DRUG HOT SPOT POSES BIG TEST FOR CITY POLICE

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"We are surrounded by it," Muckelvene said.

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

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

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

Answering the mandate

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Life on the hill

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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