Charles Manis, 67, owner of Charlie's Quik Stop on East Main Street, talks about being shot during one of the many robberies he has experienced. Manis has put plywood over the door, at left, where his most recent burglary was committed.Charles Manis received an alarm company phone call Thursday night at his Lookout Valley home, so he hopped in his car and drove the five or so miles back to his Chattanooga store, Charlie's Quik Stop on East Main Street.
He found a football-sized concrete block, splintered wood and cigarette butts littering the entrance of the shop he's owned for 21 years. The wood was boarding up the front entrance where wire-impregnated glass sat until burglars bashed it out Tuesday with a pipe or other metal object.
Manis couldn't get the glass replaced because the repair shop was closed because of the winter weather. Luckily, the wood held even though "they had beat on it for a while," Manis said.
Charlie's Quik Stop, located in the Ridgedale community, bordered by Highland Park and Oak Grove, has been robbed, burglarized or vandalized more than 100 times, Manis figures. He's been shot - the bullet is still lodged in his body - and his wife was threatened with a knife about a month ago.
Maybe, he thinks, it's time to close.
VIOLENT HISTORY
The store looks like a rat-gnawed pantry. On one side, metal sheets are fastened to cinder block walls that were beaten by sledgehammer-wielding burglars years before.
On another side, someone hopped his chain-link fence, thinking they'd get into the store by tearing off a wooden wall, only to discover that the wood was covering the wall of a metal walk-in freezer. Manis has replaced the wood wall but not gotten around to painting it white like the rest of the walls around the freezer.
The newly battered front door was a replacement for the one nearly ripped off its hinges when thieves broke in to grab lottery tickets and anything else they could hold.
And Manis, 67, bears a visible scar from seven years ago when a robber walked up behind him with a gun. As Manis turned, the robber shot him, the bullet hitting near his collarbone, traveling down through his ribs and stopping in his back.
His wife, Gudrun McBryar, 65, was spared physical wounds but doesn't work alone since about a month ago when a man walked into the store at 8 a.m., just as she opened, and threatened her with a knife. He ran away with $40.
"You just stay on edge, you can't rest," she said. "Last time, we weren't home 30 minutes and the phone rings. There's nothing you can do."
Manis criticizes police patrols, which he said are too few. After pushing for City Councilman Andraé McGary to get elected two years ago, Manis said he called the councilman three times and never heard back.
And he threw up his hands at the community meetings he'd attended, wondering aloud what they'd accomplished.
When reached by phone Friday, McGary said he had not heard from Manis in the past but would talk with him that night.
Manis acknowledged Friday evening that he'd had a "lengthy conversation" with McGary.
McGary empathized with Manis' experience, saying his home had been burglarized while he lived in the same community. But McGary defended the number of police patrols in the neighborhood.
"I will say this for our police department, they are active, they are present in this area," he said.
McGary said he encouraged Manis and others to attend the neighborhood meetings to share information, build crime-watch programs and help police.
"Will crime go down instantaneously?" the councilman asked. "That's not my understanding, but that's my hope."
Ridgedale Neighborhood Association President Gary Ball could not be reached late Friday afternoon for a comment.
police protection
Manis' shop is in the Chattanooga Police Department's Fox Zone. In early December, Capt. Ken Neblette took over Sector 2 of the patrol division, which contains both Fox and Echo zones, some of the busiest sections of the city for crime calls.
Neblette said he understands Manis' and other burglary victims' frustration, but said that, on an average shift, there are at least five officers patrolling Fox Zone.
"We've got more officers per square mile than the other zones," he said.
Even if the assigned officers get busy with calls or must work a crime scene, officers from other parts of the city will come to Fox zone to assist, Neblette said.
"It's a lot like playing zone defense," he said. "We've got our people spread out in the city and we can pull people from across the city to help if one zone is busy."
Manis doesn't believe crime has declined much in his 21 years in the neighborhood. It may actually have gotten worse in the last five years, he said.
He's right in one area - burglaries.
According a 2010 public safety report from the Ochs Center for Metropolitan Studies, all crime categories decreased in the Ridgedale area except burglaries. From 2005 to 2009, burglaries increased by 52 percent in the Ridgedale/Oak Grove/Clifton Hills community, the report shows.
Robberies dropped by 24 percent, aggravated assaults by 7 percent, simple assaults by 16 percent, vandalism by 1 percent and drug offenses by 60 percent, according to the Ochs report.
Neblette said property crimes detectives recently arrested an individual connected with at least 60 burglaries in the area and also stopped a stolen-goods fencing ring that propelled much of the community's property crime.