SWEEP JUST A 'BAND-AID'

Moss Park Bust

It was unusually quiet along the sidewalks that circle Moss Park
yesterday afternoon, part of a sad pocket of downtown where drug
pushers and prostitutes peddle to a largely transient community that
is crawling with addicts.

Deals are made on the corners, drugs are consumed in the open, and
needles and condoms are found in the public sandbox where children play.

Days ago, police concluded an intensive sweep of the area, bound by
Gerrard, Queen, Church and Parliament streets, that rounded up some
of its shady elements. Officers arrested 75 people for drug
trafficking and 21 people involved in prostitution. Altogether they
face 192 criminal charges.

The police project may explain the relative peace, but residents do
not expect it to last. "It's a Band-Aid," said Eva Curlanis-Bart, who
leads the local Garden District Residents' Association. She blames
the neighbourhood's state of affairs partly on the
hyper-concentration of shelters, rooming houses and drug-treatment centres.

She says the worst stretch, by far, is the north end of George
Street, where the 580-bed shelter for men called Sea-ton House looms.

"This part of the street is off limits. I don't use George Street
except when I take the media on a tour," said Ms. Curlanis-Bart, who
has lived in the area for 10 years.

"I don't want to be screamed at, and I really don't want to look at
guys vomiting or relieving themselves on the street. I don't want to
look at people who are drugged out of their mind. This is a human
zoo, in the worst sense of the word, so you avoid it because you
don't want to be exposed to it."

This community, within eyesight of Dundas Square, should be a
vibrant, alluring part of downtown, argues Ms. Curlanis-Bart. But
historic houses that would fetch a mint in another part of the city
have been carved up into cheap rental units, converted into crack
dens or are slowly falling apart.

"Even squatters don't want to live in a roofless building," she
lamented about what was surely a stately home decades ago. Some parts
of Church Street have been renewed, and a Ryerson University building
is a positive addition, but more must be done to improve this area,
said Ms. Curlanis-Bart, who planted a row of thorny rose bushes on
her street to keep out men who urinate in public.

"I don't feel threatened, but it's not nice to see," said Mina Park,
33, who often sees addicts smoking crack on the corner of Sherbourne
and Shuter streets. She and her husband will move to High Park before
the year is up. "If I was a student, or single, I would mind my own
business, but I have a baby to think about."

It was at the insistence of residents, who were keen to "address
quality-of-life issues," that police devised "Project Revival," a
six-week pitch to clean up the neighbourhood.

Undercover officers focused on street-level drug dealers, prostitutes
and their pimps, while uniform units busted alleged crack houses and
rounded up aggressive panhandlers. The vast majority of the 96
accused had been arrested before -- some numerous times.

Detective Sergeant Howie Page said his officers also "left no stone
unturned" as they tracked down 188 alleged violent offenders who had
breached their bail conditions.

He points to qualitative indicators as a measure of the project's
success -- at the start, it took undercover officers about 30 seconds
to purchase drugs off the street. "By Week 6, it would take an hour,
if we were even able to buy drugs at all," he said.

Of the 96 arrests, only 23 lived in the area, he said, which
highlights "the community's concerns that many drug traffickers come
to the community to prey on individuals with drug dependencies."
Forty of the accused had no fixed address.

Indeed, Ms. Curlanis-Bart believes dealers and prostitutes come for
the "captive audience." By her count, half of the city's shelters are
located around this area; 17 agencies operate along Pembrooke Street.
Such a concentration of needy, destitute individuals is a recipe for
a dead end -- businesses don't want to set up shop here and families
move out, if they can.

"What we need is some balance," she said.