Case Studies of Community Anti-Drug Efforts.

MENU TITLE:Community Anti-Drug Efforts
Series: NIJ Research in Brief
Published: October 1994
36 pages
81,352 bytes

NCJ 149316

CASE STUDIES OF COMMUNITY ANTI-DRUG EFFORTS

by Saul N. Weingart, Francis X. Hartmann, and David
Osborne

-----------------------------------
Issues and Findings

Discussed in the Brief: Case studies of 13
grassroots community responses to illegal drugs in
their neighborhoods.

Key issues: The wide variety of citizen initiatives
revealed by the case studies showed how the groups
assumed different levels of responsibility,
functioned within social networks, and were
influenced by various leaders. Assessing the
success of their efforts involves determining
improvement in the quality of life in the
neighborhood with respect to the drug trade.

Key findings: 

o Effective community anti-drug efforts show wide
variations in institutional robustness and in the
breadth of approach to drug problems. In general,
the researchers recommend that citizens be
encouraged and helped to address drug problems from
a perspective broader than that of drugs alone. In
addition, community efforts that provide a
comprehensive approach to drugs and crime are more
likely to be sustained.

o Policymakers need to appreciate and support
community efforts focused primarily on drugs.
Although some of these efforts were found to be
fragile and tenuous, such informal associations can
be an effective and viable entity in combating drug
problems. 

o Useful forms of citizen anti-drug efforts have
emerged in a variety of neighborhoods, including
those seriously afflicted by crime and violence
that were previously not considered likely to
engage in this form of community 
action. 

o Citizen drug fighters emerge from a variety of
backgrounds and experiences. They need and
appropriately use both conventional and
unconventional resources to meet their objectives.

o Policymakers should consider carefully the broad
scope of help they can provide citizens, which
ranges from financial help to granting access to
decisionmakers, from providing a meeting room to
offering technical assistance on organizing and
implementing program activities. 

o Police play a particularly pivotal role in
citizens' assault on drugs. Many citizens initially
regard the drug problem as one of obtaining
adequate police protection but, in general,
partnerships involving citizens, police, and other
agencies provide useful strategies to combat drugs.

o To forge productive relationships between police
and citizens, police executives should actively
support local patrol officers in working with
citizen groups. Police officers should be
encouraged to respond to all interested citizens,
even those who initially may be rancorous and
complain, since these individuals often evolve into
hard-working partners with the police.

Since no single community response to drugs can be
considered the best, research should continue to
identify approaches that work best under specific
conditions and in various neighborhood settings.

Target audience: Policymakers at the Federal,
State, and local level; police officers; and
community organizations.
-----------------------------------


In response to the illicit drug trade that became
especially troublesome in the late 1980's and early
1990's, a remarkable community anti-drug movement
has formed, with groups becoming active in some of
the most afflicted neighborhoods. Armed only with
their courage and imagination, citizens have
devised a variety of clever strategies and tactics
to reclaim their streets and parks from drug
traffickers. This Research in Brief examines a
number of factors that gave rise to these community
anti-drug efforts and sustained them over time.

A literature search and 13 onsite case studies
revealed evidence of widespread grassroots
community responses to illicit drugs. Even a
cursory review supports the conclusion that these
responses may represent an important asset in the
Nation's assault on drugs. If policymakers could
better understand how to harness this community
capacity, society could unleash a potent vehicle
for reclaiming drug-plagued cities from the dealers
and users who hold them hostage.

By collecting detailed accounts of a series of
anti-drug initiatives, the study aimed to identify
important features of community groups that affect
anti-drug efforts over time. Careful study of the
variables that are most critical to the initiation
and maintenance of community anti-drug efforts may
help policymakers identify those interventions that
work best to promote the success of neighborhood
drug fighters.

Case selection and preparation

Using several computerized newspaper and magazine
indexes to identify articles about neighborhoods
and drugs, the researchers collected 170 articles
published between January 1986 and June 1990 that
described 218 individuals or groups in 25 States
and the District of Columbia that had planned or
participated in a grassroots anti-drug activity.
This list was augmented with entries from
directories of citizen anti-drug groups.1

Selection criteria. Unlike other studies of the
effect of citizen action on crime, this study
selected only efforts that were citizen-initiated
and citizen-controlled. The most important
criterion was that they be truly grassroots,2
voluntary operations. No initial presuppositions
were made about how many members a group needed to
have, how often it needed to meet, or the kinds and
range of activities it needed to pursue. 

The operating assumption was that the unit of
analysis in this project was the citizen anti-drug
"initiative": a group of individuals who joined
together in an activity oriented against drugs.
Candidates needed to meet one or more of the
following criteria:

o Law enforcement, anti-drug approach: Initiatives
were sought that focused on suppressing drug
dealing in particular communities. Groups that were
primarily concerned with anti-crime measures in
general were eliminated from consideration.

o Citizen-driven rather than agency-driven:
Researchers eliminated groups that were primarily
vehicles of government agencies, including police
departments and housing authorities, since the
literature on community anti-crime programs already
focuses on these kinds of efforts.

o Variety of institutional affiliation: The study
sought some groups that were operated by and some
that were affiliated with other organizations.
These other organizations included neighborhood
associations, churches, and city governments.

o Length of time in existence: Groups that had been
active for at least 6 months but not longer than 3
or 4 years were sought, under the assumption that
most older groups lose some of their grassroots
identities. 

o Size: A slight bias was developed toward smaller
groups, which tended not to have significant
funding sources and professional staff.

o Geographic location: The study sought geographic
diversity by selecting groups in different parts of
the country and different parts of cities (from
impoverished to more affluent sections) that
represented entire cities or one particular
neighborhood.

Other key variables came under consideration but
did not serve as full-fledged criteria in narrowing
the field. 

Census data were invaluable in helping to fill in
the details of the neighborhood demographic
profiles that became an important part of each of
the community anti-drug cases. Interviews were the
primary source of information; the number of people
interviewed for each case varied but averaged 12.

Summary of Case Studies

The following summaries encapsulate each of the 13
case studies3 that are the foundation of this
analysis. While we encourage reading each case in
its entirety, the summaries will familiarize the
reader with the activities discussed in the cases
and will enable the reader to understand the
variety of community responses to drugs from which
the conclusions have been drawn. 

Ad Hoc Group Against Crime, Kansas City, Missouri 

Kansas City's Ad Hoc Group Against Crime was formed
in 1977 after a meeting between angry members of
the black community and police officials to discuss
the police response to a series of grisly homicides
of young black women. The meeting was organized by
Alvin Brooks, a former police officer who had
become an assistant city manager.

While working as a city official, Brooks
coordinated Ad Hoc, a loosely constructed
grassroots volunteer association whose mission was
handling police-community relations and fighting
crime. But in 1985, the drug problem had begun to
overwhelm Kansas City, and Ad Hoc turned most of
its attention to combating drugs. In addition to
its existing activities, which included an
anonymous witness hotline and crime-tip reward
program, Ad Hoc initiated anti-drug marches,
rallies, and drug-house "blitzes." These
activities, particularly the blitzes, came to be
supported by police, insofar as they had an effect
on their targeted areas. The activities also
brought plaudits to the police, who regularly
appeared at Ad Hoc events. 

The relationship between Ad Hoc and the Kansas City
Police Department became close, in part a
reflection of the dedication of the group to its
cause, and in part as a result of the close working
relationship between Brooks and the police
department leadership. Ad Hoc members also worked
closely with police and the district attorney to
threaten landlords with civil forfeiture if they
failed to evict drug-dealing tenants.

Allerton Neighborhood Anti-Crime Committee, the
Bronx, New York

When crack cocaine sellers overran the area in and
around Zimmerman Park in the Bronx neighborhood of
Allerton, the Neighborhood Initiatives Development
Corporation (NIDC), a tenants' rights and housing
revitalization organization, responded by
establishing a Task Force on Drugs. This task force
brought together representatives of the community
and New York law enforcement to work on developing
solutions to the problems related to the drug
situation in the
neighborhood.

