Tuesday, August 24, 2004
The Emerson Avenue man said he sees such activity right outside his studio.
FARRELL, Pa. -- Brian Sanders wants the city to do something about cleaning up the drugs and other criminal activity on Idaho Street.
The Emerson Avenue man has a martial arts school for children at the corner of Fruit Avenue and Idaho Street and said he's tired of seeing the law being broken just outside his studio windows.
Sanders said he and others at the school are trying to do something positive for young people, teaching them to respect others and authority and also giving them self-confidence, and he wants a better environment in which to do it.
Sanders appeared at a city council meeting Monday and cited the case of a young woman assaulted by another woman and then run over by the woman's car on Idaho Street.
Witnessed by mayor
He said Mayor William Morocco visited the school about six months ago and personally witnessed a couple of suspected drug transactions right outside the building.
Police hit the area hard for a couple of weeks following complaints, but the illegal activities are back to the way they were before, Sanders said.
Sanders, flanked by another instructor and 11 children who attend his school, said it is illegal to sell anything in the city without a permit and police witnessing any kind of transaction between two people in the drug trafficking area could arrest those making the sales for selling without a permit, if nothing else.
That would only bring a fine, but it would make drug traffickers feel unwelcome, Sanders said.
Afterward, council halted its meeting and met in a closed-door session with Chief Riley Smoot of the Southwest Mercer County Regional Police Department, which serves Farrell and three other Shenango Valley municipalities.
Morocco said later that city officials asked Smoot to come up with some estimates on the cost of extra police patrols in the Idaho Street area.