New Councilman Stevens Hits the Streets Running : City Hall: The 4th District representative skipped an inauguration reception and took the media and police on an eye-opening, confrontational tour of his drug-infested district.

Turning his inauguration into a statement of political purpose, newly elected Councilman George Stevens spent his first morning in office Monday confronting the drug trade on some of the most notorious corners of his 4th District, vowing to make good on a campaign pledge to help his constituents take back their crime-plagued neighborhoods.

On a day when incoming councilmen usually deliver well-meaning speeches and start learning the ropes at City Hall, Stevens skipped a reception to go face-to-face with alleged drug dealers.

“No mas, hombres, aqui,” Stevens lectured two Latino men whom he said he had surreptitiously watched dealing drugs in the 300 block of Olivewood Terrace two weeks ago. “The word is they can’t sell (drugs) anymore. That’s it. That’s why we’re here.”

Minutes later, when a woman burst from her home to accuse the pair of selling drugs and threatening her for reporting it, Stevens, backed by Police Chief Bob Burgreen, several plainclothes officers and some of Stevens’ staff, confronted the men again.

“Nothing better not happen to her,” Stevens warned. “Nothing better not happen to this lady. Because . . . what you’re doing is wrong.”

The 59-year-old Stevens, who campaigned on a platform of establishing neighborhood councils that would provide a grass-roots solution to gangs, drugs and violence, upset incumbent Councilman Wes Pratt in September by appealing to his crime-weary district and highlighting his 25 years of on-the-streets activism.

It was a theme he played again Monday, turning the media spotlight from the staid ceremonies downtown to the drug hot spots of his impoverished 4th District.

“We have to stop this,” he said. “The madness is here. And that’s what leads to all the killing. It’s just blatant, and nobody’s doing anything about it.”

In a 90-minute tour, Stevens dug torn plastic bags from bushes that he said were used to stash drugs. He barged through an apartment to view air vents that a resident claimed were used to hide another drug stash.

He threatened to have the city close down apartments where landlords allow the drug trade to flourish. He confronted a store owner whom one activist claimed had just sold alcohol to a minor--a charge that the merchant offered to refute with tape from his own video camera--and engaged in an argument with a man whom he said was drinking alcohol on a public bench on Imperial Avenue near Euclid Avenue.

Stevens said he would make five video cameras available to community activists who want to record drug activity and turn over the tapes to police.

Burgreen, in turn, promised to add 10 officers, most of them walking patrols, to the neighborhoods off Logan and Imperial avenues that Stevens toured Monday.

“It will make a big difference,” Burgreen said, adding that the officers will be assigned to the area near Southeast Athletic Park in January. “And we’ll not only move in and clean things up, we’ll stay here.”

In a tour of a Police Department mobile substation parked off 45th Street, Stevens suggested that police “harass” young people who violate a 10 p.m. curfew by holding them in the trailer’s tiny cell until their parents retrieve them.

“The word ‘harassment’ doesn’t bother me, (for) those who are breaking the law,” he said. “I am saying I support the harassment of those who are violating the law.”

In morning ceremonies at the Civic Theatre, Stevens offered a fiery speech that stood out from remarks of incoming Councilwoman Valerie Stallings and reelected Councilmen Ron Roberts and Bob Filner. All three sounded similar anti-crime themes, but none as forcefully as Stevens.

“It is the most blatant, offensive thing in my neighborhood to see drug dealers standing on corners, with no one . . . responding, while our schoolchildren walk to school past those drug sales,” he said in a speech interrupted several times by loud applause from an audience of several hundred.

Stevens also declared that he wants no more beer and wine licenses given out in his district and said he would no longer accept the designation “Southeast San Diego” for his district, which includes communities such as Chollas, Encanto, Paradise Hills, Valencia Park, Skyline and Oak Park.

“I also want to make note this morning that henceforth, there will be no more Southeast San Diego,” he said to loud applause. “Because . . . everything that happens negative in the city happens in ‘Southeast San Diego.’

“We live in communities and neighborhoods, just like La Jolla, just like Pacific Beach. We don’t lump them all in ‘West San Diego.’ We don’t want you to lump us in ‘Southeast San Diego.’ ”