Although this enhanced communication between law
enforcement agencies and the community netted a
number of drug arrests, a larger effort was needed
on the community side of the equation. With the
help of the Citizens Committee for New York City,
NIDC organized the Allerton Anti-Crime Committee,
an organization that tried to enlist Allerton
residents in an effort to improve the neighborhood
through education and community activities.

By 1990, the Anti-Crime Committee began to tackle
drug problems head-on. The situation in Zimmerman
Park, the heart of the neighborhood's drug problem,
called for drastic action. Some residents sought a
9:00 p.m. curfew in the park and others also wanted
benches removed to prevent people from
congregating. Although the police nominally
accepted the idea of a curfew, they could not
provide the level of enforcement to satisfy the
most active community residents.

To keep the peace in the Zimmerman Park area, the
Allerton Anti-Crime Committee returned to its
roots: sponsoring events intended to bring people
together. The police believed that significant
change would require citizens to take an even more
active role. 

Fairlawn Coalition, Washington, D.C.

When a cocaine market took over the Washington,
D.C., neighborhood of Fairlawn in the late 1980's
and police seemed unable to mitigate the situation,
residents responded by openly patrolling their
streets, using novel tactics to drive the drug
dealers out of the neighborhood.

An earlier experience with a police crime watch
program had taught Fairlawn resident Edward Johnson
two lessons: first, that citizens passively
watching the street from inside their homes did
little to deter crime in their neighborhood, and
second, but more important, that it was the
community's responsibility to help the police. With
this in mind, Johnson began organizing neighbors to
adopt a sense of personal responsibility for their
community, which in turn would motivate police to
take a stronger interest in the community as well.

Following a kickoff anti-drug rally, a number of
residents organized themselves into nightly patrol
groups to walk the streets of Fairlawn and act as a
deterrent to drug trafficking. Wearing their
trademark bright orange hats, the members of the
Fairlawn Coalition first drove drug dealers from
their positions merely by standing out on the
streets with them, and later by bringing in video
cameras, still cameras, and the bright light of
publicity.

The local police district assigned a couple of
officers to walk with the group, initially as
protection. Then, as the police came to understand
the dedication of the Coalition members, strong
ties developed between the police and the
neighborhood. The two patrol officers undertook
creative problem-solving efforts to decrease
criminal activity in the neighborhood, setting up
roadblocks, tracking down outstanding warrants, and
even knocking on doors of known drug dealers and
asking them how business was. As the neighbors saw
the commitment of the police to the neighborhood,
they in turn began providing more useful
information to aid in investigations. Soon a
full-fledged police-community partnership was in
place.

But the backbone of the Fairlawn Coalition's 
efforts remained the nightly patrols. Through these
patrols, residents felt safer walking the streets
of their neighborhood. The commitment of the
Fairlawn Coalition to these patrols convinced
police that a creative, fruitful partnership could
in fact improve the quality of life in the
neighborhood.

Hill Street Crime Watch Committee, Boston,
Massachusetts

The Hill Street Crime Watch Committee was formed by
residents of a troubled Boston neighborhood to help
police crack down on the drug trade that was
instilling fear and creating disorder there. The
area, which one narcotics officer called "the worst
section in the whole city," was well known to
police as a major center for drug dealing.

Frustrated by conditions in her neighborhood, Hill
Street resident Carmen Peralta called Christopher
Hayes for help. Hayes, a civilian employee of the
Boston Police Department who ran its Neighborhood
Crime Watch Program, had already organized crime
watch groups in about 100 Boston neighborhoods.
After meeting with Peralta and other Hill Street
residents and recognizing the extreme fear and
danger present in the community, Hayes asked then
Police Commissioner Francis (Mickey) Roache to meet
with the group. The meeting between Roache and the
Hill Street residents convinced the commissioner
that drastic measures were needed.

To give the Hill Street neighborhood high priority,
the police department established a special drug
task force for that area. The Hill Street Crime
Watch members were asked to participate in the drug
reduction efforts by acting as informants,
providing police with information that could lead
to arrests and abatement of the problem.

However, after an intensive effort in the area, the
cooperation began to break down. The task force was
transferred from the local police district to the
department's citywide Drug Control Unit. The Hill
Street Crime Watch Committee members felt
abandoned, as they perceived that police efforts in
the neighborhood waned while drug trafficking and
related threats of violence continued. Intimidated
relentlessly by drug dealers, the Crime Watch
leader left the group and moved his family out of
the country. Fear escalated among group members,
and the effort fell apart.

Philadelphia Anti-Drug Coalition, Philadelphia,
Pennsylvania

The Philadelphia Anti-Drug Coalition evolved from a
number of disparate local grassroots efforts
against drugs. The primary impetus for the
coalition came from a group called Mantua Against
Drugs (MAD), the brainchild of a University of
Pennsylvania professor and an inner-city community
activist. Russell Ackoff, the professor, and Herman
Wrice, the activist, formed Mantua Against Drugs
with a handful of other Mantua residents, after
determining that better communication would be
needed in order to maximize efforts to rid the city
of a common enemy: drugs.

Wrice began a dialog between the local Philadelphia
police district and the Mantua Against Drugs
members. Meanwhile, Wrice and two MAD associates
staged a raid on a crack house and, with the
blessing of the police, boarded up the building.
They held an anti-drug rally a week later. Other
successes followed, and word began to spread
throughout the city about activities in Mantua.
Spinoff groups began to form in other
neighborhoods, and alliances were formed among
these organizations.

Tactics varied from neighborhood to neighborhood
but generally revolved around community vigils.
These vigils, staged outside troublesome crack
houses, were a means to involve large numbers of
people from the community, and the vigils in turn
empowered the community to feel as though it could
make progress against drugs.

As the police became more comfortable with working
with MAD and other spinoff groups and publicity
about the various anti-drug efforts grew, interest
in a citywide anti-drug initiative increased. From
this round of activity emerged the Philadelphia
Anti-Drug Coalition, an umbrella organization that
distributed funds, resources, and information to
smaller efforts against drugs.

United Neighbors Against Drugs, Philadelphia,
Pennsylvania

In 1985, several years before MAD was initiated,
United Neighbors Against Drugs (UNAD) was formed in
response to growing drug-related problems in the
Norris Square area of Philadelphia. At that time,
the heads of a handful of local churches and social
service agencies held an anti-drug rally in Norris
Square Park, the center of the neighborhood.
Attempting to build on this success, the organizers
of UNAD held a number of subsequent "little
rallies" in local churches, with the support and
aid of the Norris Square Neighborhood Project.

At the same time, the Philadelphia police also
contributed to the effort, adding a number of
patrol officers to the area. In addition, relations
between police and community groups and
organizations in the area improved as the police
increased their efforts to reach out to the
community and keep it informed of police activities
there.

However, the effects of the community's
accomplishments soon faded. The drug dealers who
had been driven from the park retaliated, violently
assaulting two UNAD leaders on several occasions
and harassing them on others. To make matters
worse, a police captain who had done valuable work
for the community was transferred to another
district. By 1986, the initial UNAD effort
dissolved, mostly because of fear and
disillusionment.

Three years later, the drug situation had
deteriorated badly in the nearby Kensington
neighborhood. A representative of the Neighborhood
Project met with Herman Wrice, the activist who had
formed the MAD organization. With MAD as the spark,
the UNAD effort in Kensington was rekindled, using
MAD as its model.

Participants in this second UNAD effort again tried
to enlist police help and protection and, again,
received support from a new, sympathetic police
captain, Gerald Baker. In addition, UNAD
successfully broadened its agenda, addressing not
only the drug problem, but other, larger community
issues.

UNAD members organized anti-drug vigils and
marches, educational meetings, trash cleanups,
youth activities, and housing initiatives designed
to address the problems of abandoned buildings in
the area. These activities, combined with a
much-improved relationship with the local police
district, had a positive effect on the community.

The specific anti-drug effort lasted little more
than a year, and attendance at UNAD vigils and
public meetings began to fall off. Captain Baker
was transferred out of the district, just as his
predecessor had been a few years earlier. UNAD
continues in the Norris Square and Kensington
neighborhoods, proud of its past accomplishments
and proceeding with more of a focus on neighborhood
rehabilitation. 

