Black Newspaper Spotlights Names of Drug Offenders to Battle Blight

“Drug abuse and particularly PCP is getting out of hand in the black and brown community.” That hard-hitting statement is the lead in the top story of the New Voice & Viewpoint, a black newspaper in Southeast San Diego.

To back up the story, the weekly paper printed a list of 13 people arrested in Southeast neighborhoods for drug offenses.

That many Southeast neighborhoods are bothered by gatherings of drug pushers and users is hardly news, and papers regularly print the names of arrested drug dealers.

What is new is how the New Voice & Viewpoint has joined with a community group to print a continuing list of those involved with drugs in an effort to spotlight their activities and drive them from the neighborhoods.

The list is also to let those involved in drugs, but who have escaped arrest, know that there names will be in the paper if they are caught, embarrassing their families and friends.

“This article is an effort to raise the level of concern about PCP and other drug sales and usage in our community,” reads a Sept. 5 Viewpoint article, which for the first time listed names and addresses of those involved with drugs. “To this end, we will publish, on a regular basis, the names and addresses of the persons who are arrested,” the article continued.

“For the people whose names are listed, we hope that you seek help for your problem, and that you understand that your activities are of no value to our community.”

The article was written by Earl Davis Jr., editor and publisher of the Viewpoint for 16 years. Last month, Davis sold his interest in the paper, which has a circulation of 10,000, but he remains as editor.

“The whole reason for starting it (printing names) in the first place is that it (drugs) had gotten too blatant,” said Davis, sitting in his Imperial Avenue office, cluttered with old papers, boxes and an enlarged San Diego Union article written about him 15 years ago. “When they (drug dealers) start standing out in the middle of the street and stopping cars, then it’s gone too far.

“What we’re trying to do is create a public awareness that this stuff is going on and people won’t take it.”

Support for printing the names has come from the NAACP; City Councilman William Jones, who represents the Southeast area; the American Civil Liberties Union, and San Diego police.

“We’re wholeheartedly in support of this,” said Richard Juarez, Jones’ executive assistant. “This is an issue where people have to get together and take responsibility for their neighborhood. Once neighbors start realizing there is an effort like this, and they aren’t isolated, then they can begin to take their community back. At the same time, the printing of names tells people that society is putting a negative value on their behavior and maybe they’ll think twice before doing it.”

San Diego police statistics show that the majority of arrests for PCP made in the city occur in the Southeast. And area residents say they have noticed an increase in PCP use, with both sellers and users becoming bolder and less afraid of police and neighborhood pressure.

“It seems like they’ve gone from marijuana to PCP, which is more serious, and that’s why we’re concerned,” said a woman, afraid to use her name, who has lived in a Southeast home 41 years. She said printing names in the Viewpoint “is just another way to see if we can get something done.”

It’s people like her who have banded together in the last few months to form a drug and crime committee working under the auspices of the San Diego Organizing Project, a nonprofit agency that works with groups to improve the quality of neighborhood life.

The committee, working with police, obtained the list of those arrested for selling or being under the influence of PCP and convinced the Viewpoint to print the names.

“The five most troublesome spots in the Southeast area have been identified . . . where it’s an all-out war zone,” said Estela Klink, a community organizer for the Organizing Project. “What we’re trying to accomplish is getting some kind of heightened consciousness” to the PCP problem.

Klink said the committee also intends to track those arrested for drug offense as they go through the criminal justice process in order to find out why so many offenders are back on the street so quickly.

The committee won’t limit its focus to PCP, Klink said. The names of those arrested for cocaine and heroin offenses will also be sent to the paper.

Klink said that many people living in Southeast have cooperated with police by giving them car license numbers of drug dealers and calling police whenever dealers and users gather on the street. But the problem would return almost as soon as a police car faded from view, leading to widespread frustration and a sense of defeat.

“By the community getting together on its own and getting the names printed shows they aren’t willing to give up,” Klink said. “People want to regain their own neighborhood, because if they don’t try, eventually drug dealers will get the sense that they won in the end.”

Editor Davis and others involved in the battle against drugs say it is too early to tell if running the names will do any good.

Davis said some members of the paper’s staff question whether printing names will make any difference at all. “There were those who thought it would tend to glamorize the pushers even more,” he said.

The paper has so far printed 33 names in two separate editions. “If we see some kind of impact, we’ll continue to do it,” Davis said. “If it seems not to be making any dent, then I suppose we’ll abandon it.”

While some fear retaliation from drug dealers and users, none has occurred. Davis is nonetheless prepared, though his main weapon seems to be humor.

“In the 16 years I owned the paper,” Davis said with a smile, “I have had people want to do a heck of a lot to me for a lot less than printing names.”