Rebecca Cosme and Sukhraj Kaur used to be friendly toward one another, but not anymore.
The two women still agree on some things, like the fact that their Central Pasadena neighborhood can be dangerous at times; a place where men occasionally loiter, drink liquor from pint bottles and apparently even shoot up drugs.
But what the two women disagree on most — what has driven the biggest wedge between them — is the question of what should be done to keep unsavory characters away from Cosme’s home and Kaur’s Linda Rosa Market, located off the corner of Allen Avenue and Villa Street, the business’ front door just a parking lot away from Cosme’s 8-feet-tall backyard fence.
Over the past year, Cosme said she and her life partner, Sam Asencio, have called Pasadena police numerous times regarding men congregating in that lot, who allegedly throw trash over the fence and into their yard. In March, Asencio called police in March after finding a used syringe amidst the cantaloupes growing in his garden. He said an officer told him over the phone to just throw it away.
“I think there are other ways to handle that than just say throw it in the garbage and ignore the problem and hope it will go away,” said Asencio. And the problem did not go away, with Asencio finding another used syringe in his yard on July 25. That’s when Cosme called the Weekly.
“It’s gotten to the point that if I come out in the afternoon and I see it, it’s getting tossed right back over,” said Asencio. “And if I see anyone drinking in the parking lot, I’m telling them to get lost.”
But not long after finding the second syringe in July, Asencio and Cosme said the situation went from one of men hanging out to someone actually trying to break in when one of Asencio’s three children, ages 9, 11 and 12, saw a man jumping over their next door neighbor’s reinforced back fence, which is secured by a chain and a padlock. To that call, police responded within minutes in patrol cars and a helicopter, the couple said.
Although Cosme said she has called police many times over nearly three years, authorities have no record of calls for help from the couple’s home address, said Pasadena police Cmdr. Darryl Qualls. That may be because Cosme and Asencio said they gave their names but never listed their address with police out of fear of retribution from the people they were complaining about.
Not discounting the most recent complaints, Qualls, a Pasadena native, recalled a time in the late 1980s and early ’90s when that corner was a hotbed for often drug-related and sometimes violent crime. “It’s better than it was years ago,” Qualls said, “and that’s largely because we worked on it and were able to clean it up with the help of business owners.”
Qualls said Cosme and Asencio, as well as Kaur and her husband, can call the watch commander’s office if there is trouble. He provided Cosme with his direct line.
“When we first moved in, we were calling the cops every single day, and at first it was nobody showing up,” said Cosme. “I think we just got on their nerves and then sent someone out. They were sick of hearing from us.”
On the other side of the fence, Kaur and her husband are certainly tired of being blamed by Cosme and Asencio for all of the neighborhood’s woes. They also have a vested interest in making sure they run a clean and safe store, one that sells mostly wholesome market goods and beer, but not liquor. That’s for sale around the corner at E&D Liquor, on Allen Avenue, which shares the parking lot with Linda Rosa Market on the Villa Street side of the complex of stores. Other businesses using that lot are a restaurant and a beauty salon, both of which are located next door to the market on the northeast corner of Villa.
Kaur welcomes more of a police presence near her business. “If I saw someone doing something wrong, I would call the police. But someone who is doing drugs or something like that, that is not my responsibility,” she said.
As the couple spoke to a reporter, their son and daughter, ages 6 and 7, played in the store and on an ice cream delivery truck as the adults kept a close eye on them and the business.
“I have a family. I have a little boy and a little girl. I live here too,” said Kaur, pointing to a home across the street from the market space they rent.
Her husband said that he also saw a man drinking vodka from a pint bottle, and “I have problems with him too,” he said, adding, “The police have to take care of that.”
But while both sides welcome more patrols, the couple is adamant about their business not being the magnet for trouble that Cosme and Asencio claim it is.
“No one is drinking outside. No one is doing drugs,” said Kaur. If that is happening, it is occurring after the store closes at 8 p.m., at which point “That is not my responsibility,” she said. Shortly after lunch one day recently, there were only a few people in the market, or in any of the businesses. However, a lone, slightly balding thin and tallish white man with a slight beard and no apparent purpose there stood between two cars with his back three feet from Cosme’s fence and watched the front of the store as Kaur spoke with a reporter. In fairness, he may have been there looking for work. Along the fence there is a line of trees, some of which have help wanted and other advertisements tacked to them.
Cosme pointed out that there is a sign posted directly above the front door of the market that prohibits loitering and drinking in the parking lot. But that doesn’t seem to be an effective deterrent, she said.
“They’ve always been really, really nice people, and it’s just unfortunate that they are allowing something like this to happen,” Cosme said of her neighbors. But, she said, crime “is bad for my home life,” and it is making Cosme and her family “prisoners in our own home.”
Hey K;
While hard-liquor pint bottles are the choice container of the homeless, no/low-rent drug-abusing type, beer (unless perhaps it's 30/40 oz'er malts) is generally the choice of the TV-gazing, couch-potatoes who usually don't shoot up in the alley outside just before the game starts.
WhileI saw no complaints in this article about beer containers, small hard-liquor bottles were mentioned. Tell me, did the most immediate source of small hard-liquor bottles refuse an interview for this article? It seems to me that the syringe-slammers are only "doing their thing" in the immediate vicinity of a hard-liquor source.
Is this a "wrong place at the wrong time" kinda' thing? I mean, shouldn't the focus here be either on the hard-liquor store, or perhaps even the closest "sleepout" location of the local homeless crowd?
It does appear that the "problem-people" are not regular patrons of the market.
Something is missing here.
DanD