Whittier Block Watch, Denver, Colorado

Shortly after Jan Johnson and her family moved into
the Denver neighborhood of Whittier, they
discovered that it was rapidly deteriorating into a
haven for drug trafficking. Because she felt the
police were not responding as effectively as they
might, Johnson and her neighbors mounted a
persistent effort to document and report suspicious
activity in the neighborhood and to hold police and
other city agencies accountable for the condition
of the neighborhood.

When the extent of the drug trade grew intolerable,
Johnson organized a meeting of an existing
neighborhood block group and other concerned
residents. The new group, which members simply
called Block Watch, had a two-pronged agenda.
First, they wanted to convince the police to
intensify the law enforcement response to the
drugs. Second, Johnson and her fellow Block
Watchers pressed zoning officials to implement a
new nuisance ordinance that permitted the eviction
of drug-dealing tenants.

Drug-related activity soon began to abate. Several
months after Block Watch began, Johnson and her
neighbors held their last meeting, convinced that
they had accomplished much of what they set out to
do by improving the quality of police enforcement
in the area and reducing the level of drug
trafficking. (The police, on the other hand, felt
that the role of the neighborhood group had not
been as large as the community believed.) Jan
Johnson and her neighbors then began to play a more
active leadership role in a larger, existing
neighborhood association.

REACH, Detroit, Michigan

Once a modest neighborhood of one- and two-family
homes, Detroit's Pilgrim Village was hit hard by
the crack epidemic of the mid-1980's. Flourishing
crack houses, shootings, break-ins, and other
criminal activity became commonplace, driving many
homeowners away. In the midst of this spiral of
decay, the 12th Street Baptist Church, led by
Reverend Lee A. Earl, undertook a number of
activities to stabilize the community.

Beginning in 1981, church collection plate funds
were used to buy one or two abandoned houses per
year, to renovate the structures with labor
provided by church members, and to sell the
properties at a discount to needy members of the
congregation or community. In 1986, the church
created REACH (Reach Everyone, Administer Care and
Hope) as a separate entity, responsible for the
housing development program, a food distribution
program for low-income residents, and a summer
youth enrichment program. Other services were
gradually added, including a Narcotics Anonymous
group, a day care center, a teen recreation
program, a senior citizens' outreach program, and a
community development corporation.

REACH also organized a citizens' anti-drug
committee called the REACH Community Group in 1988.
The group has staged several spirited anti-drug
demonstrations, including a "funeral" for crack,
and has sponsored neighborhood cleanup efforts.

By virtue of its close affiliation with the church,
REACH reaped a number of benefits. It shared
personnel and office space. It benefited from
Reverend Earl's reputation and his gift for public
relations. Because it was established as a
distinct, nonprofit organization, REACH was able to
obtain separate liability insurance and to solicit
and accept funds from government agencies,
foundations, and corporations that would not have
donated funds directly to the church. In its first
3 years as a separate entity, REACH's annual budget
grew to $450,000.

Stella Link Revitalization Coalition, Houston,
Texas

Link Valley, once a comfortable neighborhood in the
heart of Houston, had become an open-air,
drive-through drug bazaar. Only 1 out of 10
available residential units was occupied, and the
abandoned units, broken fences, litter, and
disrepair made the area a convenient location for
drug dealers and, in the eyes of the police, a
dangerous site. In addition, Link Valley offered
easy access for drug users. It was close to a
highway, allowing consumers to drive in from other
areas, make a purchase, and leave quickly.

Police efforts to control the rising tide of drugs
in the area had not achieved the hoped-for impact.
Arrests, though substantial in number, did not make
any headway. The police, like Sergeant J.W.
Collins, who was assigned to Link Valley, began to
feel that a new strategy was necessary. It would be
two-pronged, focusing on the buyers rather than the
dealers themselves and addressing the physical
decay that seemed to be contributing to the
problems of the area.

The turning point was the murder of an elderly
resident in 1988 in a neighborhood close to Link
Valley and the arrest of her assailants soon after
in a Link Valley drug den. Representatives of nine
neighborhood associations organized themselves
against drugs and formed the Stella Link
Revitalization Coalition. After meeting with
police, the coalition soon became committed to the
new police strategy, offering to become an equal
partner in cleaning up Link Valley.

With the support of superiors in the police
department and the collaboration of the coalition,
Houston police cordoned off Link Valley to prevent
drive-through drug buys and conducted a 100-officer
sweep of abandoned buildings to look for squatters
and drug traffickers. At the same time, the
coalition coordinated a massive cleanup of the
area, picking up trash, cutting down weeds, and
hauling out garbage. Coalition members also worked
with city agencies to facilitate the enforcement of
health and housing ordinances. As a result of these
efforts--keeping drug customers away and making
drug dealing less convenient--the Link Valley
cocaine market vanished.

The Blockos, Manhattan,New York

During the first half of 1989, street-level drug
dealing entered the middle-class neighborhood of
30th Street between Park and Lexington Avenues in
Manhattan. About 15 residents met with a police
department Community Affairs Officer to see what
could be done. The police, the officer said,
already were stretched too thin and residents could
do little else except call 911 if they saw street
dealing. After holding a few more meetings, with
more and more people attending each, the residents
decided to go out into the street as a group and
simply stand near the dealers. The plan had
immediate results: two dealers joined by a group of
these residents muttered, "Looks like we're not
wanted," and left.

The second night that this tactic was tried, drug
dealers responded by mimicking the group's tactics,
bolstering their number in an attempt to intimidate
the residents. When the residents failed to be
intimidated, none of the dealers returned. The
"Blockos," a nickname allegedly coined by a
disgruntled dealer, continued their street patrols,
sending 10 to 15 men and women of all ages onto the
neighborhood streets to stand beside any dealers
they saw. They changed their hours as the drug
dealers changed theirs.

The Blockos employed a wide range of resources. A
graphic artist provided posters to announce the
meeting. A friend of a Blockos member persuaded the
New York Times to publish a story on them. Through
advertising connections, Crane's Weekly and Ad Week
covered their story. TV stations also ran stories
on the group. Two or three members who were not
employed devoted time to organizing and maintaining
interest in the group. The group also received
assistance from the Manhattan District Attorney's
Office.

Their operation was soon successful; dealers were
pushed farther downtown. As the dealers' territory
shifted, the Blockos were joined by the 29th Street
Block Association, expanding the area of operation.
Although the group no longer conducts its nightly
patrols, it has the capacity to revive and respond
effectively should the need arise. 

210 Stanton, Manhattan, New York

On Manhattan's Lower East Side, 210 Stanton is the
address of a building that in 1985 became the
headquarters of a major drug selling operation.
Buyers lined the hallways and prostitutes came in
to buy drugs, scaring tenants away from mobilizing
the tenants' association to protect themselves.

One resident, Marie Christopher, contacted Felice
Kirby, a community activist with the Citizens
Committee for New York City, a nonprofit
organization that provides training to police and
community groups to help them coordinate anti-crime
strategies. Together with Sergeant Michael Walsh, a
police department Community Patrol Officer, they
devised a strategy to evict the dealer.

Community Patrol Officers guarded the entrances to
the building, requiring all visitors to sign in. If
they were headed to the apartment where the drug
dealing originated, officers accompanied them, on
the pretext that the building was infested with
drug dealers. 

Meanwhile, Christopher organized the residents'
response. She persuaded the building manager to
file a site complaint in Housing Court against the
dealer on behalf of the building's management
corporation. Christopher then asked the Manhattan
District Attorney's Community Affairs Unit to help
advise residents on ways to build a better case
against "problem" residents. Information provided
by residents helped solidify the case against the
apartment where most of the drug dealing took
place; search warrants were issued, charges were
filed, and the resident convicted. In his wake, a
revitalized tenants' association emerged, working
to improve the quality of life for the building's
residents.

At-Taqua Mosque, Brooklyn, New York

Late in 1988, 2 years after crack dealers invaded
the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood, members of
At-Taqua Mosque decided to take their Brooklyn
community back from the dealers. They soon targeted
a nearby apartment building that hosted a number of
drug dealers. Armed with martial arts weapons, five
mosque members, including the Iman, entered the
building and ordered the dealers to leave. The
dealers called the police, who arrested the five
Muslims and charged them with felony weapons
possession.

