Neighbors Fight Back : Grass-Roots Tactics in the Drug War

As pastor of Holy Angels parish in a rundown South Side neighborhood, Father George Clements figured he had witnessed so much pain and poverty over the years that he was immune to shock.

Then, during services a few months ago, Clements called on anyone in his poor Roman Catholic congregation to stand if they had relatives who were either hooked on drugs or had died because of them.

“Every single person in the church stood up, about 800 of them,” he said. “It blew my mind.”

Such incidents have pushed Clements to the forefront of an unorthodox anti-drug crusade that blends the fervor of the temperance movement with the tactics of the civil rights days.

Boycott Vigils

He has organized frequent boycott vigils in front of corner convenience shops that legally stock glass pipes and rolling papers on the shelves along with the soft drinks, beer and candy. And, like a modern-day Carry Nation, the temperance advocate who used a hatchet to smash saloons, he was arrested recently for breaking the locked glass door of the Good Deal Distributing Co., a wholesaler that distributes drug paraphernalia, as supporters picketed outside.

Clements is not alone. In recent months, community groups, churches and even individuals across the nation have taken the first halting steps in what could be a spontaneous, grass-roots counterattack against the pushers and addicts who have turned many urban streets into free-fire zones.

Frustrated by the failure of law enforcement to dent the narcotics trade, average citizens are showing less and less reluctance to take matters into their own hands. Instead of just saying “no,” they’re beginning to say “Hell, no.”

Splashes in the News

Some actions have made a splash in the headlines. Two northeast Detroit men torched an alleged crack house on their block in 1987 and were later acquitted by a jury of arson charges. In New York and Washington, Black Muslim groups have formed anti-crack patrols that have won accolades from some public officials but also stirred criticism for roughhouse tactics, including beatings of suspected drug merchants.

Other efforts have been less dramatic, though considering the fear that has gripped many neighborhoods, they are in their own way just as gutsy.

This summer, Philadelphia community groups are picketing suspected crack houses and holding barbecues and block parties in drug-infested parks and on street corners to deliberately disrupt the activities of dealers. A Kansas City group tracks down the absentee owners of apartment buildings riddled with drug activity and pressures them into evicting trouble-making tenants.

In New Orleans, a Baptist church used its building fund to buy up surrounding crack houses instead. And Pat Morrison, a grandmother in Salem, Ore., became so fed up with the drug habits of her own offspring that she voluntarily went undercover to help police break a major amphetamine ring.

Experts say that if there is a trend it is more coincidental than deliberate, and there is no hard evidence that such activities will have any sweeping impact on traffickers or significantly cleanse drug-infested neighborhoods.

Still, organizers say the drug problem had become so blatant and dangerous that it reached a tipping point, jolting them into doing something--anything--to lash back.

“I have buried my last drug victim, I’ve gone to my last wake, I’ve done my last funeral,” vowed Father Michael Pfleger, another Roman Catholic priest who has joined the protest line in Chicago with Clements. “I’m tired of standing over the coffins of children. I’m tired of constantly having to deal with kids on the street who have their brains fried.”

Loss of Control

Dennis Rosenbaum, director of the Center for Research in Law and Justice at the University of Illinois, said the new militancy stems from a realization that the drug epidemic has rendered police and community leaders powerless to ensure even a modicum of social behavior.

“In a sense, they’ve lost their control over what happens and that causes more fear and more withdrawal,” said Rosenbaum. “All of these things add up. What’s interesting is people are starting to fight back. Whether it works or not, we don’t know.”

Gang expert Irv Spergel said neighborhood watch groups and other ad hoc safety programs may not improve overall crime statistics, but they frequently have a positive psychological impact on those who feel like prisoners in their own homes.

“Often they seem to affect the perceptions of people,” said Spergel, a sociologist at the University of Chicago. “The communities seem less frightened after they’ve been around for a while. . . . People feel more comfortable.”

That seems precisely the case in a small section of Humboldt Park, a largely Puerto Rican neighborhood on Chicago’s northwest side. Six drug-related murders, including four drive-bys, have taken place within a half-mile of Nobel Elementary School just since last Christmas.

Alarmed, the Rev. Keith Forni of Incarnation Lutheran Church got members of 25 households in his parish to participate in a 10-day vigil last month outside of an abandoned apartment house. The objective was to scare away gang members who used it as a headquarters.

Now, members of Forni’s so-called “Nobel neighbors” have organized several mini-vigils on street corners where drug deals are known to go down. And each Thursday night this summer, the group plans to take over a small park near the school that has become a center of drug activity.

“It’s just a simple matter of mathematics,” said Forni of the actions. “We’re going to make it clear that there’s more of us than there are of them. . . . We’ve hung out our shingle that says ‘true, we can’t be watching you 24 hours a day but we are going to be watching and we’re not going to be hesitant to tip off the police.’ ”

Drug Corners

In Philadelphia, where drug kingpins reportedly “sell” prime street corners to dealers for up to $30,000 or “rent” them for $500 a day, block club vigils and all-night barbecues in drug-infested areas have also been a common sight in recent months.

