Pubdate: Sat, 03 Aug 2002 Source: Ledger-Enquirer (GA) Copyright: 2002 Ledger-Enquirer Contact: http://www.l-e-o.com/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/237 Author: Jennifer Lange, Staff Writer VETERAN NOW AT WAR WITH NEIGHBORHOOD DRUG DEALERS Pushers pest It doesn't matter if it's 20 bucks or several hundred. A good day's work for Charlie Taylor is when he causes a big enough disruption to "knock" his neighborhood's drug dealers out of cash. About 3 p.m. on a recent Wednesday, Taylor parks his beaten-up '86 Ram van along the side of the road, slouches back in his seat and watches three young men a block ahead, loitering on the corner. Drug dealers, Taylor says. The guys don't seem to pay Taylor much attention, but after about 20 minutes they break up. Two of them amble toward the open-windowed van, muttering insults as they pass. "If they weren't doing anything," Taylor says, "why should they confront me?" Taylor is used to the name-calling. "They call me everything but a child of God," says the 54-year-old retired Marine, who owns a pit bull named M.C. (Marine Corps) and rarely is without his "Vietnam Veteran" cap. Taylor has lived in the Columbus neighborhood of East Highland for 12 years. For the past few years, multiple times every day, Taylor, in his light blue van or on his mountain bike, has patrolled the neighborhood's streets. Sections of East Highland are among the city's busiest for the buying and selling of illegal drugs, particularly crack cocaine and marijuana. Lawyers and businessmen and a former police officer have been caught buying drugs in East Highland. Longtime residents describe a formerly peaceful and sociable neighborhood that began to decline roughly a decade ago when homeowners died and properties became rentals. In some places, just a street separates East Highland's chipped-paint houses from The Park District, whose homes fly flags announcing their place in the district. On his rides, Taylor scouts for the buyers and sellers of crack, or "rock" as it's known on the streets. A single rock fetches about $20. Aiming to disrupt their business, Taylor parks and watches the guys, most in their late teens and 20s, he says loiter on the streets daily. "He'll just stare them down and they'll leave," says his wife of 28 years, Mary Taylor, a nursing student used to the detours around the neighborhood whenever they're coming or going. Around the neighborhood, he's often acknowledged with waves and hellos, even from some of the guys he's after. It wasn't until 1996 or 1997, when the dealers started encroaching on his street, 16th Avenue, that Taylor took an interest in their business. Taylor writes license plate numbers and addresses on gas station receipts and on envelopes. He follows suspicious cars. Recently he trailed a kid on a bike. He's been known to get out the video camera his family gave him for Christmas one year and direct it at suspected dealers. On a video he has somewhere, he says, he captured part of a drug sale. Many of the dealers' names are familiar to Taylor. If he sees someone he doesn't recognize, he might consult his children's yearbooks. "You have to use every trick you can," he says. The Taylors have eight children -- 16-year-old fraternal twins and a 14-year-old son still at home -- and Taylor says he kept a tight rein to keep them off the neighborhood's streets. Police say citizens like Taylor often provide tips -- about all-night traffic in front of a house with new occupants, for example -- that have aided in arrests and convictions, not just for drugs but drug-related crime, such as thefts and burglaries. Police are vague, however, when asked about Taylor's particularly vigilant and aggressive brand of drug fighting. "He has taken some actions on his own that only he can decide was good or bad," said Columbus police Lt. M.C. Todd. Citizen drug fighters Taylor's daily pursuit is usually solitary. But he has broader responsibilities as president of East Highland Against Drugs, one of 10 activecitizen drug-fighting groups under the umbrella of Columbus Against Drugs. Formed nearly two years ago and with an active membership of about 20, East Highland Against Drugs is one of the newest and loudest of the drug-fighting organizations. In all, the majority of the citizen drug fighters are black and in their 50s, 60s and 70s, said police Sgt. Renee McAneny, the police department's liaison to the groups. The groups are based in middle-to low-income neighborhoods, but police say illegal drugs can be found throughout town, from the most affluent to the poorest. McAneny believes some neighborhoods are reluctant to organize groups out of fear that open acknowledgment of a problem will drag down property values. A group of residents in the downtown Historic District looked into forming a group several years ago, she says, but a lack of consensus among residents killed the idea. "They wanted help," McAneny says, "but they didn't want anyone to know they needed help." The level of activity among the drug-fighting groups varies. At least one exists on paper only, and another, Peabody Apartments Against Drugs, limps along. Nine years after forming, Peabody is left with only a few members, and only one, Doris King, the leader, lives in the Housing Authority-owned apartments. Despite her size (slight, 5'4") and health (she has a heart condition that causes her to black out), King, 55, walks the rows of brick apartments with a small notepad, on the watch for drug activity and violators of apartment rules. She passes her information along to the apartment manager or police. Leaders like King and Taylor are responsible for organizing the groups' high-profile events: monthly marches through particularly bad sections of neighborhoods and sit-outs. During a sit-out, a suspected drug house or a "hot" street corner is targeted by drug fighters basically demanding, through a megaphone and under police supervision, for the criminals to get out. Like others of the drug-fighting groups, East Highland Against Drugs is part of an improvement association, which organizes events like cleanup drives. Charlie Taylor's over it all, but he brushes off the broader duties, skipping last weekend's clean-up that his wife helped with. "We can't be an improvement association and fight these drugs," he says. Taking action On a damp Tuesday about 7:30 p.m., Taylor stands on a corner of Hood Street and Samson Avenue during a sit-out in the neighborhood residents call East Wynnton. The target is a