Drug-Plagued Town Sees Hero in Gregory

Under the glare of a radiant moon one recent night, about a dozen residents of this city’s Cedar Grove area marched along the uncurbed asphalt streets of their neighborhood. And with posters in their hands declaring “Christ + You = Love Not Drugs,” they bellowed spirituals with a fervor fit for a Sunday service.

For more than 160 consecutive nights, this has been the scene on the mean streets of Cedar Grove. And it is an eye-catching sight--a preacher, a retired schoolteacher, a receptionist, a plumber, one behind the other, marching in the dark, trying to chase the “dopers” away with song and prayer.

But on this night, spindly, gray-bearded celebrity Dick Gregory was at the head of the line. It is Gregory--comedian, civil-rights activist, nutrition guru, warrior against obesity--who got these marches started about five months ago and who is something of a local hero, so dramatic has been the decrease in drug trafficking in the neighborhood, according to police and residents.

There are few here who confess to fully understanding why so rich and worldly a man as Gregory would even be called to duty in so unglamorous a place as this conservative northwest Louisiana city of 200,000. Gregory, gloating over the substantial publicity he’s gotten here, says the city was a perfect springboard for his latest crusade.

“This place is in an economic disaster, but there’s no such thing as that when it comes to drug pushers,” he says, referring to the oil glut that has left thousands of Louisianians unemployed and, many believe, has contributed to the drug crisis.

“I figure if you can get a foothold here, you can get one anywhere,” he says. “This (drug situation) is so big, so complicated, it makes the civil-rights movement look like child’s play.”

Gregory’s new activism, which started with a bang when he got arrested after refusing to leave several local stores that sold drug paraphernalia, has made for interesting, if not outright peculiar, times in Shreveport, a place hardly accustomed to his dare-me style.

At the same time, it has given a colorful and, some say, much-needed lift to the often faceless, mundane war against drug pushers and users in neighborhoods across the country.

In the last year or so, said Janet Quist, who coordinates the anti-drug effort for the National League of Cities, residents in many cities have been using bold and novel methods to try to reclaim their neighborhoods, their housing projects, their parks.

“They’re sick of it,” she said. “They’re sick of telling their kids they can’t play outside, sick of dodging bullets. . . . This (wave of activism) was bound to happen.”

Here in Cedar Grove, the people are not so sure of that inevitability, and that’s why Gregory, who is out of town more than he is in these days, is still being lauded as a godsend.

Since a major riot broke out in the neighborhood last year after a bystander was killed when a drug deal went sour, residents say they were more fearful than ever.

Drug-related fights and shootings were already frequent enough to earn the neighborhood the nickname Dodge City. A.B. Palmer Park had become so dominated by gun-toting drug sellers that they had long ago rendered it useless as a place for play, residents say.

They say one of the neighborhood’s main thoroughfares, Thornhill Drive, was rarely without a traffic jam because of the blatant buying and selling of drugs.

“I always had to take a detour home,” said Larneva Williams, 63, the retired schoolteacher. “It was bumper to bumper down there. . . . And you’d better not blow your horn.” On one corner there was even a couch, providing a resting place for the sellers.

Police all but concede that they had given up trying to make a significant dent in the drug trade. Even though some arrests were made, those arrested were quickly back on the street, Police Chief Charles Gruber said. But there was a bigger problem.

“When we went out there, we stood the chance of being bricked and rocked,” by not only drug sellers but residents, Gruber said. The people of Cedar Grove maintain such incidents were rare and charge that because the neighborhood is 70% black, the police gave it low priority. And for that, there was antagonism.

Into this racially tense atmosphere stepped Gregory. He’d come to Shreveport to invest in a local bank, but got wind of the drug problem from some local ministers, and spotting a chance to try something different, he stayed.

He stirred things up by getting arrested, along with the ministers, at the paraphernalia stores. At least one store removed the drug gadgets from its shelves.

Then he bought a tiny camper--a “drug buster” he parked at the edge of A.B. Palmer Park by the basketball court. Within days, Gregory and his assistants were cleaning up the park, sweeping glass from the tennis courts, picking up hypodermic needles around the jungle gym. They then began sitting on park benches with binoculars pointed in the direction where drug dealing was suspected. Gregory said he was shocked to learn how much impact such a benign act could have on buyers.

Convinced now that at least the users could be intimidated, he organized the marches, encouraged residents to take down license plate numbers on cars that stopped in the middle of the street to buy drugs and began bringing in friends like Coretta Scott King and Ben Vereen for anti-drug rallies at the park.

It all finally got to those involved in the drug dealing and within weeks, police and residents say, the park was bustling with parents, toddlers and giddy teens.

“The cleanliness drove them away. The singing and those religious things--it just drove them away,” said Albert Leviston, the recreation center director at the park.

The marches had a noticeable impact, too, as they attracted TV cameras and more than 200 people a night--including white city councilmen and Chamber of Commerce officials, even the mayor’s wife, and Gruber.

Oddly, residents say, there was more confrontation during those beginning days--open threats from drug dealers, idle gunshots when marchers would pass by--than now when rarely more than 25 people participate in the nightly sojourn.

Police say the bulk of the open activity has been moved to another part of town.

“There’s been a significant decrease in drug trafficking in Cedar Grove, and overall crime is down,” Police Capt. Marshall Nelson says. “But it’s gotten really bad” in a northern section of the city.

There are many, including Gregory, who expected this but who say it is all the more reason for every community to organize. Already there is an effort in the newly afflicted area to mobilize residents, police say they have been in touch with community leaders and Gregory says he is ready to do his part.

“The significant thing about all this is the attitudinal change in the residents” toward the police, Gruber said. They no longer throw bricks when police patrol the area, he says. “They applaud.”

Residents are reluctant to give so much credit--during one recent march, a bottle was thrown, apparently by a resident, at a police car escorting the marchers.

Still, people are impressed by the progress. Officials in Pontiac, Mich., came down and, excited about the effort’s focus on the buyers, are helping organize the same kind of marches there. Even Rep. Charles Rangel, D-N.Y., chairman of the U.S. Select Committee on Narcotic Abuse and Control, showed up to march.

Meanwhile, the stalwarts continue. They acknowledge that they have not driven drugs out of Cedar Grove, but they are convinced now, as Laura Harris put it, that “I have some control over this. . . . I can see better times now.”

The Rev. Joseph Gant says as winter draws near the marchers will take to the streets with a kind of “mobile patrol”--cars stopping at various points with bold signs on their sides, declaring “drug-free zone.”

“Dick Gregory has not been, cannot be our savior,” Gant says. “But he’s certainly helped raise our consciousness, helped us abandon our fears. . . . Now we’re reclaiming what’s ours, and it feels pretty good.”