Undaunted, Iman Ibrahim Bilal met with 79th
Precinct police and proposed a strategy to end the
drug dealing that plagued the neighborhood. Police
would conduct a drug sweep, which would be followed
by 40 days of Muslim patrols to take back the
neighborhood. The police agreed to the plan.

The members of the At-Taqua Mosque also had the
media on their side. The apartment building arrests
drew a sympathetic response from media covering the
event, and favorable coverage continued once the
strategy began. After the police "swept" the area
of drug dealers, the Muslims followed with 40 days
of patrols, using walkie-talkies to connect patrol
groups on the blocks surrounding the mosque.

The effort was successful. Dealers fled from the
area. Perhaps more important, relations between the
Muslims and the police grew strong, based on their
positive interaction in designing and implementing
the strategy.

Umma, Brooklyn, New York

Five Muslims who were concerned about the level of
crime in their North Flatbush, Brooklyn, community
founded Umma, a diverse grassroots initiative
seeking to reduce crime and improve the quality of
life for residents of that neighborhood. Led by Ed
Powell, the organization initiated two-man patrols
to break up sidewalk dice-shooting, reduce the
volume on blaring radios, walk children to and from
school, and report burglaries and drug sales to
police. Umma--which means "community" in Arabic and
Swahili--has some 100 members, representing the
diverse ethnic and religious makeup of North
Flatbush.

Umma has sought to improve relations between the
community and the police, working closely with
police to develop a neighborhood crime hotline, as
well as short- and long-term anti-drug strategies
for the 70th Precinct. By cultivating this
relationship and serving as a link between the
community and police, Umma has helped the rest of
the community to become more accepting of the
police. The police, in turn, have come to trust
Umma members and credit them with improving the
quality of life in the community.

Case Study Analysis 

This wide variety of citizen initiatives reveals
that different factors characterize the groups'
formation, operations, and successes. The study
analyzed the ways the groups demonstrated various
levels of citizen responsibility and approaches to
dealing with fear and danger, and how they
responded to different types of leaders, functioned
within social networks, related to other
neighborhood institutions, and expanded their roles
beyond eliminating drug traffickers from their
neighborhoods. How these factors apply to defining
the success of a citizen initiative was then
explored. 

Citizen responsibility

The hallmark of the "new" citizen drug-fighting
initiatives is the shift in the locus of
responsibility for dealing with the drug problem
away from the formal, constituted authority of the
police department to the citizens themselves. For
example, the Fairlawn (Washington, D.C.) group came
to the conclusion that "the only solution was
us.... If we wasn't [sic] willing to pay the price
to save us," no one else would either. In Houston,
the Stella Link Revitalization Coalition was the
first group that one city employee had seen take
the position: "We will do this together, and what
can we do as a part of this?" Citizens in Fairlawn
and Stella Link, as well as the Philadelphia-based
Mantua, were willing to do more than complain; they
insisted on sharing responsibility for solving the
drug problem.

In contrast, Boston's Hill Street Crime Watch
Committee and Boston Police Department officials
confirmed and validated citizens' conventional
definition of the problem facing their Hill Street
neighborhood: there was insufficient police
presence to suppress the drug trade. By defining
the problem as an undersupply of police services
and the solution as a commitment of police
resources, the citizen role was minor. Citizens
should "lay low" and report crime, and police
should do the rest.

The Stella Link Revitalization Coalition's story
illustrates how redefinition of the problem can
inform the choice of strategy and in turn yield
substantial improvements in solving neighborhood
drug problems. As in Hill Street, the dominant
strategy had been to focus on arresting drug
criminals. In Houston, when residents saw there
were always more arrests to make, the problem was
redefined, this time from an economic perspective.
Since markets are driven by consumer demand, they
reasoned, reducing demand should dry up the market
and force sellers to take their goods elsewhere. 

This created opportunities for citizens to
participate in the Link Valley operation. Since
physical decay was a problem, citizens organized a
cleanup. They identified owners of Link Valley
properties. They worked with a variety of city
agencies, including health, sanitation, and
housing, in order to bring rundown buildings up to
code. As the operation took shape, a sharp division
of labor emerged between the roles of citizens and
police. Citizens did not patrol the streets or
establish street-corner vigils but participated
with city agencies as planners and as
behind-the-scenes facilitators. By limiting
vehicular access to Link Valley and advising
motorists that they were entering a high-crime
area, police were able to close down the drug
market completely.

Citizen action in the face of danger and fear

Indirect evidence about drug dealers' willingness
to make and carry out threats of violence emerged
from the case studies. The level of violence is
important because it translates into the ambient
level of fear in the neighborhood. Some drug
markets create so much fear in the community that
the residents' ability to mount a community
response is severely compromised, as it was on
Boston's Hill Street. Other markets may engender
some fear among residents, but do not have such a
chilling effect on citizen action. In the
Washington, D.C., and the two Philadelphia case
studies, citizens took to the streets in their
effort to fight drugs, placing themselves in a most
vulnerable position. 

The behavior of drug dealers in the Washington and
Philadelphia neighborhoods seems quite different
from the behavior of dealers in Boston. The idea
that neighborhood drug markets differ significantly
from one another is consistent with what has been
reported in the small number of
participant-observer studies that describe the life
of young men who trade drugs on inner-city
streets.10 At present, however, there is not enough
information to determine whether the vulnerability
of a drug market to citizen intervention is due to
the way the market is organized or to the efficacy
of a particular citizen anti-drug initiative. 

Achieving visibility and building strength in
numbers. The more participants that organizers
could rally together for a particular event, the
less likely that drug traffickers would risk an
attack. At the same time, an enormous public
turnout communicated a message to both the
law-abiding citizens and the drug dealers that
residents could still control the neighborhood.
Organizers in the Bronx staged a "Unity Day" in
Zimmerman Park that attracted many residents. REACH
organizers held a series of spirited public rallies
in their Detroit neighborhood. Fairlawn activists
in Washington held a rally and march early on. And
organizers in Philadelphia's Mantua and Norris
Square neighborhoods held regular rallies and
marches before each vigil began. Even a relatively
small gathering of neighborhood residents seems to
mitigate the fear of retaliation if the residents
can manage to attract the news media, especially
television. 

Keeping a low profile. On the other hand, because
prominent citizen anti-drug activists become ready
targets for disgruntled drug dealers, citizen
activists in several communities tried to conceal
their anti-drug activities. In the Bronx, for
example, the early members of the Allerton
Anti-Drug Committee decided to recruit additional
members by reaching out only to close
acquaintances. A low-key, informal recruitment
strategy, Citizens Committee consultants suggested,
would be less apt to attract attention than a
public campaign. 

Observing, recording, and reporting crime to the
police from the relative safety of their own homes
seemed to offer a reasonable measure of comfort to
neighborhood crime watchers on Boston's Hill
Street, and in other cities (such as Denver and
Kansas City) that used this tactic. However,
collaborative police advice to members of the Hill
Street Crime Watch Committee to "lay low" in the
face of danger resulted eventually in the demise of
citizens' efforts. In these kinds of cases,
significant external resources, often in the form
of police presence, may be necessary to permit
citizen groups to participate, especially to
participate overtly.

Police protection. Having the support and
cooperation of the police department has been seen
to embolden citizens. In Philadelphia's Norris
Square neighborhood, UNAD members inadvertently
elicited police participation by planning a rally
in a dangerous area. When the police captain
realized that the citizens were intent on marching
regardless of his misgivings, he set up a search
light on top of a building for UNAD's first vigil.
It served as a potent symbol of the police
department's intention to expose drug criminals to
the light of justice, support for the efforts of
citizen anti-drug activists, and commitment to
protect citizen drug fighters from harm (especially
from rooftop snipers).

Drug fighter exchange programs. But fearing that
continued street vigils and other somewhat
confrontational anti-drug tactics would expose them
to retribution by local drug retailers, members of
various groups within the Philadelphia Anti-Drug
Coalition (such as MAD and UNAD) took turns
participating in vigils in neighborhoods outside
their own. These "exchange programs" provided
nearby neighborhoods with additional participants
and an injection of enthusiasm and also helped to
reduce the danger. Since local dealers were less
likely to recognize a vigil-keeper who lived in
another neighborhood, the visitors were in less
danger of retaliation.