One group, the Northwood Community Assn., has also begun distributing what it calls “Hot Spot” post cards which citizens use to make anonymous reports of drug activity. Instead of going to police, the pre-stamped cards are instead mailed to the community group, which then passes the information on to authorities. The elaborate filter is designed to ensure anonymity for tipsters, many of whom feel more comfortable dealing with a neighborhood group than with the police.

As many as 30 crack houses have been closed through information mailed in on such cards, the group claims. “It doesn’t matter how sophisticated police weapons are, whether they have bazookas or battering rams or airplanes, if the people aren’t working with them the drug dealers and pushers are going to win,” said Father Joseph Kakalec, a Roman Catholic priest who heads an umbrella group of neighborhood organizations in the Philadelphia area. “You need the people in the neighborhood to be your eyes and ears.”

Although authorities have been critical of vigilante actions such as the house-burning in Detroit, they have by and large applauded more reasoned approaches. In Chicago, several City Council members have joined anti-drug picket lines. Police say they welcome the help, in part because citizens’ groups can act without having to obtain warrants, establish probable cause or comply with other legal technicalities.

“A citizen has much more rights to take action for their community’s welfare than the police do because of the fact that we have constraints placed upon us,” said Leroy O’Shield, the commander of the Austin police district on Chicago’s West Side. “ . . . The freedom of a community and of a person to defend his home against individuals who are destroying the tranquility of his neighborhood is unlimited. Many people are beginning to take that action.”

Comes With a Price

It comes with a price. Last week in Chicago, a brick was thrown through the front window of Pfleger’s church and someone ripped out the radio and air conditioning in Clements’ car. Both priests found notes that warned: “The first of many, your friendly drug dealer.”

Back in Philadelphia, the house of one of the more outspoken members of the Northwood community group was burned down. In Miami last March, hired killers sprayed 30 bullets into grocer Lee Arthur Lawrence, who had been a leader in efforts to keep drugs out of his neighborhood of Perrine.

On occasion, however, collective bravado and diligence does pay off. The South Austin Coalition Community Council pored over official arrest data and other paper work to prove to authorities an apartment hotel near a school in their neighborhood had become the No. 1 haven for drug peddlers in the city. In April, a task force of 200 federal agents and police swooped down on the facility and arrested 19 members of what was termed a major drug ring. Among them was a police sergeant, who authorities said may have been a part owner of the hotel.

Although many community groups were founded specifically to fight City Hall and alleged abuses of power by officials, some activists say the drug problem has ushered in a new spirit of cooperation.

License Numbers

In Yakima, Wash., a major port of entry for the Mexican drug pipeline, members of Neighbors Against Drugs take down the license numbers of cars they suspect are cruising streets looking for dealers. They turn the numbers over to the motor vehicle department, which then sends a post card to inform the owner of the auto that the anti-drug group had spotted the car in use in a known drug-dealing area. Dan Snider, a leader of the group, said the cars usually quit cruising around after the owners receive three such post cards.

One of the most extensive partnerships has been forged in Oakland, Calif., where the Oakland Community Organization, a federation of nine church- and community-based groups, worked closely with police last year to create the new Beat Health unit.

When OCO pinpoints what they believe to be a crack house, the unit sends in a team that includes not only police but also housing inspectors; health department workers; water, electric and gas company inspectors, and even people from child welfare and animal protection agencies. The idea is to write the place up for enough code violations or other infractions that it can be either quickly shut down or cleaned up even if there is no blatant evidence of criminal activity.

Ron Snyder, OCO’s executive director, said the unit shut down 86 crack houses in the city over the last eight months and hopes to shut down 200 more over the next year. “They go after the property in a comprehensive way rather than processing the drug dealers through the criminal revolving door,” Snider explained.

OCO is one of eight such groups across the nation that received grants under a $400,000 program administered by the National Crime Prevention Council, the private Washington-based group that funds the Officer McGruff safety program through local police agencies.

Many Spinoffs

Maria Nagorski, the director of technical assistance for NCPC, said the group hopes to develop and refine small-scale anti-drug efforts such as OCO’s so they can be copied elsewhere. Similarly, the National Training and Information Center, a Chicago-based group which assists neighborhood organizations around the country, has scheduled a drug conference for December to give community activists a chance to swap ideas.

“We have to galvanize people, we have to become catalysts,” Clements said before his arrest at Good Deal, the wholesaler whose door he broke during a demonstration last month. “If it looks like we’re using strong-arm tactics, I say, ‘yeah.’ ‘Cause we’re talking about death. We’re talking about children. We’re talking about people whose lives are going to be destroyed. Whatever it takes.”

Researchers Tracy Shryer in Chicago, Lisa Romaine in Denver, Anna Virtue in Miami and Edith Stanley in Atlanta contributed to this story.