TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/091189/09118900.053

Text File | 1992-09-23 | 19KB | 365 lines

                V≡                                                          NATION, Page 14

On the Front Lines


House by house, block by block, angry citizens are rising up
against the drug dealers who have invaded their neighborhoods

By Richard Lacayo


    Where Rantine McKesson lives, in the Seven Mile-Van Dyke
section of east Detroit, the streets are thick with "rollers."
That is the slang term for the young dealers with the beepers
on their belts and their heads busy calculating how to spend the
$3,000 or so they can make each week selling crack. The streets
are clogged with customers too, mostly whites from the suburbs
who treat the neighborhood as their very own drive-in drug mart.
Not long ago, one woman got out of her car and simply waved a
handful of cash in the air. A flock of rollers came running.

    For a year, McKesson, 34, a legal secretary, watched the
takeover with dismay, disgust and sometimes horror. But she
merely watched -- until the night in July when feuding dealers
shot up a house just a block away. "While they were running
away, they dumped a 12-gauge shotgun in my alley," she says.
"One of the neighborhood kids found it." It was then that
McKesson decided to face down the dealers and galvanize the
neighborhood with a march against crack. "I'm afraid for my
kids, myself and my property values," she says. "But I'm not
going to run."

    No one will be listening more closely this week to George
Bush's proposals for a national war on drugs than the people
whose neighborhoods have been commandeered by the crack trade.
Countless numbers of angry homeowners and frightened apartment
dwellers have discovered that in the war against drugs, the
front line is just outside their front doors. Frustrated by
federal, state and local authorities whose effectiveness fails
to match their rhetoric, a growing number of Americans have
devised their own methods for driving the dealers from their
streets.

    All around the country, they have been organizing to patrol
their own turf, seal up the abandoned houses that serve as
crack dens, even bring suits against absentee landlords who own
the buildings. Some go in for a more dangerous tactic: direct
harassment of drug sellers. That was one of the methods used by
the fearless Beat Keepers in Los Angeles to chase off the
dealers near Hollywood and Vine. Though their confrontational
approach is risky, the Beat Keepers have a rallying cry that
could be taken up by the troops in the lonely war against drugs
in almost any city: "Beat the crack, and take the neighborhood
back!"

    The neighborhood that McKesson wants to take back is
typical of the patchwork landscape that is much of Detroit,
where tidy streets abruptly give way to blasted stretches of
chaos. The white bungalow in which she lives with her husband
Edwin, a Detroit police officer, their two children and a
twelve-year-old niece, sits amid well-kept houses with neatly
trimmed lawns. But just a few blocks away are the rubble-strewn
lots and abandoned buildings where the crack dealers hang out.

    After deciding to lead a citizens' march against the
dealers, McKesson received some encouraging cooperation from the
community. She persuaded a company to donate the paper for 1,000
flyers announcing the march, then convinced a printer to produce
them for free. Local merchants contributed poster board and wood
to make signs carrying messages like DRUGS SPELL DEATH. CRIME
SPELLS JAIL. Then she wrote a letter to the Detroit city
council. "I said we were going to do this march whether they
liked it or not," McKesson recalls. To her surprise, the council
offered its enthusiastic support, even providing a police escort
for the demonstrators.

    The response from McKesson's neighbors was less heartening.
Only 60 turned out for the march, many of them children.
Undaunted, McKesson and her small band went ahead, marching,
shouting and imploring for 15 hours on a muggy Saturday in
August. At one point, they came upon a dealer about to make a
sale. "We just stared at him," says McKesson. "He saw he was
surrounded and took off."

    For the past two months, McKesson, husband Edwin and
neighbor Randal Joyce have kept busy conducting patrols and
boarding up deserted houses that might otherwise serve as crack
dens. "Yesterday I chased a middle-age white guy out of here,"
she says. "I was right down his tail. And because the dealer saw
me, he wouldn't sell the guy dope." The dealers began operating
again as soon as the march was over, but at least the message
had got out: Some of the residents are going to fight.