Avoiding confrontation. In Washington, D.C.'s,
Fairlawn area, the citizen group decided not to
invite the Guardian Angels or Nation of Islam into
the neighborhood because they feared that these
groups' aggressive tactics could escalate into
violence. Instead, they included men and women aged
40 and above in their nightly patrols to create a
presence on the street but to pose no threat to the
physical well-being of dealers. As a result, the
Fairlawn patrols provoked no retaliation.

Rapid communication and assistance. In Fairlawn,
citizens also used walkie-talkies to ensure rapid,
two-way communication on the street. Furthermore,
by stationing one citizen at home with a
walkie-talkie, mobile patrols could readily relay
information to the police. Patrols would transmit
their observations over the radio, and the
individual at home would telephone the information
immediately to the police department.

Types of Leaders

Two groups of individuals played leadership roles.
The first group was composed of neighborhood
residents who decided to do something to address
the drug problem. The second comprised professional
community organizers, individuals who did not
necessarily live in the community but who provided
advice, inspiration, and resources to the group.
Individuals who assumed positions of leadership in
the neighborhood anti-drug effort were usually
citizen-activists rather than professional
organizers. In Washington, D.C., two of the
Fairlawn leaders had been active in a number of
voluntary organizations such as the PTA and Boy
Scouts. 

The situation was similar in other cities. Although
none of the organizers of Boston's Hill Street
Crime Watch Committee had previously belonged to
organizations that fought drugs or crime, several
principal players had the combination of
interpersonal skills and work or volunteer
experience that equipped them to become leaders. A
neighborhood that to some observers may seem
deficient in human resources may have a ready store
of able individuals with leadership talents that
have developed in a different context. 

While nonprofessional citizen-activists played
leadership roles in Houston, Boston, Washington,
and Denver, professional community organizers
exercised leadership in other sites. Herman Wrice
and Sister Carol Keck in Philadelphia, Al Brooks in
Kansas City, Danny Bakewell in Los Angeles, Chris
Hayes in Boston, and Andrew Laiosa in New York are
examples of professionals who played important
roles in citizen anti-drug initiatives. While the
nonprofessional activists described above served as
anti-drug organizers on nights and weekends, some
professionals' full-time paid occupations were
those of community organizers. 

Effect of social networks

Existing social networks often serve as the nucleus
for the formation of anti-drug efforts. Organizers
begin with friends and neighbors, expressing
concern about neighborhood problems and sharing
ideas about plausible solutions. The groups then
begin to organize formally and to reach out for
additional participants. The Fairlawn Coalition,
however, is an example of an anti-drug effort that
created and then solidified relationships that did
not necessarily predate the anti-drug initiative.
Early organizers contacted the minister at the
Garden Memorial Presbyterian Church, who helped
plan a community rally and march. The coalition
announced the rally and march with hand-lettered
flyers and invitations to ministers,
representatives of city organizations, and other
leaders in the Washington area. 

An outstanding feature of the Fairlawn Coalition
was the creation of a cohesive social group from
the citizens who agreed to participate. The nightly
patrols, each begun with a prayer, and the
barbecues, picnics, and parties forged a durable
camaraderie that included the police officers who
patrolled the neighborhood as well as the citizens.
In sociological terms, the "purposive incentives"
associated with stifling the drug trade were
initially augmented and subsequently transformed
into "solidarity incentives"; i.e., collegial
feelings for one another.11 This transformation may
account for the difference in character between
anti-drug groups like Fairlawn's and many of the
traditional crime prevention activities that social
scientists have examined.12

Role of neighborhood institutions

Although individual citizens have started
drug-fighting groups with little or no outside
assistance, standing neighborhood institutions
often play an important role in establishing new
groups. They are almost always a major part of the
supporting network that is generated. In some
cases, a standing institution will create an
anti-drug initiative to address a problem or need
that the institution's leaders have identified.
Subsequently, the anti-drug initiative may spin off
and become a separate entity.

Several cases illustrated how an anti-drug
initiative can evolve from an existing neighborhood
institution. In Kansas City, the anti-drug
committee, established in 1985, grew out of the
earlier Ad Hoc, established 8 years earlier. In the
Allerton area of the Bronx, the Anti-Crime
Committee was created in 1989 from the NIDC
established in 1982. And in Link Valley, the Stella
Link Revitalization Coalition emerged from existing
neighborhood institutions. 

Churches were the significant neighborhood
institution in several groups: REACH in Detroit,
Fairlawn in Washington, D.C., and UNAD and MAD in
Philadelphia. The sponsorship of a local church can
play a significant role in fostering the work of
citizen activists by providing them with facilities
and materials, staff time, free publicity from the
Sunday pulpit, and a credibility they might not
otherwise have. "If you have preachers involved,
you have access to a lot of people who will be
getting information from some very credible
sources, people they respect," according to
Reverend Floyd J. Naters-Gamarra of Philadelphia's
Norris Square. 

Political clout

Anti-drug organizations can become a large or
important constituency that decisionmakers cannot
ignore. In addition to the number of citizens who
participate in an anti-drug initiative, the group's
influence is also a function of the reputation and
credibility of the participants, their degree of
organization, the sophistication of their
strategies, and their ability to draw media
attention.

For example, in Houston, since the Stella Link
Revitalization Coalition represented 6,000 homes,
it could muster considerable political clout. Size
alone commanded respect from the city councilman,
the assistant police chief, and city health and
housing officials who agreed to meet with coalition
representatives. 

Kansas City's Ad Hoc Group Against Crime was also
able to develop sufficient clout to wield
independent influence over the city government. Ad
Hoc is distinct among the study groups in that it
was, from the beginning, a citywide organization
without allegiance to a specific area. It was
formed after political leaders asked the assistant
city manager to meet with leaders of the city's
black community. This request must have reflected
the politicians' judgment about the level of
tension in the minority community following the
murder of several young black women. Ad Hoc quickly
became an established institution. Its activities
were well known in the community through
fundraising on black-owned radio stations and
through the programs it organized. The mayor helped
to raise funds on behalf of Ad Hoc, and the
assistant city manager continued his leadership
role. 

Services to the community

Citizens organized a variety of activities to
prevent drug abuse, assist crime victims, and
improve the physical environment.

Prevention programs. Citizen groups organized an
extensive array of drug prevention programs
directed primarily to neighborhood youths. These
programs included initiatives that emphasized drug
education, employment, counseling, and recreation.
The Philadelphia Anti-Drug Coalition organized a
summer youth olympics. Detroit's REACH organized a
youth basketball association. Kansas City's Ad Hoc
Group created a program in which adult volunteers
taught young people about the realities of prison
and the criminal justice system; Ad Hoc activists
also ran a counseling program for first-time
juvenile offenders. The Allerton Anti-Crime
Committee in the Bronx sponsored basketball
tournaments and dance contests for neighborhood
kids, organized an anti-drug play for teenagers,
and brought a drug education program to a local
school. 

Some programs also served adults. For example, both
REACH and the Allerton Anti-Crime Committee set up
Narcotics Anonymous groups. The Allerton group also
distributed fliers that listed treatment programs
for drug addicts.

Victim assistance. Kansas City's Ad Hoc Group
developed a set of victim assistance programs as
part of its broad anti-crime mission. They included
the organization of volunteers to install locks for
elderly citizens who had been victimized, a
counseling program for victims of sexual assault, a
program to help resolve family disputes, and an
effort to pay the expenses incurred by crime
witnesses when they testify in court.

Neighborhood improvement. Since physical
deterioration of a neighborhood can create an
environment conducive to drug trafficking, citizen
drug fighters responded with efforts to remove
trash, "dress up" the street, and promote
redevelopment. During MAD-sponsored vigils in
Philadelphia, participants brought garbage bags to
clean up street corners where drugs were regularly
sold. Stella Link Revitalization Coalition
participants in Houston filled 10 semi-trailer-size
dumpsters with 250 cubic yards of trash on a single
Saturday. REACH sponsored flower planting and curb
painting and initiated an ambitious effort to
renovate abandoned houses in the neighborhood. 

