Raleigh apartment residents vent at meeting about curfew

RALEIGH, North Carolina (WTVD) -- Residents of a Raleigh apartment complex placed under curfew demanded answers from their property management company at a special community meeting.

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Residents, advocates and Raleigh police officers were all there. But when ABC11 tried to go inside with our cameras, the apartment managers told us to leave.

An insider snapped still pictures as residents gathered to voice their concerns or questions about the much-talked about 10 p.m. curfew issued by the managers of Raleigh North Milbank Apartments.

"I don't understand why you guys weren't let in," said Mickey Hayes, a Raleigh resident, who attended the meeting inside the complex's community center.

"About half (of the attendees) felt the curfew was justified. The other half felt the curfew was an imprisonment," Hayes said.

Last Friday, a number of residents here expressed their outrage about the curfew.

"Just because our skin is black, we're not all criminals. You don't have to deal with us all the same way," Katherine Seaberry said last week.

But management insisted the curfew was the best way to keep out drug dealers and gangs. Records show more than 1,500 calls for police service in this neighborhood during the last year.

ORIGINAL STORY: Raleigh apartment residents fume over management's curfew

Community advocate Diana Powell had her own sit-down meeting with the property manager.

"They don't want media involved; they want to handle this on their own," Powell said.

After the community meeting, Powell called it a good first step. Several RPD officers were there, but she says more can be done to ease the tension between community and police - even among residents who support the curfew.

"(Many residents) that were in that room, in the meeting today, voiced that they did not have an issue with the curfew," Powell said. "It was the type of officers that are being sent over (and harassing residents), and their concern was those officers were not in that meeting."

Raleigh Police used the gathering to clarify one very important point to residents and perhaps ease fears; they do not have the legal authority to enforce a curfew on private property.

But, the complex has also given RPD permission to trespass and arrest anyone here who is not on a lease and not with a tenant. The police department has agreed to that.