NATION, Page 14On the Front LinesHouse by house, block by block, angry citizens are rising upagainst the drug dealers who have invaded their neighborhoodsBy 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