    Battles like McKesson's can be won, though the victories
are hard earned, tenuous and often restricted to just a few
blocks wrested from the drug thugs. But McKesson can take heart
from the example set by the people who live near 20th and Tasker
Streets in South Philadelphia. A year ago, the area was swarming
with crack dealers and addicts. Today they are nowhere to be
seen, though it took a tragedy to alert the neighborhood to the
depth of its own predicament. In July 1988, Ralph Brooks Jr.,
6, was paralyzed by a stray bullet fired during a feud between
two dealers.

    Soon after, disgusted residents formed the 20th and Tasker
Improvement Council. One of their goals was simply to get
ordinary citizens out from behind their closed doors. "Unless
the community comes up with ways to reown the streets, the
dealers will be back," explains community organizer Peter Moor.
"We want to get the barbecues going again."

    Throughout the year, hundreds of local people have taken to
the streets in a series of outdoor vigils, cleanups and plain
old parties. A visitor to the area can now see the 50 former
crack dens boarded up by local residents, many of them covered
with a painted warning: ANOTHER HOUSE SEALED BY THE RESISTANCE.
A vacant lot once used for drug sales has also been converted
by residents into a playground: the Ralph Brooks Jr. Tot Lot.

    Similar efforts are taking place wherever residents are
determined to show dealers that they are outnumbered by the
people they have cowed for so long. "We're overwhelming them
with our numbers," boasts Julius Wilkerson, director of New
Orleans' Velocity Foundation, which has set up 22 "drug-free"
zones around that city.

    Bulletins from other cities along the front:

    LOS ANGELES. Last Monday night developer Danny Bakewell,
head of a group called the Brotherhood Crusade Black United
Fund, led about 50 men to the door of a crack house in the heart
of gang-infested South Central. "This is a major hit," he told
the anxious group. "We're going to confront a major drug house."
Backed by his platoon, all recruited from a local church,
Bakewell, 42, knocked on the door. "Why you picking on me?"
asked the startled man who answered. "I'm picking on dope
dealers," replied Bakewell. "You deal dope, then I'm picking on
you." The group did no more than show their numbers that night,
but it apparently worked: drug selling at the house has halted.

    In the month since Bakewell launched his campaign, police
say, crime has dropped more than 67% in the 36-block area
targeted for neighborhood patrols and crack-house swoops. "We
send a clear message that if you are dealing dope, we will do
what it takes to drive you out," says Bakewell. "We'll stand
outside your door, call you out, report you to the police,
disrupt your clients. We will just emphatically say, `This gig
is up.' "

    CHICAGO. Two nights after Bakewell's raid, two Chicago
priests, the Revs. George Clements and Michael Pfleger, led 200
people on an antidrug march through the South Side, where Father
Pfleger's St. Sabina Church is located. But the men have done
more than march. Last May, when an 18-year-old boy from his
parish died of a drug overdose, Father Clements took action
against a local candy store that did a side business in crack
pipes, syringes and cocaine scales. For weeks Father Clements,
57, had been trying in vain to persuade the shop owner to stick
to Tootsie Rolls and chewing gum. "After the funeral, I got very
emotional," says Father Clements. "I went in and told him to
smash up the stuff right there."

    When the man refused, the priest planted himself in the
doorway, telling any prospective customer that the shop owner
sold drug paraphernalia. "To my pleasant surprise, people would
not go in," Father Clements recalls. The proprietor gave in
after 45 minutes and removed the drug equipment. Six weeks
later, Fathers Clements and Pfleger and a group of parishioners
turned to civil disobedience, though some might less charitably
term it outright lawlessness. They broke down the door of a
local paraphernalia manufacturer, occupied the offices and were
arrested. While charges were later dropped, the incident
prompted the Illinois legislature to adopt a law banning the
sale of such equipment.

    BERKELEY. Molly Wetzel, a management consultant, formed the
Francisco Street Community Group after her 15-year-old son
Peter was robbed at gunpoint by a drug dealer. Early this summer
she and 14 neighbors filed suit in small-claims court against
the landlord of a crack house located down the block from her
home. Each plaintiff was eventually awarded $1,000. The
previously indifferent landlord evicted the tenants.

