FED-UP WEST ENDERS READY TO OUST PLAGUE OF HOOKERS

Hundreds Expected At Meeting To Plot Action Plan

Residents of the city's west end say they're tired of living among
prostitutes and drug dealers and will join forces to take back their streets.

Joanne Moffatt says prostitutes moved onto her street after neighbourhood
patrols pushed them out of an area to the east.

She says it's hurting community spirit and people are fed up.

"We've been infested by prostitutes," Moffatt says. "Stores are losing
money because of it. There are even prostitutes sitting on the planters
outside (NDP MLA) MaryAnn Mihychuk's constituency office."

Moffatt will be among hundreds of people expected at a community meeting
Wednesday to help residents figure out how to make their neighbourhoods
safe again.

The meeting, to be held at 7 p.m. at the Orioles Community Club on Burnell
Street, is being hosted by Lanny Gellner, who was instrumental in creating
the Spence Team on Patrol volunteer group to drive prostitutes out of the
eastern end of the neighbourhood.

The patrols walk in groups of three or four, writing down locations,
descriptions of prostitutes and licence plates of their customers. Gellner
says when his group began night patrols between Agnes and Balmoral streets,
from Portage to Notre Dame avenues, the prostitutes moved to the west side
of Agnes Street.

"We successfully made things uncomfortable for the prostitutes," he says.
"They don't like witnesses."

Gellner says he is hoping to create a patrol group to work between Agnes
and Arlington Streets, forcing the prostitutes to move again. And he says
will set up a patrol team in the next neighbourhood they go to, until they
have nowhere else.

"It's a lot easier to patrol the streets at night for a few hours than to
follow your kids around and pick up needles and condoms in front of them,"
Gellner says.

He says the problem has become so bad, the prostitutes are out at all hours
of the day and night. He adds that people are getting close to taking
things into their own hands.

"Patrolling is better than burning down their houses or smashing their car
windows," he says. "And people are seriously entertaining those thoughts.
They are sick and tired of being sick and tired."