Defining effectiveness

Longevity and political clout. The success of an
anti-drug effort--size, political clout, longevity,
and the desire and capacity to take a comprehensive
approach to neighborhood quality of life issues--
enhances the possibility of impact. An anti-drug
effort that reaches this stage of
institutionalization can carry out a systematic
assessment of interrelated neighborhood problems
and of resources available, marshal a broad array
of resources, develop opportunities for employing
various tactics, and promote a comprehensive
response to local drug problems. Almost any
neighborhood would be substantially aided by having
such assets at its disposal.

Nevertheless, since most neighborhoods do not and
will not develop large and well-organized anti-drug
initiatives, measuring a community response to
drugs in these organizational terms alone is
unsatisfactory. The most striking counter example
is the case of the Blockos in Manhattan. In order
to discourage street-corner drug traffickers who
had moved into the neighborhood, Blocko members
began to patrol the streets of their neighborhood
on weekend evenings from 8:00 p.m. to midnight.
Like members of the Washington, D.C., Fairlawn
Coalition, the Blockos would stop, stand, and stare
at the traffickers until they moved along. Within a
short time, the dealers had left the neighborhood
and the Blockos decided to end their patrols. A
similar sequence of events took place in Denver's
Whittier neighborhood, where the Block Watch was so
successful, in the view of its members, that it
went out of business within seven months of its
establishment. The fact that these efforts did not
result in the creation of durable institutions does
not make them failures.

Despite general agreement among organizers and
researchers that anti-drug efforts addressing a
variety of related problems from a more
comprehensive perspective are more desirable,
citizens do not always aspire to create robust and
long-lasting institutions. Citizens have other
interests and activities that compete with their
commitment to fighting drugs. To expect that
grassroots citizen anti-drug initiatives must
develop into large, well-integrated organizations
seems inappropriate. Furthermore, the Blockos and
the Whittier Crime Watch left an important legacy:
the latent capacity for mobilization of a citizens'
response if one should be required in the future. 

Objective measures. A second approach to defining
the success of an anti-drug initiative is its
impact on the level of drug dealing in the
community. This perspective relies on objective
measures of effectiveness rather than on an
assessment of the group's viability as an
organization. A successful anti-drug initiative, in
this view, yields significant, measurable, and
relatively long-lasting reductions in the level of
neighborhood drug trafficking.

The cases documented measures of success that,
despite being empirically based, are tenuous. The
Stella Link Revitalization Coalition and the
Houston Police Department together reduced Link
Valley calls for police service by 44 percent, and
serious crime in surrounding neighborhoods fell by
as much as 12 percent. In the Fairlawn neighborhood
of Washington, serious crime dropped 20 percent
between 1988 and 1989, corresponding with the
Fairlawn Coalition's anti-drug activities. These
examples, however, do not form a sufficient
empirical basis from which conclusions can be
drawn. 

Since statistical information is often inconclusive
or unavailable, evaluators used another measure of
success: the accomplishment of specific objectives.
For example, the Kansas City Ad Hoc Group's
"close-a-drug-house-month" campaign in February
1989 logged 600 telephone calls in identifying 217
suspected drug houses; 25 drug houses were closed
during this 1-month campaign.

Different objectives can mean differences in what
constitutes citizens' assessments of success. The
objective of completely cleansing a neighborhood of
drug trafficking may not seem realistic (or even
necessary) from the citizens' point of view. For
example, in Denver, community activists felt that
the drug problem had been largely solved, even
though two crack houses continued to operate in the
area. 

A successful community response to drugs should be
large enough and last long enough to improve the
quality of life in the neighborhood with respect to
the drug trade. It need not obliterate all signs of
drug trafficking, and it need not result in the
establishment of lasting institutions. The
initiative could wax and wane, or it could lay
dormant for a time. Some recognizable outcome is
necessary for the activity to count as a success,
but the effect may be modest. 

Implications and Recommendations

Several implications can be drawn from the analysis
of the cases, and recommendations for policymakers
can be offered.

Effective community anti-drug efforts show wide
variations in institutional robustness and in the
breadth of approach to drug problems. Those that
are able to develop and operate from institutional
strength, see drug problems from a variety of
perspectives, have access to a spectrum of
resources, and connect responses to broader
neighborhood quality of life issues seem more
likely to maintain citizen cohesiveness around
other issues. However, not every community will
have the desire or capacity to operate from this
broader perspective.

Recommendations: Citizens who are involved in
community anti-drug efforts should be encouraged
and helped to address drug problems from a
perspective broader than that of drugs alone. This
type of perspective allows the development of a
variety of mutually supporting strategies.
Encouraging it also allows citizens to think more
inclusively about what resources (among them those
of private and public agencies) might be available.
Still, even anti-drug efforts whose activists are
unable or unwilling to move beyond a primary focus
on drug problems should be encouraged to do what
they are able and willing to do.

Community anti-drug efforts that are specifically
and primarily focused on drugs are fragile and
tenuous. Policymakers must recognize this quality
and learn to appreciate and approach these efforts
on their own terms. Rather than robust, durable,
and well-established corporate entities, community
anti-drug groups are often small, informal
associations. Groups like Manhattan's Blockos or
Denver's Block Watch stayed in existence only long
enough to achieve their objectives. Others, like
Philadelphia's United Neighbors Against Drugs, have
had dormant periods, either as a result of their
own success or because their members were
intimidated by threats and violence. Dormancy can
represent a state of readiness, in which the
community capacity for drug fighting exists but is
not currently mobilized.

Recommendations. Police officials and
representatives of other organizations that fight
drugs can easily overlook a viable community
anti-drug initiative if they do not know what to
look for. Community anti-drug efforts are rarely
organized as large, nonprofit institutions with
offices, officers, and budgets. If policymakers
seek out only well-established organizations, they
will underestimate the informal capacity for drug
fighting that exists in neighborhoods. Several
Federal programs have approached established
community organizations exclusively.13 Future
programs must reach deeper into the community to
provide assistance to the smallest and most
unstructured associations.

In order to reach down into the community,
government agencies should begin to cultivate
working relationships with institutions that are
located closer to the grassroots. Community
foundations, churches, and neighborhood service
providers are among the institutions that could
serve as intermediaries between government agencies
and local anti-drug groups.14

Citizen drug fighters emerge from a variety of
backgrounds and experiences. Some of these
individuals have previous professional experience
battling community problems, while others are
concerned citizens who simply have had enough of
the effects of the drug problem on their
neighborhood. Community institutions also step
forward to provide some unexpected or unanticipated
resources. Citizen drug fighters need and will use
a considerable variety of unconventional resources.
Institutions like churches, philanthropic
organizations, and neighborhood development
corporations offer the citizen anti-drug initiative
financial resources, in-kind services, and moral
support. Professional organizers act as catalyst,
liaison, facilitator, and cheerleader.

Recommendations. Policymakers not only must
recognize citizen drug fighters but should consider
carefully the kind of help they need. While
financial support is always useful, citizen drug
fighters require other resources as well. In many
cases, being taken seriously by the police and
other public officials makes a dramatic difference
in citizens' morale and in their willingness to
participate. By sharing responsibility with
citizens, by granting them access to senior
decisionmakers, and by providing citizens with
feedback on the impact of their activities,
officials encourage additional participation. 

Access to telephones, photocopiers, and meeting
rooms facilitates citizens' ability to organize a
campaign. To the extent that financial resources
are available to promote citizen drug-fighting
initiatives, a little bit can go a long way.
Distinctive T-shirts, caps and hard hats, portable
two-way radios, and other "tools of the trade" may
enhance the safety of citizens on patrol and on
vigil and promote camaraderie. Funds for advice
about organizing and technical assistance can be a
sound investment if the professionals know the
neighborhood well, have experience and a commitment
to anti-drug organizing, and are well positioned in
the community or in the government to facilitate
citizen access to decisionmakers.