    Wetzel's suit, the first of its kind in the country,
inspired a similar and equally successful action in San
Francisco. "All my neighbors have big smiles on their faces, and
so do I," says Gary Brady, one of 17 residents who were each
awarded $2,000 in that suit. He and Wetzel are now collaborating
in the preparation of a manual to teach others how to bring
similar court actions.

    HOUSTON. The police were well aware of the open drug
dealing in Link Valley, a six-block area of derelict condos and
apartment houses about six miles from downtown. Dealers used to
wave brazenly from the windows of their squatters' pads to flag
down drive-by customers. Inevitably, drug-related crime began
spilling into nearby neighborhoods. After an elderly woman was
murdered in her home last September, George Harris, a tax
accountant, and Don Graff, an upholstery salesman, helped form
the Stella Link Revitalization Coalition, an umbrella group of
civic associations from nine area neighborhoods with a combined
population of about 20,000.

    First they searched title records to identify the owners of
23 Link Valley properties, then asked the owners of empty
buildings to board and clean them up. After getting co-operation
from most of the landlords, the coalition secured affidavits for
the police to enter and search the buildings, and persuaded
local politicians and police brass to provide extra officers and
$100,000 in overtime pay for a sustained sweep of the area. They
even helped put together an interagency task force to coordinate
the efforts of federal and local officials.

    The coup de grace came in January, when 100 police officers
invaded Link Valley. Most of the dealers had already fled the
area, but the police show of force was consolidated by two
important follow-ups. First there was a cleanup blitz in which
500 volunteers and jail probationers filled 40 Dumpsters with
trash. That was followed by a month during which police mounted
checkpoints around the area to drive away prospective buyers --
and with them the dealers. Today the area remains free of drug
selling, and serious crime is down by 11%. "It used to be like
a war zone," recalls Thelma Tapiador. "Now you can walk to the
convenience store and not be hassled."

    The experience of Link Valley illustrates one article of
faith among neighborhood resistance fighters: local citizens can
move quickly where government plods. "The civic groups
coordinated agencies, and they put pressure on property owners
and lenders," says Sergeant James Collins, a Houston police
officer who was involved in the effort. "The police department
can't do that." The revived attention of police, who had felt
stymied in the past, also showed that authorities can be
energized to act when they see that residents care enough to do
the same. "The police were dying for some help," recalls Link
Valley activist Graff. "They were like little kids in a candy
store when they got it."

    The kind of help that police are most likely to welcome is
information. In Providence the 100 volunteers of the Elmwood
Neighbors for Action operate car patrols intended to intimidate
potential buyers. But if they spot a sale under way, members
call in the details to police using cellular car phones paid for
by the state. In Houston police issue car markings and CB radios
to patrol units they sponsor.

    In general, patrollers never intervene or attempt to
confront violators. Instead, they soak up such details as car
license numbers and the descriptions of people passing money or
drugs on the street. In Boston tipsters can also call
Drop-A-Dime (the name comes from the street term diming, meaning
to inform). Begun six years ago, the anonymous hotline now
handles 300 to 500 calls a month. One in twelve results in
either an arrest or the confiscation of drugs. "We can't get the
kind of information these citizens provide," says William
Celester, deputy superintendent of the Boston police department.
"They know the dealers. They watch them up close."

    "An effective campaign against drugs can't be conducted by
angry people with baseball bats," says Michael Clark, director
of the Citizen's Committee for New York City, a nonprofit
organization that assists community activist groups. Clark
advises such organizations that the largest possible membership
will make individual members less prominent as targets for
dealer resentment. He also stresses cooperation with police, not
lone-operator tactics. His group has helped train about 1,000
city police as "community patrol officers" who work with
neighborhood organizers to coordinate antidrug efforts.

    To mobilize citizen cooperation in some of the hardest-hit
areas of Washington, police are planning a door-to-door
campaign to encourage residents to band together. "We're going
to them rather than waiting for them to come to us," says
inspector Melvin Clark, head of the Neighborhood Watch Program.
They have their work cut out for them. In a city that last week
counted its 303rd murder this year -- a record, with four months
still to go -- many of those in the poorest neighborhoods are
numbed by the daily dose of gunfire, stabbings and beatings.
Drug money also sometimes buys off local residents, who in
return will open their doors to dealers fleeing a bust.

