Concerns flare with reports of fights, gunfire<\/span><\/p>\nNeighbors of the Bergmann have had issues with the hotel’s tenancy and management for years, they say.<\/p>\n
After the city closed down the hotel in March, many residents in the area said they did not want to see it reopen. At a meeting of the Uptown Neighborhood Association in May with city manager Rorie Watt, community development director Rob Steedle and Assemblyman Jesse Kiehl, several in attendance pressed the city officials on the issue.<\/p>\n
Watt said there was no plan to condemn the building until it was deemed structurally unsound. The neighbors were advised to continue to monitor the situation and to alert the police if there were issues.<\/p>\n
This month, members of the neighborhood association began registering an uptick in issues of concern.<\/p>\n
One resident noted a loud altercation at 5 a.m. on July 9 and again at about 6 a.m. on July 19. The night before, she said, she found a man crouched down digging in the flower bed next to her driveway who then “took off.” Others reported gunshots and possible drug-dealing and prostitution activity.<\/p>\n
On July 22, Kiehl — who also is a neighbor — emailed the group to say that he sat down with outgoing Juneau Police Department Chief Bryce Johnson.<\/p>\n
“I pushed on these issues and shared my own observations,” he wrote.<\/p>\n
“Please keep calling in the disturbances and logging the drug runs and suspicious activity,” Kiehl continued. “I can promise you it’s not going into a void — it’s helping, and I think we’ll see results.”<\/p>\n
Sell noted that the problems being called in appear to be associated with residences near the Bergmann Hotel, not specifically with the hotel itself.<\/p>\n
“We have posted extra patrols and more visible patrols,” she said, and added that charges will be filed on a woman in the area recently who appeared suspicious, but refused to stop at the direction of an officer.<\/p>\n
“When you see something, report it,” Sell said. “We want to know when things are actually happening up there, so we can address it.”<\/p>\n
Sell gave the neighborhood association kudos for organizing a National Night Out party on Tuesday and promised police department staff would attend.<\/p>\n
“That is what National Night Out is for, to say, ‘These are our streets,’” Sell said. “We are definitely supporting them on that. … We’re very glad the neighborhood is so involved. That’s how we’re going to solve this.”<\/p>\n
\nContact reporter Liz Kellar at 523-2246 or liz.kellar@juneauempire.com.<\/b><\/p>\n
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It might have felt a little bit like déja vu for Juneau Police Department officers and City and Borough of Juneau officials Thursday as they asked people found inside the Bergmann Hotel to leave and boarded up any opened doors. JPD Lt. Kris Sell was one of the group that conducted a walk-though of the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":107,"featured_media":4572,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":4,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-4571","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4571","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/107"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4571"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4571\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4572"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4571"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4571"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4571"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=4571"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}