Pictured is Andrea Hatfield, a Jamestown resident who came to the City Council to report an increase in strangers coming into her neighborhood in the warmer months. Screenshot courtesy of the city of Jamestown’s website

Following some unusual people being spotted in and around her neighborhood, a member of the public has approached the City Council with concerns.

Andrea Hatfield, who lives on Hotchkiss Street near the Roger Tory Peterson Institute, said that as warmer weather comes, so do the amount of strangers that pop up around her neighborhood. While this is not something new, she did have a few instances that were concerning to her.

“We have had a dramatic upswing in stranger activity, like a gentleman who claimed to be homeless going down Hotchkiss Street, sitting on porches, trying to get into people’s garages,” Hatfield said. “We’ve had people coming down Parkway, one woman, I think it was Easter weekend, it was fairly nice weather … walking down Arlington, so I don’t think it was a local.”

Also, a few weekends ago, Hatfield reported a man came up through her backyard, which she said was “highly unusual” because that would cause him to walk up through vegetation such as poison ivy. She said he had come up from the Roger Tory Peterson Institute and said he was lost, looking to try to get to Lakeview Cemetery.

“I said, ‘Well you don’t live there, where are you trying to get to in town?'” Hatfield said. “‘Well, over by Liberty Street.’ You know, he wasn’t really doing anything illegal, but it was just a rapid sequence of unusual things.”

Hatfield also noted that her area was a shortcut for multiple places, including for people coming up from Falconer, or Jamestown Community College, or the hotel where some homeless people are currently being housed.

“I understand they need a place to stay, but it’s starting to impact the neighborhood and I’m not sure it benefits them to be way out there on the edge of town,” Hatfield said. “We don’t have a grocery store, we’re far away from any services. And as I said earlier, grouping a number of people together who are homeless … at a hotel next to an expressway doesn’t seem like a great way to help them.”

She added that it most likely does not benefit the city either, saying that the amount of strangers walking around has just been a little more intense than in previous years. Hatfield said she felt that the homeless needed help and that where they are in the hotel right now was not helping them, adding she was also curious to learn more about housing projects at the meeting to see what more could be done, also raising concerns about a school aged child she had heard about living in the hotel. Council President Tony Dolce said police chief Timothy Jackson will take note of the strangers in the neighborhood and keep an eye on things.

“Ninety-nine percent of the time it’s nothing bad, but just so people know that there are people watching and looking out for each other,” Dolce said.