Felon-friendly home is also a police magnet
THIS STORY ALSO HAD A PICTURE OF ME ON THE FRONT PAGE
By ED SEALOVER - THE GAZETTE
Even for a troubled, neglected neighborhood, the constant flow of police cars to 807 Bryce Drive has been jarring.
Officers have been there 41 times in the past 10 months, responding to screaming matches, drug complaints and accusations of theft, among a laundry list of other things. There have been strip parties in the basement and a cavalcade of ex-cons moving in and out.
Inside the nondescript, two-story south-central Colorado Springs house resides an ever-changing array of recently released prisoners seeking help from homeowner Paul Thomas Dalton. Dalton, an ex-con who found religion in jail and vowed to help his fellow man upon his release, has offered them a place to stay to keep them from traveling the same path he staggered down.
But Dalton is a diagnosed schizophrenic who is jobless, bankrupt and has little contact with his housemates. Last month, the Regional Building Department condemned the house for a short time and forced out nine people, including a woman with a young son.
After 14 months of offering up his home, even Dalton admits his experiment was disastrous.
“By helping people, I figured, good things come back to me,” he said while perched on a worn couch in a living room cluttered with papers, plates of food and ashtrays full of cigarette butts. “I think I’m going to be ending that. It’s really caused more trouble than it’s worth.”
Neighbors agree, though most are unwilling to speak about it. A recent trip through the East Lake community found some who looked out from behind locked doors and said they see the traffic but don’t want to get involved.
Gretel Fitzpatrick has lived three doors down from 807 Bryce Drive for 40 years, a time during which the com- munity has become poorer and more transient, she said. She described Dalton as a “very nice, outgoing gentleman,” but she’s getting sick of the police activity at his house.
“Every time I look, the cops are there,” Fitzpatrick said. “I was talking to the neighbor up the street, and he said he’s tired of having the cops over there all the time.”
A high-school dropout, Dalton served two years in the Navy before moving across the country selling items at flea markets. Shortly after arriving in Colorado Springs eight years ago, he got involved in a scheme where he and an accomplice would enter a store, empty a box that contained a low-priced item, stuff it with expensive goods and buy it at the low price.
Dalton was arrested three times for theft between 1995 and 1998, according to court records. The last conviction got him a five-year sentence, and he served about 1½ years in Community Corrections.
When he got out in 2000, he got a layman’s degree online from the American Baptist Association so he could work as a prison volunteer, he said. This certification allowed him to do ministry work without being a minister.
Last April, when he held a job booking cruises for Carnival Cruise Lines, he got what he called a good deal and bought his five-bedroom house. He started taking people in, mostly friends of his wife, who was in prison for possession of methamphetamine.
The first call for police help came in mid-September; seven more followed in 2004. In six months this year, officers have been called to the house 33 times.
Sgt. Catherine Buckley, the neighborhood policing officer for the area, called that “a fairly high amount” for a singlefamily residence. Although the southeastern part of town is more crime-prone, the East Lake neighborhood where Dalton lives is not otherwise a high-crime area, she said.
Police records show that most of the problems are disturbances between roommates, or between Dalton and the residents, over money or personal gripes. Stolen checks have been found in the house, and there have been reports of drug paraphernalia on the property.
Given his mental condition, Dalton’s ability to offer consistent aid to anyone is dubious; he’s also had financial problems.
The 46-year-old declared in his April bankruptcy filing that he is a schizophrenic who hears a voice of “Saundra” that causes him anxiety and a loss of focus. The Colorado Department of Human Services backed this with a diagnosis of chronic schizophrenia included in the file.
Dalton, who speaks in a raspy voice and sometimes twitches when he talks, can’t work because of his condition. Usually he stays upstairs alone and doesn’t get involved with his tenants, he said.
He doesn’t counsel those with whom he does interact. He just gives them rides and a place to stay, he said.
Asked to describe success stories among the residents, Dalton ran his fingers through curly, disheveled hair before replying that he couldn’t think of any. Several of the residents have returned to prison, he said.
