ to send to each active member of the city police force — and she asked him to get an accurate county and then tolet her know.

After researching the APD’s staffing level, Lance said he told the woman that 176 gift cards would cover everyone then active in the beleaugered-but-still-functioning unit.

The FOP president then noted that he asked his sources how many officers the budget allotment would have covered if the APD was fully staffed.  

“They have 176 officers, but they (the APD) are ‘allotted’ for 215 officers,” Lance said.

So was Lance surprised when he learned exactly how far off the APD is from being fully staffed?

“No, I knew they were short,” he told the Daily Planet. “You’ve got two shifts a day. You’ve got 80 (officers) or so who are working (per 12-hour shift). With vacations” and other reasons for being away from work, “they can’t be as efficient and do the job they need to do with limited manpower.

 â€œThey’re having a hard time finding people who want to take the job” of a police officer in Asheville, which, he said, has a highly negative reputation in the local, state and national law enforcement communities as being nonsupportive of police in particular, and law and order in general.

Also, as in previous interviews with the Daily Planet, the local FOP president noted that the very presence of a Buncombe County district attorney (Todd Williams), who, in Lance’s view, is widely known in the law enforcement community to frustrate sincere officers — who are striving to do their jobs of enforcing the law — by routinely seeking the dismissal of so many of the cases.

Williams’ performance as the DA serves only to encourage perpetrators to commit ever more offenses because, based on the perps’ experiences, there are no consequences looming — ever — in Buncombe’s lax legal system, Lance said.

Further, News 13 reported: “The survey stated that, based on crime data, while Montford ‘is relatively safe, it’s seeing an average of two violent crimes per month, specifically assaults or armed robberies.’”