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Federal program starting to pay off in Warren
Federal program starting to pay off in Warren areas
By ED RUNYAN
WARREN
After nearly four months of arrests and cleanups in the city’s near-north and southwest areas, Warren residents say the city’s federal Weed and Seed grant program is starting to bear fruit.
The seed part of the program also has begun, with a Southwest Block Party last weekend on Hoyt Street Southwest designed to provide fun, food and school supplies.
“We’re doing great,” said Rhonda Bennett of Hoyt Street, volunteer facilitator for Warren’s Weed and Seed program. “It has made a difference.”
Bennett, part of the Southwest Neighborhood Association and a one-time Warren City Council candidate, said the warrant sweeps, undercover prostitution stings and other enforcement efforts since early April have reduced prostitution on the north side and drug dealing in the southwest.
“People will say, ‘I can’t stand on the corner or solicit on the corner because something’s being done,’” Bennett said of criminals.
Not far from Bennett’s home is the intersection of Highland Avenue and Fourth Street, a block that has been notorious for drug dealing. Even at that corner, the drug trafficking has been reduced, Bennett said.
“At 5 and 6 a.m., you’d see people with a drug habit looking to get a fix — people who don’t live in the neighborhood,” Bennett said of various parts of southwest Warren.
“Now, you drive by at 5 and 6 a.m., and the streets are empty. We haven’t done enough, but we’ve done enough that you can sit out on your porch at night,” she said.
Bennett said she thinks problems in the southwest area worsened when the city laid off 20 police officers Jan. 1, 2009, and word got out that the city didn’t have as many officers as it needed.
“That draws criminals,” Bennett said. “That tells me that I might be able to do a B&E [breaking and entering].”
Bennett is an advocate of citizens’ filling out Hot Spot cards available at the police station and other places to anonymously describe criminal activity taking place in their neighborhood — so that the criminals know that someone is watching.
“You have to know that if you’re bad, you’re not going to get away with it,” Bennett said.
Capt. Joseph Marhulik, one of the police department’s Weed and Seed coordinators, said prostitution has been affected by the two “john” stings conducted in April and July, netting seven arrests for soliciting prostitution.
There are still prostitutes working in that area, however, he said.
Patricia Dawson of Maple Street, Bennett’s neighbor, raised two children on Maple Street, the youngest being 24 now.
As her daughter and son, now 28, were growing up, there were several women on the street who kept an eye on her kids.
“There was still love in the neighborhood,” she said. “We need that back.”
She wishes something like that existed near a large fight among juveniles that occurred on Brier Street Southeast about 10 days ago that left a 15-year-old boy in critical condition with a head injury and sent four other teens to the juvenile justice center.
“That was shameful,” she said, wondering why none of the adults in the neighborhood took the time to guide the young people in a positive direction.
Dawson said she thinks the police work done in the southwest area has helped reduce drug dealing.
“It’s been peaceful this summer,” she said.
Two residents of Hamilton Street Southwest, just south of the former Western Reserve High School, however, say they don’t think police efforts have been enough to substantially change their neighborhood.
When Virginia Stroud sits in her front yard or rides a Niles Trumbull Transit bus to the store, she still sees indications of drug dealing. And although some vacant homes have been torn down, there’s still too many more, she said.
“There’s a lot of people I don’t know and have never seen before,” she said. “There’s definitely lots of room for improvement.”
Part of the problem is the amount of respect many people have for property, she said.
“I was always taught as a child you don’t throw a potato chip bag on the ground. You wait until you get home and throw it away. But now they don’t care,” she said.
A neighbor several houses away said she isn’t happy with the overgrown weeds and run-down house next door. But she’s actually more unhappy about the vacant lot on the other side, where the house was demolished and the weeds are 2 feet high. People throw trash in the lot, attracting opossum, groundhogs and rats, she said.
“It’s basically like a dead zone,” Bennett said of portions of Jackson and Hamilton streets, where a large number of arrests have been made this summer for drug dealing. “For every three to five good properties, there’s 10 bad ones. That’s where the criminals set up.”
The Weed and Seed grant provided $100,000 for the first year. The amount to be provided in years two through five has not been determined.