Police Chief to Act on Citizen Complaints

Resident Susan O’Brien told the City Council this week that she is afraid to take her two young children for walks around their north Garden Grove neighborhood.

Teenagers loitering on the sidewalks, unattended children and scores of cars parked or abandoned along Faye Street and the Chapman Avenue neighborhood are just some of the nuisances that O’Brien and more than two dozen of her neighbors described Tuesday night.

“There are two problems,” O’Brien said. “Unsupervised babies and young children--they run in front of cars and play in the gutter and street. The second is the teenage gang activity. . . . It’s escalated to a point where we can’t drive by.”

After hearing the complaints, Police Chief Stan Knee met with the residents in a room next to council chambers. He said afterward that he plans to set up a neighborhood meeting as soon as possible, evaluate the situation and develop a strategy to deal with it.

Among the residents’ complaints were that the city has not responded to their repeated complaints about code violations and unruly neighbors.

Knee apologized for any delay in police response and said he will mobilize the appropriate city and county agencies to deal with specific complaints.

“We’ll come up with a plan to protect the neighborhood and ensure that people follow the law,” Knee said. “We can’t make them leave the area, but we can make them follow the law.”