Of the resources that citizens' groups utilize in
their assault on drugs, the police play a
particularly pivotal role. Because citizens and
police share a common interest in reducing crime,
drugs, and disorder, they seem like natural allies.
However, the relationship of the two is not always
without problems. Many citizens' groups regard the
drug problem as one of inadequate police
protection. And it is true that only the police
have the power to initially act in neighborhood
situations in which the threat of violence is
strong and persistent. But a conventional law
enforcement approach, in which police retain all
the power and responsibility for fighting drugs and
crime, is likely to undermine citizen initiative
and contribute to the persistence of drugs in the
neighborhood. Shared responsibility for community
security is essential.

Recommendations. In order for citizens and police
to forge more productive relationships, police
executives must be willing to support the
initiative of local commanders who go out on a limb
to help citizen drug fighters. Senior police
officials must find better ways to manage the
relationship with citizen drug fighters than some
appear to have done in the cases documented here.
Furthermore, police officials must be willing to
recognize and to deal honestly and fairly with even
those rancorous citizens who initially may complain
bitterly that the police are the source of their
troubles. Irate citizens often evolve into the most
valuable and hard- working partners that any police
department could want.

Conclusion 

Because there is no single community response to
drugs but rather a variety of responses, it is
important to appreciate and cultivate variability
and innovation. Perhaps different citizen
initiatives have evolved to address different
problems in different environments. Before
specifying one or several model programs, it is
essential first to initiate a program of research
that can identify what works best under what
conditions. If we can evaluate community
drug-fighting efforts and assess the kinds of
interventions that work best in particular drug
markets, then we can offer concrete, practical
advice to citizens, police officials, and
policymakers for the most effective strategy to
defeat drugs neighborhood by neighborhood.

Notes

1. These directories were identified by the
Neighborhood Crime Prevention Center, the Office of
National Drug Control Policy, the 1000 Points of
Light award program, the Robert Wood Johnson
Foundation's Fighting Back Program, the Federal
Office of Substance Abuse Prevention, the Vera
Institute of Justice, and the Citizens Committee
for New York City.

2. "Grassroots" means originating among or carried
on by the common people. Webster's Unabridged New
Twentieth Century Dictionary of the English
Language, 1980. 

3. Six of the case studies discussed here were
prepared by Harvey Simon, a professional casewriter
with Harvard University's Kennedy School Case
Program: "Kansas City and the Ad Hoc Group Against
Crime," Case C16-91-1023.0; "Curfew at Nine: A
Bronx Neighborhood Looks for Solutions," Case C16-
91-1088.0; "The Orange Hats of Fairlawn: A
Washington, D.C., Neighborhood Battles Drugs," Case
C16-91-1034.0; "Neighborhood Crime Watch in
Boston," Case C16-91-1039.0; "United Neighbors
Against Drugs," Case C16-91-1094.0; "A Denver
Neighborhood Tackles Crack," Case C16-91-1063.0.
All were published in 1991.

Three case studies were prepared by other Kennedy
School casewriters for a 1990 NIJ-sponsored pilot
study of community responses to drugs: Lundberg,
Kristen, "The Philadelphia Anti-Drug Coalition,"
Case C16-90-937.0; Kates, Nancy D., "REACH: Fighting
Crack and Crime in Pilgrim Village, Detroit," Case
C16-90-936.0; and Kennedy, David M., "Fighting the
Drug Trade in Link Valley," Case C16-90-935.0.

The remaining four case studies were prepared by
Susan A. Powers of the Vera Institute of Justice
and are included in "Community Response to Drugs,"
Working Paper 090-01-20, Program in Criminal
Justice.

4. Skogan, Wesley G., Disorder and Decline: Crime
and the Spiral of Decay in American Neighborhoods,
New York: Free Press, 1990:140.

5. For a more comprehensive review of these complex
phenomena, see Skogan, Wesley G., "Communities,
Crime, and Neighborhood Organization," Crime and
Delinquency, Vol. 35, No. 3, July 1989:437-457; and
Skogan, Wesley G., "Community Organizations and
Crime," in Michael Tonry and Norval Morris, eds.,
Crime and Justice, Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 1988:39-78. 

6. Skogan, Wesley G., et al., "The Reactions to
Crime Project: Executive Summary," Washington,
D.C.: U.S. Department of Justice, 1982; see also
Yin, R. et al., "Citizen Patrol Projects,"
Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Justice, 1977.

7. Newman, Oscar, Defensible Spaces: Crime
Prevention Through Urban Design, New York:
Macmillan, 1972.

8. The neighborhoods with regular, informal contact
with the police included Fairlawn (Fairlawn
Coalition), Mantua (Mantua Against Drugs, or MAD),
Philadelphia's Norris Square (United Neighbors
Against Drugs), Kansas City (Ad Hoc Group), and the
Bronx (Allerton Anti-Crime Committee).

9. Block watch programs have been discussed in the
literature for many years. See for example,
Rosenbaum, Dennis P., "The Theory and Research
Behind Neighborhood Watch: Is It a Sound Fear and
Crime Reduction Strategy?" Crime and Delinquency,
Vol. 33, No. 1, January 1987:103-134.

10. Fields, Allen B., "Slinging Weed: The Social 
Organization of Streetcorner Marijuana Sales,"
Urban Life, Vol. 13, Nos. 2-3, October 1984:247-
270. See also Reuter, Peter, "Money From Crime,"
RAND Corporation Report, Santa Monica, California,
July 1990.

11. Wilson, James Q., Political Organizations, New
York: Basic Books, 1973.

12. Heinzelmann, Fred, "Promoting Citizen
Involvement in Crime Prevention and Control," in
Neil D. Weinstein, Taking Care: Understanding and
Encouraging Self-Protective Behavior, New York:
Cambridge University Press, 1987:254-279;
Rosenbaum, Dennis P., ed., Community Crime
Prevention: Does It Work?, Beverly Hills,
California: Sage Publications, 1986.

13. The U.S. Department of Health and Human
Services, Office of Substance Abuse Prevention,
operates a large grant program for drug abuse
prevention that requires substantial coordination
at the local level but makes no explicit provision
for participation by grassroots neighborhood
groups. The National Institute of Justice awarded a
grant to the Neighborhood Crime Prevention Center
to fund several existing community organizations
that proposed to become involved in anti-drug
campaigns.

14. Mayer, Steven E., and David M. Scheie,
Supporting Low Income Neighborhood Organizations: A
Guide for Community Foundations, Minneapolis:
Rainbow Research, 1989.



-----------------------------------
Sidebar 1

Historical Overview

Citizen anti-drug initiatives first came to the
attention of the general public and to some
policymakers through a collection of startling
newspaper and magazine articles. With dramatic
headlines like "Neighbors Fight to End Drug
Plague," "Residents Fed up With Dope Dens,
Prowlers," and "Neighbors' Fury Shakes Drug Ring,"
news reports of citizen drug fighters have revealed
a number of surprises. 

First, citizen activists deployed an array of
anti-drug tactics and strategies. In addition to
the block watch programs that law enforcement
agencies have promoted for many years, citizens
developed a variety of creative responses aimed at
reestablishing control over their neighborhoods.
These included marches, innovative use of video
cameras, street-corner vigils, public meetings,
solidarity-building tactics, citizen foot patrols,
and demonstrations at known drug houses. Other
citizens initiated new partnerships with police
departments, prosecutors' offices, and other city
agencies to devise novel solutions to the illicit
drug trade.

Second, innovative strategies flourished in
desolate and seemingly disorganized neighborhoods--
neighborhoods characterized by poverty and other
disadvantages, with few apparent resources to draw
upon. These efforts took place in neighborhoods
with high levels of crime, violence, fear, and
disorder. 

Many researchers and community organizers believe
that while crime may be an effective organizing
issue, it has little value for sustaining citizen
participation. Most believe that crime is a no-win
issue, and few organizers would be willing to
jeopardize their organization's survival by
exclusively fighting crime.4 Because information
about crime and crime prevention has often
increased residents' fear of crime and of one
another, some prevention programs have had the
paradoxical effect of decreasing citizen
participation in crime-ridden areas.5 As a result,
many scholars and organizers believe that it is
necessary for a citizen anti-crime group to broaden
its agenda if it is to mount an effective response.
Neighborhood groups involved in crime prevention
activities have been shown to be more effective and
able to maintain active support if they deal with a
variety of neighborhood problems as well as crime.6

Police researchers and police themselves have
become increasingly aware of the importance of the
community as a resource, especially within the
context of the community policing approach. This
awareness stemmed in part from programs that
demonstrated civic willingness to aid the police in
crime control and prevention. 