brick duplex with white shutters. Neighbors got suspicious about the place when cars started showing up all hours of the night, setting off a chorus of barking from a neighbor's dogs. Six people, most in their 60s and 70s, show up to protest -- not an unusually low number, but fewer than organizers expected before the spell of rain earlier in the evening. It's the second protest there in the past few weeks. They set out a few folding chairs and stools, a cooler of soda and a table with chips, snack cakes, peanuts and a box of figs. Drug Fighters of Columbus, a spin-off of Carver Heights Against Drugs, organized the event, but Taylor, who frequently attends marches and sit-outs outside East Highland, takes the lead. Through a megaphone, he initiates a round of chants, his voice as jarring against the quiet as the sudden crack of fireworks. Get off the crack! And take your neighborhood back! Hit the road jack! Take your crack and don't come back! Police say they're aware of drug dealing in the area but don't know for certain about the duplex. "We can only speculate," says Officer Vernon Harris, a member of the tactical operations unit who, with Officer Misty Howell, accompanied the group. No one appears to be home at the duplex, and as the sky grows dark the neighborhood is quiet and its streets empty, except for a few parents and children outside. Shortly after the protest gets under way, Wallace Jones,who lives across the street from the duplex, tells the group that the suspected dealer is gone. "It's a blessing because I have grandkids and I don't want my grandkids around it," Sylvia Jones, Wallace Jones' wife, says later. Jones, 43, says she called the police several times during the three or four months the suspected dealer, who appeared to be in his late 20s, lived there. She says she watched him move out in the middle of the night days after the first sit-out. "He moved out because we were here," says Earl Whitaker, a 77-year-old wearing a Drug Fighters of Columbus T-shirt over a light green dress shirt with a fraying collar. This is Whitaker's neighborhood. It's a lot cleaner than it was in the mid-1980s when he returned to his hometown after living in suburban Boston for 35 years. "It was wicked," he says, describing the traffic that clogged Samson Avenue. "It's much better now, but we gotta stay on it. You slack off a little and they're back on it." After learning of the suspected drug seller's departure, the group spends most of the two hours set aside for vigils snacking and in spirited conversation. Officer Harris tackles a crossword puzzle for a while. When someone mentions dinner plans, he says, "You got salmon at the house? What time is supper?" Shutting 'em down The self-described drug-fighters may seem more like obstinate, nosey grandparents than the do-good vigilantes suggested by names like Drug Fighters of Columbus. But police say their approach is effective in chasing away dealers, though they almost always reappear, sometimes in a different part of town. "What they do is bring attention to the neighborhood that there's a problem," said Capt. J.D. Hawk, special agent in charge of the Metro Narcotics Task Force, which consists of representatives from five regional law enforcement agencies."It gets too hot for the drug dealers and they move on to another neighborhood." Citizens often provide tips that lead to investigations and later arrests. Hawk gets calls from citizens, as does Sgt. Larry Parker Jr., who works closely with the drug fighters. Two years of work by Carver Heights Against Drugs in the late 1980s and early 1990s, Parker says, helped eliminate the brisk drug business in the area of Ninth Street and Benner Avenue. Every day, he says, they were on the street marching. "It's putting a damper on their business, especially with law enforcement there with them," says Parker, a police officer for 16 years who'll take a spin through a drug-infested part of town if he can't sleep. Smoothing edges Charlie Taylor likes to pass time sitting on his porch. Out there, sometimes in the early morning hours when he can't sleep, he seems as firmly rooted as the tall and upright magnolia in his front yard. Someone, he says, once commented that he must not want company out there since there weren't many extra places to sit. He doesn't dispute that. The porch was where Taylor was one clear Sunday afternoon in October 1998 when, instead of taking his family on a country drive, he ended up in handcuffs. Taylor says a group of young men congregated near his house, openly passing drugs. He told them to stop. They called him names. The verbal altercation escalated for several hours, he says. About 5:30 p.m., Taylor flagged down a cruiser patrolling the neighborhood and reported that the group of young men had called him names and threatened to kill him. A couple of witnesses said it was Taylor who issued the threats. Police arrested Taylor, according to the incident report, for allegedly pointing a shotgun at a 26-year-old man who Taylor says was among the group bothering him. A judge dismissed the case and ordered Taylor to keep away from the men. Taylor answers obliquely when asked about the incident. "That was a walking stick," he says, a hint of good-natured mischief in his voice. "I told the judge it was a walking stick." Taylor's temper made for a rough start when he first got involved with Columbus Against Drugs about two years ago. "You can't put fire on fire and make the fire go out," says David Lockett, 67, a retired first sergeant Army Ranger and president of Columbus Against Drugs and Carver Heights Against Drugs, the city's first group. "He wanted action right then and there, but it takes time," Lockett says. Initially the two men clashed, but now -- following Columbus Against Drugs protocol -- Taylor calls "Sarge" up to a few times a week to report any major problems in East Highland. Though that fire still burns, Lockett says, Taylor has calmed and become one of his most committed leaders. Other members respect him for it. Taylor admits he's less likely to take matters into his own hands. He's more "humble" and not as uncomfortable around the police and city officials. That's not to say the self-described loner was unhappy with the way things were before he started organized drug fighting, when he didn't know most of his neighbors. "I'm comfortable right here on this porch all day," he says on a hot afternoon, a tall glass of ice water at his side. "That would've been me." - --- MAP posted-by: Tom