PHILADELPHIA BEGINS MAJOR CRACKDOWN IN BLIGHTED AREA

PHILADELPHIA, June 15. Scores of police officers and federal agents,
followed by a convoy of garbage trucks and graffiti cleaners, invaded
Philadelphia's most violent and bleak neighborhoods at dawn today and vowed
not to leave until the area is safer and cleaner.

The combined local and federal sweep marked the start of one of the
broadest and most sustained crackdowns against crime and urban blight
undertaken in a large city in recent years, patterned after a
zero-tolerance strategy developed most notably in New York several years
ago. Philadelphia officials, who have been criticized for failure to
reverse crime statistics in the dramatic way New York and other cities
have, said they turned to the large-scale crackdown out of desperation.

"We are determined to take this area back, block by block, for as long as
it takes," said Ted Diehl, a coordinator from the city manager's office who
was supervising the initial stage of the operation in one part of the
targeted area. "Crime, drugs, abandoned houses -- we're going after all of
it."

Nothing else has turned around North Philadelphia's desolate Fairhill and
Kensington neighborhoods, which last year had a murder rate four times
higher than any other community in the city -- whose overall tally, 411,
dropped only 2 percent from the previous year. Now, officials here said,
for at least the next 18 months police officers and an array of city
workers will occupy the area almost around the clock trying to break up
gangs, stop drug dealing and restore some measure of hope to residents,
many of whom live in stark poverty.

Philadelphia officials said the initiative, called Operation Sunrise, will
be the largest anti-crime effort here since the city's disastrous attempt
in 1985 to remove the radical group MOVE from a poor neighborhood. The area
targeted now covers about 2.5 square miles and has more than 70,000
residents. It is one of the most densely populated and economically
depressed parts of the city.

Police leaders have been working with community leaders here for more than
six months to develop the plan, seeking to enlist residents' support.

Other cities have waged similar campaigns in recent years by swarming some
of their most dangerous, decaying neighborhoods with police officers for a
few days and making many arrests. In the District, law enforcement
officials have set up roadblocks and sometimes put floodlights in the
streets to improve safety in areas overwhelmed by drug dealing and gunfire.

But the effort here was proclaimed as the beginning of a long-term
presence. And city officials said attacking the neighborhood problems from
every angle and all at once -- from boarding up vacant houses to towing
abandoned cars, chasing away prostitutes and removing trash and graffiti --
holds great promise.

Many residents said they are overjoyed to see the initiative and called it
overdue. For too long, they said, police officers who patrol their streets
have appeared to be overwhelmed.

"I love it with the cops around -- I saw 15 this morning," said Melanie
Joseph, 27, an unemployed mother of three who has lived in the area for
four years. "But I think it's going to take them a few years to get this
place cleaned up."

Others residents, however, expressed doubts. Some said that without more
jobs and better schools in the area, the odds of success are remote.

"I hope it works, but I fear that as soon as they slow down or stop this,
all the problems will just reappear," said Jim Wilson, who has lived in the
area for five years. "It's just so bad. You got hookers in the street every
night, addicts running around, and it takes the police 20 minutes to get
here every time you call them for anything."

The area, a few miles north of Philadelphia's gleaming Center City, has
been dying for years. To some residents, it's known as the "Badlands."
Factories are sealed or have been razed into empty lots that are now filled
with garbage. Many of the narrow streets are lined with crumbling, empty
old rowhouses that often serve as drug dens.

More than 40 percent of the residents in the area live below the poverty
line. The neighborhoods are a mix of Hispanic immigrants, who arrived in
large numbers over the last decade, and poor blacks and whites who have
been struggling for better lives for a generation.

The size of the city's task in attempting to revitalize the downtrodden
area was plain today. Even as it rolled out garbage trucks, housing
inspectors and more police officers to cheers on a few blocks here in the
morning, there were still more ominous signs on other streets nearby, where
brazen curbside drug dealing was flourishing well into the afternoon.

"When I was a kid here, I used to play in the streets," said Gene
O'Connell, 40, who is unemployed. "Now you would never even think of
sending your kids outside alone. Unless they are willing to go to
full-scale war here, it's going to be another joke."

As part of the effort, local officials will work with federal agents from
the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, the Immigration and
Naturalization Service, and U.S. Customs. Philadelphia officials refused to
give the full cost, which will be funded partly by federal grants, or to
say exactly how many of its own police officers and city workers will take
part.

Staff writer Roberto Suro in Washington contributed to this report.

Copyright 1998 The Washington Post Company

Checked-by: (Joel W. Johnson)