Another approach that contributed to the idea that
communities play a role in preventing crime was
"crime prevention through environmental design." It
is a strategy based on the concept that the layout
and the management of buildings and neighborhoods
can be changed to help citizens become more secure
in their environments and make potential offenders
less likely or able to commit criminal acts.7 Crime
prevention through environmental design focuses on
physical design in the context of the ways that
residents think about and utilize the area in which
they live.

-----------------------------------
Sidebar 2

Community Anti-Drug Tactics

An organization's strategy sets out the broad
guiding principles that define the approach to a
problem. An organization's tactics, in contrast,
are the set of particular activities that define
the strategy in operational terms and bring it to
life. Citizen drug fighters have invented, adopted,
or adapted a remarkable battery of anti-drug
tactics to their own needs. 

Grass roots vigilance. In many neighborhoods,
citizens collect information about the neighborhood
drug market in a systematic, organized, and
detailed fashion and then communicate the
information to the police department. Information
exchange is often an informal process. Citizen drug
fighters in almost half of the groups in these case
studies met regularly with police officers to
discuss the drug problem in the neighborhood and to
convey information about drug dealing.8 In
addition, citizens organized formal crime-reporting
schemes, which included block watch programs
(Denver, Boston, and Kansas City)9 and hotlines
(Kansas City). 

Establishing a presence on the street. A second
tactic was to take an open, public stand against
the traffickers. This included crack house raids
(Kansas City and Philadelphia), raids and marches,
citizen patrols--regular evening events in which
small groups of residents searched the neighborhood
for signs of the drug trade (Washington, D.C.)--and
street-corner vigils (Philadelphia). In this study,
the vigil served as a particularly appropriate
instrument to combat drug dealing in
well-established locations, while the patrol seemed
better suited to a mobile and fluid drug trade. 

Advocacy on behalf of the neighborhood. A third
tactic involved citizens approaching the
authorities--usually the police--to help them
combat drug trafficking in the neighborhood (see
"Quality of Relationship With the Police"). In
addition, citizen drug fighters in many locations
sought to influence the behavior of city agencies.
UNAD activists in Philadelphia, wearing their white
hardhats and T-shirts, encouraged greater judicial
accountability by attending court proceedings for
suspected neighborhood drug dealers. Stella Link
Revitalization Coalition members pressured Houston
landlords and government agencies to secure or tear
down abandoned or unsafe Link Valley buildings. The
activists facilitated this process by identifying
the title holders of Link Valley properties.
Members of the Denver Block Watch reported
excessive noise, overcrowding, and truant children
to city offices.
-----------------------------------

Sidebar 3

Quality of Relationship With the Police

The case studies present ample evidence that the
police response to citizens' efforts profoundly
affects the character and success of the venture.
The quality of the relationship between police and
citizens is a decisive factor in determining the
course and character of the community response to
drugs. 

Early confrontations

With few exceptions, citizen drug fighters
complained bitterly about the amount and quality of
the police services that they received early on.
Drug dealers swamped the neighborhood, many seemed
to say, because the police were ineffective in
keeping them out. These sentiments led to
confrontational meetings between citizens and
police in Philadelphia, Denver, Boston, Kansas
City, and Washington. 

In Kansas City, the mayor and a member of the city
council called a meeting between the police and
black leaders in the wake of the murders of a
number of young black women. The meeting, planned
as a session for 100 representatives of the black
community, became a contentious public forum where
angry residents confronted police and city
officials. 

Unfortunately for the police, demands for better
service are one of the earliest and most consistent
responses in the citizens' repertoire. The police,
if they are to meet the needs of the communities
they are charged to serve and protect, must have
the professionalism that enables them to see
community anger as an opportunity to address
problems of drugs and crime. They may find it
counterproductive to interpret such anger as a
rejection of the role of the police or to take it
as a personal affront. Anger is rather a reaching
out on the part of the community, and responsible
police departments will see past the heat of
confrontation to seize the moment.

Building a relationship

One of the critical features in the development of
a productive relationship between police and
community is the establishment of contact with a
senior police official who is willing to take the
citizens' group seriously and to work with it. A
single receptive police official can have a
profound effect on the development of a community
response to drugs, as shown by the contributions of
officers like Captain Beheler and Sergeant Collins,
in Fairlawn and Link Valley, respectively. Yet, no
department had a formal protocol for dealing with
citizen anti-drug groups, or a policing philosophy
that encouraged officers to be responsible for
promoting and nurturing citizen efforts. The
officers developed the relationships not because of
their department's philosophy and organization, but
despite it.

Hazards of conventional policing

Aggressive law enforcement remains a crucial
prerequisite to citizen action in many of the most
disorganized neighborhoods, but this approach,
which involves traditional law enforcement, is
often insufficient. The Boston case is a compelling
example of what can happen when police employ
traditional strategies in their interactions with
citizen drug fighters without using community
resources to maximum effect. 

In Boston's Hill Street neighborhood, then Police
Commissioner Roache responded to citizen complaints
with the traditional response of establishing a
three-person special task force to break the back
of the drug trade. Here, the priorities of the
police drove citizens' behavior: The residents
learned how to provide detailed, reliable, and
rapidly executed reports to police officers, often
dialing into a telephone beeper carried by the
patrol sergeant. These measures helped the police
dramatically increase the number of arrests.
Although the police response was a genuine effort
to assist, they retained total control over the
planning and execution of the enhanced enforcement
effort.  

Police officials rated the Hill Street neighborhood
as a high priority because of the severity of the
problem (drug trafficking, gangs, and violence).
They focused less on the nature of the solution
(competent partners at the grass roots). In other
words, police involvement in Boston derived from an
overall law enforcement strategy for the city and
the need to respond to problem areas, but to do so
in the traditional way. The police response
included but was not based on close relations with
the residents, shared aspirations for a
neighborhood, and personal commitments. (By
contrast, the Houston police were heavily involved
in the Link Valley anti-drug effort and did not use
arrests as a major means to solve problems.) Thus,
when the police special task force was transferred
from the Boston neighborhood, the community's
relationship with the police reverted to the status
quo ante, as citizens' former misgivings about the
commitment of the police and their trustworthiness
reemerged.

The residents might well have asked: How could
everyone do the right thing with so little to show
for it? The answer may have something to do with
the "enforcement-resistant" character of the drug
market on Hill Street. But it also implicates the
police strategy, which could have more fully
exploited the creative solutions that the citizens
have the potential to deliver. The Boston cases
illustrate the need for law enforcement to
leverage, not replace, citizen initiative. When the
police use conventional responses, they often
assign citizens to narrow and limited roles and
thus reduce the likelihood that those citizens will
invent novel tactics or participate in innovative
partnerships.
-----------------------------------
-----------------------------------

Francis X. Hartmann is Executive Director and
Senior Research Fellow with the Program in Criminal
Justice Policy and Management at Harvard
University's John F. Kennedy School of Government.
Saul N. Weingart, a Research Fellow with the
Program, is now a physician at Beth Israel Hospital
in Boston. David Osborne, Research Assistant with
the Program, is now Special Assistant to the
Director, Office for Victims of Crime, 
U.S. Department of Justice. 

The research for the study was funded by the
National Institute of Justice, Office of Justice
Programs, U.S. Department of Justice, grant 90-IJ-
CX-0033.
-----------------------------------

Findings and conclusions of the research reported
here are those of the authors and do not
necessarily reflect the official position or
policies of the U.S. Department of Justice.

-----------------------------------
The National Institute of Justice is a component of
the Office of Justice Programs, which also includes
the Bureau of Justice Assistance, Bureau of Justice
Statistics, Office of Juvenile Justice and
Delinquency Prevention, and the Office for Victims
of Crime.
-----------------------------------