LAW ENFORCEMENT BLITZ DESIGNED TO UP QUALITY OF LIFE

Iorio Ready To Declare East Tampa Crime War

TAMPA - Making good on a key campaign promise, Mayor Pam Iorio is expected
to announce a massive anticrime and rejuvenation project for east Tampa
that the city's police chief compares to the invasion of Iraq.

"To borrow a term from the military," Chief Bennie Holder said, "it'll
'shock and awe' the criminals."

The mayor said she will announce specifics of Operation Commitment on Monday.

"We are looking at a sustained enforcement plan," she said.

Police are mum about specifics, fearing drug dealers and others targeted
will go into hiding during the first offensive, expected to be unleashed
Monday and last until May 24.

The operation will focus on neighborhoods including Belmont Heights,
Jackson Heights and Southeast Seminole Heights, where police will target
open-air drug markets selling mostly crack cocaine and marijuana, officials
said.

"There are known drug holes where there is daily drug activity, and we need
to get them out of our city," Iorio said. "If they move to another part of
the city, we will go after them."

Capt. Marion Lewis heads a Tampa Police Department antidrug squad that will
play a prominent role in the operation.

"It's going to be a holistic approach," Lewis said.

Code enforcement inspectors will issue tickets to property owners whose
lawns are strewn with garbage and abandoned cars. Firefighters will hand
out smoke detectors. Crime prevention officers will offer security
inspections for homes, and drug counselors will talk to drug users and
their families, said police Maj. Jane Castor, who oversees District 2,
which includes east Tampa.

The operation will draw police from other areas of the city, Castor said,
but there will be enough left to respond to 911 calls.

Community Wants Results

Tampa Neighborhood Watch Association Vice President Marilyn Durst is
hopeful about the initiative, which she sees as the extension of a 1990s
community policing program.

"They've been doing these sweeps and putting on a dog and pony show for a
while," she said of much-publicized sweeps in the past. "But then they
leave. And when they've been gone for a few hours, it's 10 times worse than
before they got there. The prostitutes and drug dealers have to make up for
lost time."

And that's the flaw in the plan, she said.

"They make lots of arrests and put up lots of numbers," Durst said. "It
makes an impact for the moment. But, if they don't stay and keep the
cleanup and maintenance going until it is thoroughly conveyed to the
criminal element that they're not welcome, it's a waste of time."

East Tampa residents are taking a wait- and-see attitude.

Ernest Daffin, 54, has lived in east Tampa around 34th and Lila streets
most of his life. Occasionally, he said, it gets dangerous.

"It does get crazy sometimes," he said. Drug dealers and car thieves are
the biggest problem. Operation Commitment "is a good thing," Daffin said.
"They'll slow it down, but they won't stop it."

Abe Chin, 43, a resident of east Tampa for 10 years, said he recently
watched a man dumping garbage where Ellicott Street dead ends into the
railroad. Chin asked: "Why do you do that?"

The man threatened to shoot him. Chin backed off, allowing the man to dump
the trash near an abandoned motor home and a dilapidated trailer left there
years ago.

"It's a jungle back here," Chin said. Still, he said: "I love my neighborhood."

Others said they see no need to make the push. Lilly Grandberry, 73, sat on
the porch of her east Tampa home and said she feels secure, even though
blocks away on Thursday night, a motorist at the stop light at North 22nd
Street and East Osborne Avenue was held up at gunpoint and robbed of his
cash and car.

Despite the robbery, Grandberry said, "I feel safe here."

The idea of sweeping into neighborhoods to clean up crime is not a tactic
that always works, said Hubert Williams, president of the Police
Foundation, a Washington-based research and policy group.

Solutions to crime-ridden and blighted neighborhoods "don't come in a box,"
he said. Rather, they are in the attitudes and ideas that come from
communities and their interaction with the police.

"The problem with sweeps is that they bring in people who are guilty, and
they bring in people who are innocent," he said. "That tends to alienate
the community."

Success, he said, is measured by how safe people feel in the aftermath.

East Tampa Business and Civic Association President Betty Wiggins said she
is optimistic Iorio's plan will be more effective than past initiatives.

"It's just going to have to be a sustained effort to try to arrest this
malignancy that is so entrenched in our community," she said.

A Proven Strategy

Citywide police statistics indicate sweeps conducted in the late 1990s
under former Mayor Dick Greco seem to have made a difference. Greco's plan,
which mirrored former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani's, had street crooks,
panhandlers, vagrants, prostitutes and street-level drug dealers arrested.
The theory was if you improve the quality of life, the more serious crimes
also will decrease.

In 1996, a year after Greco took office, murders dropped to 41 from 47 in
1995, Tampa police statistics show. By 1999, the number dropped to 31, and
the yearly total has not reached 40 again.

The same is true for rape. In 1998, Tampa police investigated 328 sexual
batteries. The next year, that number dropped to 262. Last year, police
logged 257 rapes.

Aggravated assaults and burglaries rose during the past five years, but
larcenies last year dropped by more than 1,500 from 1998, the department's
Web site states.

Former Tampa City Council member Bob Buckhorn, who was chairman of the
city's public safety committee, said the mayor's initiative will be a
positive step.

"When you've got drug dealers that own the streets 18 hours a day," he
said, "it takes a willingness to be out there 24/7 to eradicate it."

Buckhorn said east Tampa must be cleared of drug dealers before
redevelopment can take place.

"Street-level drug dealing is the most critical issue facing east Tampa, he
said. "You can't get redevelopment in impoverished areas unless it's safe.
In order to do that, you've got to make an environment where customers are
safe and investments are safe.

"It's a wonderful initiative," he said. "It will pay off, but it's got to
be ongoing."