Tenants and Landlords

Audra Jornov reported today in the Register-Star that the police were called three times on Tuesday night "to the area of 37 Columbia St." to deal with noisy altercations: "HPD squashes late-night fight." According to the report, on their third visit, the police used pepper spray to quell a "large and discontented" group of twenty to thirty people and tazers in "drive-stun mode" to subdue the four people who were resisting arrest for violent behavior. Interestingly, the assessment rolls reveal that 37 Columbia Street is one of two houses in the row between First and Front streets (33 Columbia is the other one) that are owned by former Hudson police commissioner and pastor of Shiloh Baptist Church, Reverend Ronald Grant. 

This is not the first time there has been trouble of this kind on this block. Last year, in May, a group of Second Ward residents came to the Police Committee of the Common Council to express their concerns about the level of noise and unruly behavior in the neighborhood. According to them, the focal point of the disruptive and unsettling activity was a trio of houses on Columbia Street between First and Front streets--two of them being the two houses owned by Grant. Then police commissioner, Grant conceded that the disturbance might have come from one of his buildings and said he was addressing the problem "in his capacities as commissioner, landlord, and community leader." A report on that meeting by Jamie Larson appeared in the Register-Star for May 25, 2011: "Residents say noise, disruptions escalating."