SPOKANE, Wash. — When visitors get off I-90, their first view of Spokane is usually the intersection at Second Avenue and Division Street.
First impressions are important, but when visitors drive through Second and Division, they may be greeted with crime, drug use or violence.
Two churches near Second and Division claim the lawlessness was never this bad in the past. Now, they're struggling to find a balance between helping those in need and securing their churches.
Two years ago, a shooting across the street from Redemption Church interrupted Pastor Miles Rohde's sermon. Since then, he's also had to pick up trash, human waste and drug paraphernalia outside the church. At one point, he said a man came inside the church and said he was looking for a box cutter "so he could murder someone."
Rohde said the crime and violence weren't this bad nine years ago when his congregation moved into the building.
"Some of the care facilities, Catholic Charities wasn't here yet, though the shelter house was," he said. "We had some homeless here but predominately, they were genuinely homeless. Just in need of things. There was not big drug activity, but since then we've really dealt with the criminal element."
Redemption Church now has to vet every person they let in, according to Rohde. He added the church's insurance premium has skyrocketed from $900 a month to $3,200.
The Spokane Police Department (SPD) began increasing patrols in the area in September. On Monday, Rohde said police cleared out a homeless encampment outside the church; however, he knows officers can only do so much, especially when the Spokane County Jail is on a red light status.
"What it means is that the jail literally does not have the capacity or the ability to accept a new arrestee into the facility, and that means that officers can be sitting with prisoners for five hours," SPD Cpl. Nick Briggs said. "The importance of being able to book somebody into jail is not because we necessarily believe that arrests are the sole way of curing the issues that we are seeing, they are not."
However, Briggs said when someone is behind bars, they aren't using drugs or breaking windows.
"You have those who want to be helped and those that don't. You know, life is a choice, we can't force people to anything they don't want to do, but we can do a better job than we have been doing," said Rev. Amos Atkinson, the assistant pastor at Calvary Baptist Church.
He said churches shouldn't need barbed wire, but Calvary Baptist spent roughly $13,000 to secure its parking lot and other parts of the church.
"Last week I had to run two guys literally off the porch," Atkinson recalled. "They were sitting up here in the corner, getting high on our steps, smoking. It's just a vicious cycle that our churches are dealing with here in this area."
Despite the challenges, Calvary Baptist has no plans to move. In fact, the church will celebrate 134 years in the same location next year.
Redemption Church, however, is a different story.
"In January, we put it on the market, and we've had very little interest because of the location," Rohde said. "I don't know how that problem is ever going to be fixed, certainly not with money being thrown at it. We're dealing with a moral crisis as well."
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