At least two small children have accompanied their mothers during stays at the house. Tonya Luther, who visited her newborn grandchild there in February, said she saw a glass pipe used for drugs on the floor and there was no water or heat in the house.
And Dalton acknowledged that on two occasions he has allowed a friend who runs a strip-tease business to throw parties in his basement. He sees no reason to defend that, noting: “Exotic dancing is actually a very old art form.”
He has tried to kick troublemakers out of the house, he said. But when he has wanted to do this, police have told him he could not without giving 72 days’ notice, he said.
But the city’s code-enforcement officer, Karon DiPentino, denied there is a 72-day rule or anything stopping Dalton from evicting residents.
“We don’t get involved in that,” DiPentino said. “Absolutely not. And he’s the one who lets them in in the first place.”
Problems like these can affect the surrounding area more than people realize, said Jan Doran, president of the Council of Neighbors and Organizations. Frequent police visits to a house can drive down surrounding property values and increase the number of people who want to leave the neighborhood, she said.
“More importantly, it creates a tremendous fear factor,” Doran said. “Anytime you see a house that has a regular police presence, what you end up doing is alerting neighbors that something is wrong and they should be worried.”
In May, Dalton rented the basement area to Sandy Turcotte, a friend of his wife, Robin DeBusk. Turcotte was not an ex-convict; she became the first person to sign a contract to live in part of the house.
Dalton and Turcotte blame each other for the trouble that ensued, but city officials have determined Turcotte was living in an uninhabitable area. The ceiling fan was loose, electrical wiring was exposed and there was a hole in her ceiling that peered into the upstairs bathroom, Turcotte and DiPentino said.
Dalton said he agreed to rent the basement to her for $500 a month but told her to use the upstairs bathroom and kitchen.
Turcotte said she was told everything would be fixed, and then was not given receipts for rent payments.
In less than a month, she called police nearly a dozen times. She reported that computer parts and watches were stolen from her and that Dalton had taken down a wall between the kitchen and basement area to get to her.
Dalton said Turcotte pushed it down.
Finally, she called code enforcement in late May. On June 6, the Regional Building Department condemned the house and ordered all nine residents out within 48 hours.
Code enforcement cited Dalton for many violations. City planners told him it is illegal to turn a single-family home into a duplex.
Land-use inspector Pam Brady also said it’s against the city’s zoning code to have more than five unrelated individuals living in a single-family house.
But DiPentino said the housing code allows for 10 people in a 740-square-foot house and noted the zoning code is more stringent and more difficult to enforce.
Regional Building cited Dalton for working on the wiring, plumbing and walls without a permit, and it declared the building unsafe.
Department spokeswoman Leslie Gruen said those citations are rare in an owner-occupied home.
“Typically when a building is declared unsafe, it’s been run down and abandoned,” Gruen said.
Dalton hired an electrician to pull a permit for the work, allowing him and DeBusk to move back in the next day.
Turcotte is staying with friends as she looks for a new home.
Dalton has a lot of repairs to make in the next two months, or the house will be condemned again. He is struggling to raise money but said he will get it done.
Once he does, it may or may not be business as usual.
Though Dalton still has sheets of stickers with a serenity prayer on them, he isn’t ministering in prisons anymore.
In an interview two weeks ago, he also said he does not plan to open his house to others again.
But when reached last week Dalton said a man who had no place to stay and whose girlfriend had just gotten out of prison called him for help.
The two are living at 807 Bryce Drive now.
“As much as I said I wouldn’t help anyone, I couldn’t help myself,” Dalton said.
As long as Dalton’s efforts continue, the police cars may remain a regular sight on his street. Until the house is fixed up, people could have to relocate on short notice.
The reformed felon said, though, that he didn’t know whether he would change the past, despite the troubles it brought. Although many of the people he tried to help have regressed, maybe they’ll think of him and reform at some time in the future, he said.
“If one person had been changed 100 percent and turned their life around, everything else would have been worth it,” he said. “I can’t say it was a failure. Only God can say that.”
