RESIDENTS FIGHT TO RECLAIM CITY AREA

Another Harewood neighbourhood group is taking the law into their own hands
because the law's hands are tied.

Residents of Princess Street are fed up with prostitution and drug dealing
going on in what they describe as a crackhouse.

Frustrated with a lack of action from the city or police, they have banded
together, and for the last three nights they have been hitting the streets
with signs and cameras, warning Johns, drug dealers and their customers
that they are being watched.

"We're hoping to drive them out," says Joanne Boyer. "Everybody's fed up."

The residents are following the example of a Kennedy Street group, which
earlier this year succeeded in getting a crackhouse shut down.

Boyer worries about the effect the illicit activity on her street is having
on her children. Recently, she noticed her three-year-old looking out the
window.

"I asked him, ?What are you doing?' He said, 'Just watching the
crack-heads.' Three years old!"

The house in question is half a block up the street from Bayview Elementary
School.

Princess Street residents say the house has been a problem for about three
years now. But it became intolerable a few months ago when a certain
prostitute moved into the neighbourhood.

"She's a busy girl," Boyer said, "and she's psychotic."

The woman wanders the streets at all hours of the night and morning plying
her trade, say neighbours, and makes a lot of noise while she's at it.

She also has a tendancy to use other people's yards. One neighbour found
the woman in her yard with a customer.

"This prostitute was doing a guy right outside her window," Boyer said.

Residents have tried talking to the city, and call police on a regular
basis. They always get the same story: Until police can catch someone
committing a crime, there's not much they can do.

One neighbour, named Daniel (who did not want his last name used, for fear
of retribution), isn't sure he buys that.

"If this happened in Hammond Bay, or any of these posh areas, it would be
shut down," he said.

Residents in the area have begun taking down licence plate numbers of the
Johns and drug dealers, and passing them to police, in the hope a few
arrests will bring a halt to the illegal activity.

"We're going to do this as long as it takes," Boyer said.