{"id":1330,"date":"2014-10-08T05:29:05","date_gmt":"2014-10-08T09:29:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.shorebeat.com\/brick\/?p=1330"},"modified":"2014-10-08T05:22:36","modified_gmt":"2014-10-08T09:22:36","slug":"maple-leaf-park-full-of-drugs-and-vagrancy-resident-tells-brick-council-in-enforcement-plea","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/brick\/2014\/10\/maple-leaf-park-full-of-drugs-and-vagrancy-resident-tells-brick-council-in-enforcement-plea\/","title":{"rendered":"Maple Leaf Park ‘Full of Drugs and Vagrancy,’ Resident Tells Brick Council in Enforcement Plea"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Maple<\/a>

Maple Leaf Park (Credit: Google Maps)<\/p><\/div>\n

The Maple Leaf Park condominium development in Brick Township\u2019s Herbertsville section is home to drugs, prostitution, deadbeat landlords and a steady stream of late-night partying and loitering, a resident of the complex told the Brick Township Council at a meeting Tuesday night.<\/p>\n

James Cancel told the township\u2019s governing body that he bought a condominium in Maple Leaf Park years ago to raise his sons as a single father, and has seen the neighborhood steadily decline ever since, part of a plea for help from township officials to step up code enforcement and anti-crime efforts there.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy board, and the management company is shielding these people,\u201d Cancel said. \u201cThere is major noncompliance here.\u201d<\/p>\n

Cancel\u2019s bleak description of the crime-plagued condominium complex is one that has been far from a secret in Brick, but is rarely discussed. Decrying \u201cslum landlords,\u201d Cancel said 70 percent of the complex is rented, many to Section 8 tenants who do not take care of the property and engage in criminal activities.<\/p>\n

\u201cLandlords fly under the radar here,\u201d he said, describing one rental apartment near his that is rife with bed bugs and cockroaches.<\/p>\n

Cancel decided to bring his story before the township council after he said he\u2019s had no progress with the complex\u2019s management company. His request: stepped-up enforcement of township regulations requiring rental certificates of occupancy in units, more attention from township code enforcement officers and more intensive policing of the area.<\/p>\n

Cancel\u2019s son, Steven, said he left to join the U.S. Marine Corps in 2004 when some neighboring residents were using crack. He returned in 2008 and problems had only gotten worse, he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen I came back in 2008, there were prostitutes \u2026 now there\u2019s drug dealing,\u201d Steven Cancel said. \u201cIf this were Camden or Asbury Park, I wouldn\u2019t be standing here. But Brick is a nice place. It\u2019s ridiculously fixable. There are people form this side of town whose kids go to school across the street [at Brick Township High School] who say, \u2018I\u2019m glad my kid goes here instead of Memorial.\u2019 That all comes from Maple Leaf Park.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Cancels were joined by other residents of Maple Leaf Park who did not speak publicly. Township council members said they would discuss the issue of code enforcement and policing at the next meeting of the council\u2019s Public Safety Committee.<\/p>\n

\u201cThank you for your courage in speaking out against this and for caring about the community you live in,\u201d said Councilwoman Andrea Zapcic, pledging to schedule a meeting to look into the issue further.<\/p>\n

\u201cMaybe there is something we can do to help the police department better police that area and make it a safer place for you and your family,\u201d said Council President Susan Lydecker.<\/p>\n

In 2012, the township organized meetings with residents of Maple Leaf Park that included police chief Nils R. Bergquist and members of the previous governing body to discuss similar concerns. After Tuesday night\u2019s meeting, Bergquist said efforts to organize a neighborhood watch program in the development did not pan out \u2013 nobody signed up to volunteer.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe spend a lot of resources in Maple Leaf Park, and we will continue to spend a lot of resources in Maple Leaf Park,\u201d Bergquist said, adding that he would be speaking with the committee of council members and the township attorney to take a fresh look at ordinances and what could be done to improve the situation.<\/p>\n

The 359 unit complex, off Herbertsville Road, has been a source of crime issues for years in Brick, along with other condominium complexes in the area. In 2005, the leader of the Philadelphia Latin Kings, William Sosa, then 25, was arrested in nearby Sutton Village, off Lanes Mill Road.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are little kids running around as lookouts,\u201d said Steven Cancel. \u201cThis is what\u2019s going on. Are you going to tolerate this?\u201d<\/p>\n

<\/div><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Maple Leaf Park condominium development in Brick Township\u2019s Herbertsville section is home to drugs, prostitution, deadbeat landlords and a steady stream of late-night partying and loitering, a resident of the complex told the Brick Township Council at a meeting Tuesday night. James Cancel told the township\u2019s governing body that he bought a condominium in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1331,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[2],"tags":[24,285,381,382,27,262],"class_list":["post-1330","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-government","tag-brick-nj-news","tag-code-enforcement","tag-crime","tag-drug-dealing","tag-herbertsville","tag-maple-leaf-park"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/brick\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/10\/Screen-Shot-2014-10-08-at-12.19.13-AM.png","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pgt2Ft-ls","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shorebeat.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1330","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shorebeat.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shorebeat.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shorebeat.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shorebeat.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1330"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.shorebeat.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1330\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shorebeat.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1331"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shorebeat.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1330"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shorebeat.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1330"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shorebeat.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1330"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}