    Washington has another, unique problem. The fight against
drugs is badly hampered by persistent allegations about cocaine
use by Mayor Marion Barry. In December city police aborted an
undercover drug investigation of convicted drug dealer Charles
Lewis at a downtown hotel after they learned that Barry was in
Lewis' room. Last week a Washington TV station reported that
Lewis has told FBI investigators that he and the mayor smoked
crack in the room during several of Barry's visits.

    The kind of assistance the police do not welcome comes from
citizens who presume to take on the drug dealers themselves.
The enormous profits of the crack trade and the heavy weaponry
that has become standard gear among dealers have made fighting
the drug war more dangerous than ever, and not just in Colombia.
Earlier this month Maria Hernandez, a 34-year-old mother of
three who had been resisting the intrusion of drug dealers in
her Brooklyn, N.Y., neighborhood, was shot to death through the
bedroom window of her apartment. Just ten days earlier, her
husband Carlos had been stabbed in a confrontation with a drug
dealer. After the McKessons were threatened by dealers who vowed
to shoot up their house, Rantine moved her children into the
basement for a month.

    In Los Angeles, where much of the drug trade is controlled
by the city's trigger-happy youth gangs, threats are such a
common problem for the members of MAGIC -- Mothers Against Gangs
in Communities -- that they acknowledge them on the message of
the telephone answering machine at the group's headquarters.
"Hello, you've reached MAGIC," the tape says cheerily. "We're
still receiving your threats, but it's not going to make us
stop. We've come too far to turn around."

    Law-enforcement officials are also wary of volunteer
actions that smack of vigilantism. In Detroit two local men took
it upon themselves to torch a local crack house. (Arrested and
tried for arson, they were acquitted by a jury that accepted
their argument that the crack-house attack was a form of
self-defense.) Some other drug-fighting tactics, while legal,
seem to press against the limits of the constitutional. In Belle
Meade, a drug-beleaguered neighborhood of Miami, citizens acting
with the approval and funding of the Miami City Commission have
erected barricades across five of the six streets that lead into
the area. Some residents would like to put a guardhouse at the
sixth to screen all visitors. While outsiders might object to
the constraints on their freedom of movement, the barriers seem
to have had the intended effect: while Miami averaged an 11%
increase in crime over the past year, Belle Meade enjoyed a 16%
decline. The idea is now under consideration in 20 other Dade
County communities.

    Skeptics point out that dealers driven out of one
neighborhood frequently set up shop on someone else's doorstep.
"Often you're just changing the geography of crime," says
University of Texas sociologist Mark Warr. "Moving it somewhere
else rather than reducing its frequency." The free-floating
nature of the drug trade means that every community must be on
guard. In Boston, for example, the Montgomery-West Canton Street
Crime Watch patrols an area containing just 54 houses and about
250 people. Christopher Hayes, director of the city's
Neighborhood Crime Watch, formed the group himself 17 years ago.
"You have to think small," he says. "You can't worry about
what's happening three or four blocks away."

    But organizers like Hayes know that antidrug crusaders also
have to think big, because the threat to small neighborhoods
comes from the wider world. When Rantine McKesson was passing
out the leaflets to alert her neighbors about the forthcoming
march against crack, she discovered the depth of another
problem. "It's remarkable how many people could not even read
them," she recalls.

    Small wonder. At nearby Pershing High School, almost half
the black teenagers drop out before graduation. Among these
youths the unemployment rate is 45.5%. Police raids and citizen
patrols will never be a match for a drug epidemic fed by poverty
and joblessness. Now the apparently tireless McKesson is not
only resisting the dealers with crime patrols but setting up a
literacy program. As her husband Edwin says, "Someone has to
make a difference. If you don't start with yourself, it will
never get done."


-- Richard Behar/Philadelphia, S.C. Gwynne/Detroit and Richard
  Woodbury/Houston