CRIME: RESIDENTS FEARFUL OF POLICE OFFICERS, DRUG DEALERS

With burglar bars, padlocked gates and deadbolts on his doors, Isaac
Wesley felt safer at his Meadow Street home in Jackson's Georgetown
area.

Even then, he said, it did not stop a thief Feb. 3, who ripped
Wesley's porch screen, smashed glass to gain entry to his house and
stole two television sets.

It's not the first break-in Wesley, a retired mill worker and
widower, has had to deal with in the past four years, said Perry W.
Robinson Sr., president of the 200-member Georgetown Neighborhood
Association.

"How many times, Isaac - 20?" Robinson asked.

"More than that," Wesley said.

Wesley, 88, a shy, soft-spoken man, reported the burglaries.

"They never have told me if they caught anyone," he said.

Police records show Wesley reported 10 burglaries since 1994, Jackson
police spokesman Robert Graham said. Four of those are informational
reports, meaning a formal police report was not taken, Graham said.
But flaws discovered Monday in the city's crime-reporting system
makes it possible other reports exist, he said.

Residents say since December, 19 properties, Wesley's included, were
burglarized. Of those, residents say, nine vacant houses on Spring
Avenue have turned into crack dens for prostitutes and pushers.
Fearful of perceived police corruption and retaliation by drug
dealers, residents say they hesitate to report crimes.

"They call me at home," said Robinson, a retired Frito-Lay worker,
who founded the association in 1990, in the footsteps of a crime
watch program. "Elderly folks have a problem with the Jackson police.
They think the police are their enemy."

Police Chief Bracy Coleman said officers strive to build a harmonious
relationship with the community. It is unfair, he says, to judge them
because of eight Jackson officers charged and three subsequently
convicted on police corruption charges.

"That doesn't mean the whole Police Department is going to jilt
them," Coleman said.

Georgetown is patrolled by Precinct 3. On the east it borders Bailey
Avenue, Hawkins Field on the west, Fortification Street on the south,
and Medgar Evers Boulevard on the north. In the mid-'70s, as renters
surpassed homeowners, the neighborhood went on the skids, Robinson
said.

"When that happened, the community became unstable - that's when the
crime started," Robinson said. "Drugs are the No. 1 problem in
Georgetown today. The drug users are targeting these elderly people's
homes and stealing everything they have. There's no reason these
folks have to suffer."

But at a recent monthly meeting of the Georgetown Neighborhood
Association, that's not what police officials said.

Robinson invited Deputy Chief Cleon Butler, who manages Precincts 3
and 4, and Precinct 3 Cmdr. Gerald Jones, appointed Dec. 1, to the
Feb. 12 meeting in the Jackson Medical Mall's Community Room.

"The citizens that had homes broken into lost thousands of dollars of
personal items and suffered property damage," Robinson said. "Many of
them have told me they are afraid to leave their homes because they
believe someone will break in."

When the 75 mostly elderly black homeowners complained about recent
house burglaries, Butler said there has been an increase in
burglaries in Georgetown.

In a three-year period, Jan. 1 to Feb. 16, house burglaries in
Georgetown climbed from 12 in 1999 to 21 in 2000 to 40 in 2001,
Graham said.

The problem may be related to parolees living there who may be
committing crimes, Butler said.

Residents want more. The residents at the Feb. 12 meeting say they
want feedback.

Butler responded: "We have had a major decrease in drug activity in
Georgetown."

The audience groaned and ticked off addresses where they say drugs are sold.

"No way, no way," said Robinson. "Drugs are wide open in Georgetown.
They are so visible."

Standing outside his house recently, Wesley turned his back, without
a hello, on a boy riding by on a bicycle. Wesley suspects the
teenager may sell drugs.

He refers to the burglaries as "the troubles." Because of them he no
longer sits outside on his porch in an overstuffed easy chair.

"Too dangerous," he said as he leaned on the chain-link fence
protecting his property. He kicked the curb with his scuffed black
work shoe.

He has lived in his four-room house at the corner of Meadow and
Spring streets for 88 years. Too old to move, when he goes out to
make a few dollars doing yard work, Wesley knows he runs the chance
of having his home ransacked, again.

"They watch me," said Wesley of the criminals. "Years ago, we slept
with the windows up, the doors open at night, we didn't need to lock
them. Not now. No, God."