Excessive trash, grass over growth, and chipped paint on houses aren’t just eye sores, but they can be cited as a city code violations.

Helping to clean up city streets is the job of Syracuse Code Enforcement inspectors.

Omar Sharif has been working for Syracuse City Code Enforcement for 13 years. He said when he puts on his badge, it’s an opportunity to create positive change in the community.

“Ok, so we had a case,” said Sharif. “I cited them for house numbers, they got the house numbers up. That’s all I asked them to do. The property looks good and solid from the outside. We got compliance there. I’m happy about that.”

Omar is checking on the progress of the properties he inspected back in August. He works with his partner, Reggie Packer, who has been an inspector for about a year.

But Omar and Reggie met at Nottingham High School and have known each other for 30 years.

“I love my city,” said Packer. “Driving around, you see stuff like this. It’s just not good. You see houses where people take care of them and they are living next door to these houses and I feel bad for them.”

When walking the city streets doing exterior inspections, they are looking for anything on the property that is poorly maintained or in bad condition, like trash, debris, overgrowth, chipped paint, and broken windows.

“This is just, this is too much. These houses are so dilapidated and it creates a mentality amongst people in the area that no one cares about this street," Sharif said. "So they can come and do whatever they like, like I said, it creates a dark alley mentality for what used to be a quiet street in the city of Syracuse and we have to do something about it."

On Neutral Court and Park Street on the city's north side, they cited about 18 houses for violations. On their follow up inspection, they saw that about seven had made improvements.

“That was corrected, so we’re going to go to violation, remove the graffiti on the fence. We’re going to close that violation. It shows what date I closed it so we are making progress,” said Sharif.

Omar and Reggie say that’s their ultimate goal is to get people to comply.

“This is case-by-case basis, working with people and building relationships between the city personal and owners and residents," said Sharif.

They work with residents that need more time to make changes, but when there is no contact or progress, they are forced to fine residents and sometimes take the issue to court. 

“Some owners think we are out here just to fine them and that’s not the case not one bit. Our overall objective from heads down is to get the city to look better and feel safer,” said Packer.