Pubdate: Sat, 17 Mar 2007
Source: Asheville Citizen-Times (NC)
Copyright: 2007 Asheville Citizen-Times
Contact:  http://www.citizen-times.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/863
Author: Adam Behsudi

DRUG HOT SPOT POSES BIG TEST FOR CITY POLICE

ASHEVILLE - Recent springlike weather was a welcome change for the 
group of kids playing outside the Lee Walker Heights community center.

But for residents like Delores Fleming, the warm air often brings out 
the worst in her neighborhood - crime, drug dealing and more shootings.

"You get a little antsy on the weekends," she said leaning over a 
chair in her kitchen and looking out the window at the group of 
children who frolicked nearby.

Her fears are not without reason. The neighborhood of a few hundred 
residents lies in the center of Asheville - and at the center of the 
city's fight against drug crime, according to statistics city police 
compiled this month.

Officers made more drug arrests around Lee Walker Heights in 2006 
than in any other area, according to those statistics.

That sets up the roughly 10-block area as one of the toughest tests 
for Asheville's latest drug strategy.

Police made 76 arrests in the Lee Walker Heights area during 2006, 52 
of them felonies.

The public housing development Lee Walker Heights is home to about 
200 people who pay an average rent of $182 a month. The development 
is the third-poorest of the city's 11 public housing developments in 
terms of average annual family income. The average household in the 
development earns $8,000 a year, according to the Housing Authority 
of the City of Asheville.

Fleming, the resident council president and resident of the 
neighborhood for 15 years, said much of the drug activity comes up 
the hill from Short Coxe Avenue. She said the street is a well-known 
area for drug dealing and prostitution.

On the corner of Short Coxe and Southside avenues, Georgia Muckelvene 
has been cutting and styling hair for nine years. Her shop sits 
almost directly in the center of the reporting area.

"We are surrounded by it," Muckelvene said.

She said the proximity of the bus stop and a loyal customer base has 
kept her shop prosperous despite it being tucked between the major 
thoroughfares of Biltmore and Asheland avenues.

But she said nuisances and dangers do plague the area, including 
homeless camps in the woods behind her shop and drug dealing, often 
in broad daylight, on the street outside.

"It hasn't bothered us, but we know what's going on," Muckelvene said.

Answering the mandate

Police hope to improve the scene outside Muckelvene's shop and in 
other high-crime areas in the coming weeks and months, Chief Bill Hogan said.

"We all have an interest in addressing the drug problem," he said.

Starting immediately, Hogan said all patrol officers will be spending 
half of their unobligated time targeting high-crime areas, which 
include housing authority neighborhoods.

He said for every hour that an officer is obligated to a specific 
incident, two hours should be available to answer calls and patrol.

Another part of the plan involves filling five vacant positions on 
the city's drug suppression unit as early as this month.

Hogan said the efforts should show a marked increase in drug-related 
arrests by as early as May.

The plans have drawn praise from one of the department's most vocal 
critics, City Council member Carl Mumpower, who earlier this year 
conducted his own drug stakeouts to show the prevalence of open-air 
drug dealing in the city.

"We gave (police) the mandate to confront our open-air drug market, 
and it's apparent they're treating it seriously," he said.

But Mumpower said he is cautious to withdraw all criticism until he 
sees the plan in action.

"Intent counts, but execution is everything," he said.

Life on the hill

At Lee Walker Heights, residents weren't surprised that the area they 
live in had the highest number of drug arrests.

"It got worse since I first moved up here," said Dorothy Austin, a 
resident for 22 years who is trying to move from the development.

Just next door at the community center, Elinore Earle runs the Youth 
HAND (Housing Against Narcotics and Drugs) program.

The program provides after-school activities and academic support for 
33 children ages 5 to 14 who live in the development.

Earle said she moved the program to the Lee Walker Heights community 
center one year ago after running the program for 12 years from the 
W.C. Reid Center on Livingston Street.

"I wanted to be up here closer to the parents," she said.

Summer involves getting the kids "off the hill" as much as possible 
for field trips, swimming and other activities, Earle said.

"Even though they've been exposed to this," Earle said, waving her 
arm toward the development, "it does not mean they cannot learn."
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MAP posted-by: Elaine