Donna Milbrandt still remembers the feeling of coming home and startling a would-be burglar, of having someone uninvited in her house.

“I immediately ran next door to the neighbors,” she recalls. “I was scared.”

It took weeks to shake that feeling.

Two decades later, Donna and husband Sigmund feel safe as can be in their North Argonne Avenue home in Sterling Park.

For years they watched neighbors and friends move away, one by one, eyeing the greener grass in Ashburn and other non-Sterling destinations.

But since the Eastern Loudoun Police Station was built nearly two years ago, their Sterling neighborhood is a different place. It’s a place with significantly less crime, cleaner streets and less worry. A place they can call home.

Mean streets to clean streets

For the past decade, parts of Sterling have tarnished an otherwise low crime rate in Loudoun County. According to information from the Sheriff’s Office, approximately one-third of the county’s crime in the last 10 years occurred in the area currently patrolled by deputies with the Eastern Loudoun Station.

Of the big four violent crimes (homicide, assault, rape, robbery), that Sterling area accounted for more than 30 percent of each category in the last decade. Additionally, auto theft and larceny also topped the 30 percent mark. Of the seven crime categories provided by the Sheriff’s Office, Sterling accounted for less than 30 percent just once, with 840 burglaries out of 3,341 accounting for 25 percent of the county’s total.

The neighborhood surrounding the station was among the most crime-infested in the county. From June 8, 2009, until June 8, 2010, there was a homicide, 26 rapes, 21 robberies, 80 aggravated assaults, 129 burglaries, 80 auto thefts and 1,235 larcenies in that territory alone.

Now – a few months short of two years after the station opened – the drop in area crime has been staggering.

“Looking at these numbers, it is incredible how far crime has dropped in the area surrounding that police station,” Loudoun Sheriff Mike Chapman said.

From two years before opening, to a year and seven months after completion (the latest available statistics), crime has dropped across the board in the area, often dramatically.

Murders are down 50 percent, rape cases have dropped 60 percent, robbery is 4 percent less frequent and aggravated assault dropped 54 percent.
Additionally burglary (down 50 percent), auto theft (down 37 percent) and larceny (down 28 percent) have also seen substantial declines.

The Milbrandts saw this coming. They testified four years ago to put the station in place. With lower crime, property values have gone up and property insurance has dropped.

And while the couple feels much safer, it’s not just about violent crimes and break-ins. Donna Milbrandt identified a variety of side effects that police presence has brought to the area.

“We used to have teenagers joyriding out here in front of our house. They would fly down the road at [high speeds] and stop right before they’d hit a tree. That’s gone now,” Donna Milbrandt said. “It wasn’t unusual to wake up on a weekend morning and see beer bottles all over the street. There is not as much littering now.”

The Milbrandts believe the station has cleaned up their neighborhood – in every meaning of the word. They said the driving has been slower and safer and the police cars are quiet.

Bill and Peggy Pinner, neighbors of the Milbrandts, are especially content with the station residing in their neighborhood.

“I can tell you, we think [the station is] about the greatest thing that can be in this area,” said Peggy Pinner, who also moved to the neighborhood in 1969. “There’s a real feeling of security, and it’s a quiet, beautiful building.”

The Pinners, who also attended the proposal meetings, said the only worry they had prior to construction of the station was that prisoners would be held there overnight,  which to them equated to a potentially bad situation. Their concerns were alleviated when they learned that prisoners are not held in cells overnight, but instead transferred to the Loudoun Adult Detention Center in Leesburg.

A cultural transition

Supervisor Eugene Delgaudio (R) has represented the Sterling area for several terms, and helped usher the new station into existence.

When the proposal fell onto the ballot in 2007, he decided to back the Sheriff’s Office.

“I was up for re-election that year, and there was a lot of opposition to it,” Delgaudio said. “Everyone was saying that they didn’t want it in their neighborhood.”

Delgaudio said the Board of Supervisors reviewed 50 different locations in Eastern Loudoun to find a suitable home for the station, but that accruing the 5 acres to get it built didn’t come easy. Still, the station was the hot topic for Sterling’s residents, as upwards of 400 people attended community meetings and an open house once the station was completed.

Despite the push back, Delgaudio decided to structure his campaign position around getting the station built. He was re-elected, and remains on the board today after another successful campaign in 2011.

While Delgaudio is certainly happy with the lower crime statistics in the area and positive feedback from residents, he believes that a cultural change is what sparked a declining crime rate. More specifically, Delgaudio said the Sheriff’s Office has instituted community policing tactics.

“For law enforcement to be truly effective, it needs more cooperation, more enthusiasm from citizens,” Delgaudio said. “It’s not about the statistics, it is about the partnership between the general public and law enforcement.”

Neighborhood watch

Community policing is not a new concept – it was a key component of former Sheriff Steve Simpson’s strategy when he took over in 1996.

“Engaging the community and the relationship of the community and law enforcement is huge,” Simpson told the Times-Mirror in September 2011. “That’s a large part of why crime is down in Loudoun.”

A spokesman for the Sheriff’s Office said that Loudoun County residents know their neighborhoods best and can identify when something is out of place.

Delgaudio indicated that there are a lot of residents in Sterling looking to volunteer time to make the streets safe. He believes this auxiliary police force could be an effective way of curbing crime, using a similar technique to the way Loudoun Fire Rescue uses volunteer firefighters.

The Sheriff’s Office community policing program has eight deputies assigned to it, with one deputy assigned to each community serviced by the program, according to Field Operations Division Commander Robert Buckman. Yet, the Eastern Loudoun location is the only separate facility so far.

The 18,400 square foot building has multiple storage, records and evidence rooms, an area to video conference with a magistrate, three holding cells, lockers, an exercise room, kitchen and separate roll call room. Basically, the building is a self-sufficient behemoth, a fitting destination to survive a pending apocalypse.

The next similar station in Loudoun may be the proposed Round Hill station in Western Loudoun, which is still in the planning stages, despite being conceived nearly a decade ago.

“The Western Loudoun Station will enhance community policing,” Chapman wrote in a letter to Supervisor Janet Clarke that was obtained by the Times-Mirror. “It will serve as a base for roll call, prisoner process, citizen service and will provide an opportunity to engage the community through regular meetings.

Chapman indicated he’s met little resistance while lobbying for the Western Loudoun Station, especially while going door-to-door during the 2011 campaign season.

However, the Board of Supervisors recently took a step back to further inspect plans for the station. If the statistics from Eastern Loudoun are any indication, another station just may make sense.