Pubdate: Sun, 11 May 2003
Source: Tampa Tribune (FL)
Copyright: 2003, The Tribune Co.
Contact: http://tampatrib.com/opinion/lettertotheeditor.htm
Website: http://www.tampatrib.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/446
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Author: Keith Morelli, The Tribune
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LAW ENFORCEMENT BLITZ DESIGNED TO  UP QUALITY OF LIFE

Iorio Ready To Declare East Tampa Crime War

TAMPA - Making good on a key campaign promise, Mayor Pam Iorio is expected 
to announce a massive anticrime and rejuvenation project for east Tampa 
that the city's police chief compares to the invasion of Iraq.

"To borrow a term from the military," Chief Bennie Holder said, "it'll 
'shock and awe' the criminals."

The mayor said she will announce specifics of Operation Commitment on Monday.

"We are looking at a sustained enforcement plan," she said.

Police are mum about specifics, fearing drug dealers and others targeted 
will go into hiding during the first offensive, expected to be unleashed 
Monday and last until May 24.

The operation will focus on neighborhoods including Belmont Heights, 
Jackson Heights and Southeast Seminole Heights, where police will target 
open-air drug markets selling mostly crack cocaine and marijuana, officials 
said.

"There are known drug holes where there is daily drug activity, and we need 
to get them out of our city," Iorio said. "If they move to another part of 
the city, we will go after them."

Capt. Marion Lewis heads a Tampa Police Department antidrug squad that will 
play a prominent role in the operation.

"It's going to be a holistic approach," Lewis said.

Code enforcement inspectors will issue tickets to property owners whose 
lawns are strewn with garbage and abandoned cars. Firefighters will hand 
out smoke detectors. Crime prevention officers will offer security 
inspections for homes, and drug counselors will talk to drug users and 
their families, said police Maj. Jane Castor, who oversees District 2, 
which includes east Tampa.

The operation will draw police from other areas of the city, Castor said, 
but there will be enough left to respond to 911 calls.

Community Wants Results

Tampa Neighborhood Watch Association Vice President Marilyn Durst is 
hopeful about the initiative, which she sees as the extension of a 1990s 
community policing program.

"They've been doing these sweeps and putting on a dog and pony show for a 
while," she said of much-publicized sweeps in the past. "But then they 
leave. And when they've been gone for a few hours, it's 10 times worse than 
before they got there. The prostitutes and drug dealers have to make up for 
lost time."

And that's the flaw in the plan, she said.

"They make lots of arrests and put up lots of numbers," Durst said. "It 
makes an impact for the moment. But, if they don't stay and keep the 
cleanup and maintenance going until it is thoroughly conveyed to the 
criminal element that they're not welcome, it's a waste of time."

East Tampa residents are taking a wait- and-see attitude.

Ernest Daffin, 54, has lived in east Tampa around 34th and Lila streets 
most of his life. Occasionally, he said, it gets dangerous.

"It does get crazy sometimes," he said. Drug dealers and car thieves are 
the biggest problem. Operation Commitment "is a good thing," Daffin said. 
"They'll slow it down, but they won't stop it."

Abe Chin, 43, a resident of east Tampa for 10 years, said he recently 
watched a man dumping garbage where Ellicott Street dead ends into the 
railroad. Chin asked: "Why do you do that?"

The man threatened to shoot him. Chin backed off, allowing the man to dump 
the trash near an abandoned motor home and a dilapidated trailer left there 
years ago.

"It's a jungle back here," Chin said. Still, he said: "I love my neighborhood."

Others said they see no need to make the push. Lilly Grandberry, 73, sat on 
the porch of her east Tampa home and said she feels secure, even though 
blocks away on Thursday night, a motorist at the stop light at North 22nd 
Street and East Osborne Avenue was held up at gunpoint and robbed of his 
cash and car.

Despite the robbery, Grandberry said, "I feel safe here."

The idea of sweeping into neighborhoods to clean up crime is not a tactic 
that always works, said Hubert Williams, president of the Police 
Foundation, a Washington-based research and policy group.

Solutions to crime-ridden and blighted neighborhoods "don't come in a box," 
he said. Rather, they are in the attitudes and ideas that come from 
communities and their interaction with the police.

"The problem with sweeps is that they bring in people who are guilty, and 
they bring in people who are innocent," he said. "That tends to alienate 
the community."

Success, he said, is measured by how safe people feel in the aftermath.

East Tampa Business and Civic Association President Betty Wiggins said she 
is optimistic Iorio's plan will be more effective than past initiatives.

"It's just going to have to be a sustained effort to try to arrest this 
malignancy that is so entrenched in our community," she said.

A Proven Strategy

Citywide police statistics indicate sweeps conducted in the late 1990s 
under former Mayor Dick Greco seem to have made a difference. Greco's plan, 
which mirrored former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani's, had street crooks, 
panhandlers, vagrants, prostitutes and street-level drug dealers arrested. 
The theory was if you improve the quality of life, the more serious crimes 
also will decrease.

In 1996, a year after Greco took office, murders dropped to 41 from 47 in 
1995, Tampa police statistics show. By 1999, the number dropped to 31, and 
the yearly total has not reached 40 again.

The same is true for rape. In 1998, Tampa police investigated 328 sexual 
batteries. The next year, that number dropped to 262. Last year, police 
logged 257 rapes.

Aggravated assaults and burglaries rose during the past five years, but 
larcenies last year dropped by more than 1,500 from 1998, the department's 
Web site states.

Former Tampa City Council member Bob Buckhorn, who was chairman of the 
city's public safety committee, said the mayor's initiative will be a 
positive step.

"When you've got drug dealers that own the streets 18 hours a day," he 
said, "it takes a willingness to be out there 24/7 to eradicate it."

Buckhorn said east Tampa must be cleared of drug dealers before 
redevelopment can take place.

"Street-level drug dealing is the most critical issue facing east Tampa, he 
said. "You can't get redevelopment in impoverished areas unless it's safe. 
In order to do that, you've got to make an environment where customers are 
safe and investments are safe.

"It's a wonderful initiative," he said. "It will pay off, but it's got to 
be ongoing."
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MAP posted-by: Terry Liittschwager