Pubdate: Wed, 11 Jul 2001 Source: Boston Globe (MA) Copyright: 2001 Globe Newspaper Company Contact: http://www.boston.com/globe/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/52 Author: Marcella Bombardieri HARTFORD NEIGHBORHOOD TAKES ON DRUG TRADE HARTFORD - When a 7-year-old girl was shot in the face on the Fourth of July, caught in the crossfire of a drug dealers' dispute, a neighborhood long overrun by violence and drugs was finally shocked into action. No more protests outside police headquarters. No more solemn sermons from the pulpits of local churches. This time, residents of this city's North End marched straight to the drug dens. Three times since the shooting, angry neighbors have rallied on corners monopolized by cocaine and heroin dealers, corners where violence has escalated dramatically in the last six months. ''Who shot Takira?'' they've shouted into a bullhorn, referring to the young victim, Takira Gaston, shot as she played on a pink scooter. They've kept shouting, even as brazen dealers in gold medallions stared them down from a balcony. ''We want the shooters! We want names!'' the crowd has demanded. Some names were whispered into organizers' ears at rallies on Friday, Sunday, and last night. But that may not be the demonstrators' biggest coup. The real victory, community members say, is making so many neighbors angry enough to pour out of houses where they have been stewing in isolation, cowering in fear, or simply trying to ignore the decay outside, where stately homes alternate with empty lots and boarded-up buildings. In fact, one woman burst into grateful tears on a street corner last night as a small but raucous group chanted outside an abandoned storefront. This tragedy, some say, could be a turning point. ''We want the neighborhood back and we won't stop until we have it back,'' said Prince Webb, 75, who has lived here for more than 30 years. ''No one is safe in their homes, no one is safe in the street, and the police can't do it all. We have to take it back, and we're going to do it.'' Hartford is an island of poverty - the eighth-poorest city in the country - in America's richest state. High unemployment and dropout rates, along with drug peddling and the strife it brings, have been facts of life in the North End for so long, some neighbors said, that those who couldn't afford to move somewhere safer gave up fighting. ''It's been a constant diet of violence,'' said the Rev. James Lane of the North End Church of Christ. ''And with that, there's been a lack of a sense of community, a sense that somebody else is going to do it.'' But nobody else has. And now Takira Gaston, celebrating Independence Day with her family just a week ago, has a new home, Yale-New Haven Hospital. Her condition has improved from critical to stable, but she'll need multiple surgeries to reconstruct her face after the bullet - shot from an abandoned corner market down the block from where she was playing - tore through her cheeks, knocked out teeth, and shattered her jaw. ''What if it happens again? She got shot, but they don't stop shooting, do they?'' asked Marci Powell, Takira's aunt. ''My 5-year-old is inside right now while I'm sweeping the porch, because I'm afraid of what will happen.'' Police said yesterday they have identified two suspects, but no arrests are imminent. The streets of Hartford are getting more dangerous than they've been since the gang-infested days of the early and mid-1990s. Last year, there were 18 murders in the 171/2 square miles that make up Hartford. Seventeen homicides have already occurred this year, most of them drug-related, said Hartford Police Lieutenant Neil Dryfe. And the first six months of 2001 have seen 415 incidents in which a gun was fired. When scores of gang members were sent to prison in the 1990s, convicted on racketeering charges, their places on street corners were taken by younger men, Dryfe said. Now the gang members are getting out, returning to their old haunts, and fighting with the upstarts. To make matters worse, Dryfe and community activists say, the younger crop work in small ''crews'' controlling a street or a corner, instead of establishing formal gangs. Owing allegience to no one, they've become increasingly trigger-happy, observers say. Dryfe, public information officer for the Hartford police, also says police have let down their guard. Plagued by scandal in recent years, they've had trouble recruiting new officers and, as a result, manpower along with morale has declined. But Dryfe promises that under its new chief Bruce Marquis, the department will boost visibility in high-crime neighborhoods even as it works with state and federal authorities. Still, he said, police need all the help they can get from the neighborhood. ''We wish they were doing it more, not just when a tragedy happens,'' Dryfe said. ''This is supposed to be a partnership.'' But organizers promise that their nascent movement will outlast the shock of Takira's shooting. The goal is to shame and harass drug dealers until they pack up and move out of the crack houses for good, said the Rev. Cornell Lewis, the main organizer of this week's rallies. ''People know where they live, where they eat, where they park their cars, and where they sleep at night,'' said Lewis, an associate pastor at the North End Church of Christ, who has the words ''Spirit of Nat Turner'' printed in marker on his plastic water bottle. ''Let's see how they like it when we show up at 8 o'clock on a Saturday morning.'' Lewis says he knows it can be done, because he did it on his own street six years ago, when the rape of a young woman in broad daylight brought his frustrations over drugs and crime to a boil. The minister, who works as a substance abuse counselor, set up a nine-week antidrug vigil. He organized street blockades, deploying video cameras and halogen spotlights to drive away customers. Neighbors used binoculars to write down license plate numbers, then called the police as often as they could. After nine weeks - and several threats to Lewis's life - the dealers closed shop, never to return. The remaining neighbors threw a street party to celebrate. Now Lewis is helping residents a few blocks away, where Takira was shot, plan the same kind of campaign. ''It's a war of attrition,'' he said. Of course, it takes more than a grass-roots awakening to stomp out the drug trade. Dealers can always find another place to squat, said community activist Carl Hadrick, until the demand for drugs wanes, until poorly educated young people can get jobs. ''At the march on Friday, [men recently released from prison] came up to me and said, `Brother Carl, you know I used to hustle. I don't want to do that anymore. Can you get me a job?''' said Hadrick, executive director of the Hartford Youth Peace Initiative. ''But to be honest, I don't have anything.'' And then there's the problem of fatalism. Asked what the community could do to respond to the violence, Powell, Takira's aunt, shook her head and said, ''They could take some of the innocent people away to live somewhere else. We just need to let the dealers have Hartford. Let them keep it.'' Lewis and his fellow activists are praying that kind of attitude is on its way out. ''I equate [Takira's shooting] with the Alabama church bombing that killed those four little girls,'' said Joshua Blanchfield, a University of Hartford student. ''It's so horrific, it's a galvanizing thing.'' - --- MAP posted-by: Doc-Hawk