CITY RESIDENTS PUT DRUG PUSHERS ON SPOT

LAKELAND -- Armed with flashlights, bull horns and tenacity, 45
marchers took to the streets Saturday for what they call "taking back
their neighborhoods."

Three vans full of marchers unloaded at three Lakeland neighborhoods.
They stood in front of homes that police identified as known "drug
houses" and warned the residents inside, "If you keep selling crack,
we'll keep coming back," and "We're gonna be doing this all night long."

The city-sponsored march, part of the Turn Around Lakeland program,
was the seventh of its kind and by the accounts of organizers and
police, the most successful.

"This is my sixth march, and each time we come back we see the same
thing -- the dealers aren't there the next day," said Alonzo Thompson,
a marcher and the city's Weed and Seed coordinator. "This is effective
in keeping the dealers moving and that keeps them from getting a
foothold in an area and setting up big organizations."

On Saturday afternoon, marchers targeted a home on the south side, in
the area near Cleveland Height Boulevard and Eastway Drive.

Saturday night's march started at Kathleen Road and 10th Street on the
north side. The 45

marchers, all wearing matching yellow T-shirts and white hard hats
yelled to the people inside a home to stop dealing drugs.

"Hi-de-hi-de-hi-de-ho, drug dealers got to go," the group
chanted.

A few curious eyes peered out from behind the curtains of the home,
but no one ventured out to confront the crowd.

The Saturday night march continued to another neighborhood, near
Brunnell Parkway and Second Street, where the marchers met with more
protest. That didn't stop the group from targeting at least five houses.

The chanting was relentless. Several residents, mostly women, yelled
back from their yards, telling the group to go away. The marchers chanted

louder.

"Up with hope, down with dope."

During the march, which included Lakeland police officers along for
protection, one person was arrested on an warrant for violating the
city's noise ordinance.

As the man sat in the back of the police car the group had a chant for
him too: "Stupid, Stupid, how does it feel, sitting in the back of the
police mobile."

Police say the chanting is working.

"We have seen a definite decrease of drugs in these neighborhoods,"
said Lakeland police Lt. Tom Day.

Day said the Paul A. Diggs neighborhood on the north side, designated
as a Weed and Seed project area, has shown a noticeable decrease.

But some residents of the neighborhoods didn't like the
intrusion.

One man who was standing in the yard of one of the targeted homes off
Brunnell Parkway said he thinks what the group was doing is good in
theory, but he was offended that some of his neighbors were targeted
- -- erroneously, he said.

"I see drugs sold in this area all the time, but it's not to people
who live here, it's people who come from other places," said Aaron
Henderson, who lives on Edith Avenue. "They need to stop and ask the
owners of these houses before they just start yelling at them."

The object of the marches is to let the drug dealers know the
community isn't going to sit by quietly anymore, said Herman Wrice, a
Philadelphia man who started the national program and now travels the
country starting groups like Turn Around Lakeland.

The city is paying him $21,000 to set up the program in
Lakeland.

Among the marchers Saturday night was Polk County Commissioner Janet
Shearer, who said she would like to see the program expand into the
county.

"The police and government can't do it all to stop drugs," said
Shearer, who sits on the county's Weed and Seed Steering Committee.
"The citizens have to be involved. It's nice to see that here."

Wrice has supervised six other marches in Lakeland and plans one more
before turning the group over to the citizens and police to run.

"I could have turned it over to them by the fifth march," Wrice said.
"This is the best group I have ever worked with. Lakeland has done
more in a short time than any other group in the country."

The night march started with about 30 minutes of training. It ended
between 9 and 9:30 p.m. when marchers were loaded back into vans and
returned to the community center where the night's training started.
At the center they were given stickers to put on their white hard hats.

On their white hard hats will go stickers, each one representing
something different.

Each sticker is intended to represent a small victory in the war on
drugs and to illustrate how that victory came about.

There's a picture of a roach for each time a drug dealer runs away, a
light bulb for each time a dealer turns on a house light, even a
picture of buttocks for when the marchers are mooned by their intended
targets.

"The same stickers are used all over the country," Wrice said. "It
helps tie us all together."