GROUP REUNITES TO KEEP E. PALO ALTO STREETS CLEAN

East P.A. group reunites against drugs, gangs

IF EVERYTHING goes according to schedule, Dennis Scherzer and a half-dozen
of his East Palo Alto neighbors will be patrolling the area around
Crystal's Dinette on Clarke Avenue today.

At the neighbors' meeting this week, the 6 a.m. stakeout was listed as
Number 5 on the agenda: ``Disrupt Crystal's Dinette drug meeting.'' It was
a couple of items down from Item 3c: ``Report re. drug addict nightclub.''

Scherzer said that's a pretty typical agenda for the group's weekly
meeting. They call themselves Turn Around East Palo Alto, and they don't go
in for a lot of polite bureaucratic language like, ``Address increasing
narcotics trade on Bay and Clarke Streets.'' They want drug dealers out of
their neighborhoods, and they're way past being tactful about it.

If you remember what East Palo Alto was like back in the bad old days of
'91 and '92, you probably heard about a lot of crime-watch and community
groups with names like Turn Around East Palo Alto. That's when lugubrious
TV promo announcers were touting upcoming ``special reports'' on East Palo
Alto's sky-high homicide rate: ``The little city they're calling Murder
Capital USA.''

I used to talk to Scherzer a lot back then and get reports from the front.
He stood in the street taking license plate numbers of drivers who'd come
over the Dumbarton Bridge to score drugs in his neighborhood. He was sick
and tired of trying to raise a family in a place where people turned up the
TV to drown out the sound of gunshots.

Then came the crackdown. East Palo Alto joined forces with Palo Alto, Menlo
Park the CHP and the sheriff and got enough cops on the streets to finally
put a lid on the drug dealing and gang banging. By 1993, the bullet-riddled
bodies of young men were no longer arriving at Jones Mortuary on a monthly
basis. The neighbors had won. And a lot of the crime-watch groups disbanded
or lay dormant.

But over the past year the gunfire-nights began to return. Some neighbors
began complaining again about being caught in the middle of gang turf
feuds. Meanwhile, a recent civil grand jury report recommended disbanding
the police department because it's underfunded and badly managed. It began
to seem like the bad old days might return.

That's why Scherzer and his neighbors resuscitated Turn Around East Palo
Alto a year ago. They aren't about to let the junkies take over again. So
they put on white hats and stand vigil on street corners and back lots
where drug dealers do business. They take camcorders and write down license
plate numbers and report back to the cops.

Scherzer's been at it so long his white hat is covered with stickers. The
stickers are part of the national ``Turn Around America'' program that was
started in Philadelphia. They're like Boy Scout merit badges.

One sticker has a drawing of a foot and a donkey. ``That's a `kick-ass'
sticker. You get it if you scare drug dealers away on your vigil,''
Scherzer said. Another sticker has the head of dog on it. ``You get that
one if a drug dealer calls you `bitch,' '' Scherzer said. ``And you get
these with the bird on them if a drug dealer flips you the bird.''

There are dog and bird stickers in two rows all the way around the brim of
Scherzer's white hat. ``The idea is when your hat is dirty, your streets
are clean,'' he said. He looked at the dog stickers and laughed.

I asked him if he was scared to keep showing up in his white hat every week.

``Frankly,'' he said, ``I'm scared about what will happen if we don't show up.''