DEBATING CO-OP / CONDO SECURITY

"I was the first person to say we need to talk about this and make sure we have proper security measures in place," says Nina Statman, a marketing director who moved into a ground-floor apartment in the co-op in 2008 with her husband and their two young sons. She was elected to the five-member board this past spring.

"I felt this incident was not addressed in a way that made me feel comfortable," she says. "So I sent out a reply e-mail asking for more specific details about what had happened. If we as a group feel there's an issue with safety, let's have a meeting and air our concerns."

Committee and Cops

A meeting was convened December 6, 2009, and 32 of the 54 co-op apartments were represented, a mix of old guard and recent arrivals. Jill Dube, the board's treasurer and a resident since the building's conversion, gave an update on the armed robbery. Other shareholders offered information about a break-in in the co-op's basement, a stolen bike and computer, and a shooting in the neighborhood a year earlier.

Statman and two other shareholders were named to a security committee. They attended a community meeting held by the NYPD's 77th Precinct in Crown Heights, and gave police officers a tour of the co-op, then took down their security recommendations. They also began exploring the cost of installing cameras and enhanced exterior lighting. But as the committee was doing its work, a subtle split became evident within the co-op.

Dube, a real estate lawyer and the mother of a teenage son, was remembering the bad old 1980s when the co-op was trying to get on its feet. "When we moved in we were not well-received on the block," she recalls. "At the beginning we had lots of problems. There were robberies, burglaries, muggings in the vestibule. We could see the drug-dealing going on. But we didn't put in some expensive security system. Instead, shareholders took turns volunteering as security guards." While "nobody has time to do that anymore," she says, she notes that the buildings "on either side of us have security cameras, and they have worse problems than we do."

High Tech vs. No Tech

As Dube sees it, common sense trumps high-tech. "Until people stop giving door keys to guests, until they stop holding doors open for strangers, until they take precautions, you can't expect a security system to protect you," she says. The building's property manager, Justine Delagana of Saparn Realty, agrees. "I strongly believe that if people don't pay attention to who's walking in behind them, it won't work even with cameras," she says.

Newer arrival Statman, however, advocated a surveillance solution. "I feel if there are things we can do to make [the building and neighborhood] even safer, we should explore those options," she says. "There were definitely some struggles" over disagreements over the security cameras. "We got into it a little bit," she says, "but we've worked it out."

The division within the co-op wasn't simply between the old guard and more recent arrivals. Other factors included the location of the shareholders' apartments, whether or not they have children and the age of the children. In the end, the issue boiled down to a difference of opinion between shareholders who felt safe and those who felt less so.

Next page: Trying and failing to reach accord >>