RED RIBBON WEEK: ONCE KNOWN FOR DRUGS AND VIOLENCE, NINTH AND BENNER REVIVES

Jodie Arrington has seen his neighborhood go straight to hell, and
come back again.

Arrington lives on Ninth Street, near its intersection with Benner
Avenue. In the 1980s, Ninth and Benner was notorious for drug
trafficking, and for the violence that came with it.

Twenty years ago, Arrington was sitting in his living room when
gunshots erupted right outside.

He looked out the window and saw a man with a gun walking back to a
Cadillac parked at his driveway.

Arrington still remembers the gun's barrel: too long for a pistol, too
short for a rifle or shotgun. He wasn't sure what it was.

The gun had just been used to shoot a man in the legs, the victim left
bleeding in the street.

Arrington overheard what the gunman said as he climbed into the Cadillac:
"He threw the gun on the seat and told the driver, 'I could have killed
him, but I wanted him to suffer.'"

To hell and back

Arrington is 88 now. An Army veteran of World War II, he moved to
Columbus from West Point, Ga., in 1947, first living in East Highland.

He bought his home on Ninth Street in 1978.

He describes how the area slid into decline:

"Prior to that it had been a quiet neighborhood. ... At the time before
the drugs got so prevalent, you could be sitting on your porch and a
person walking by would say 'Good morning' or 'Good evening' or 'How
are you doingUKP' Then it changed so some of them were talking to
themselves ... expressing their thoughts or attitudes toward somebody
else. If they looked up on the porch and saw you, they'd act like they
didn't see you."

Then violence became increasingly common.

"It just got outrageous. One year a young man got killed here on the
corner of Ninth Street and Benner Avenue. Another got his legs shot
out from under him."

The latter was the day Arrington looked out his window and saw the man
with the gun getting into the Cadillac. He thinks it was 1989.

Fighting back

It seemed the residents had to recapture their neighborhood or be
overrun.

"We started off with a neighborhood watch in 1990," Arrington said.
Each block had a block captain charged with making contact with all
his neighbors and making sure their property was being watched when
they weren't home.

"Then we were able to get a man in here from Philadelphia by the name
of Herman Wrice," Arrington said. "He came in and organized us into a
drug-fighting group called CHAD, Carver Heights Against Drugs."

Wrice, who died in 2000, was the father of an initiative training
residents to take direct action to fight crime in their communities.
He started it in West Philadelphia, in 1988 forming a group called
"Mantua Against Drugs." It would stake out street corners where drug
deals were going down and chant through bullhorns at the dealers. It
worked partly because even if the dealers didn't mind, their customers
did. Crack addicts tend to be paranoid.

In 1992, Wrice came to Columbus, where he trained David Lockett and
other neighborhood drug fighters. Lockett became the leader of Carver
Heights Against Drugs, the city's first grassroots group fighting
street pushers, while Arrington became the leader of an offshoot
called Drug Fighters of Columbus.

Originally from Atlanta, Lockett moved to Columbus in 1968, buying a
house on Schaul Street where he still lives today. He is a veteran of
Vietnam, a Ranger who did two tours of combat duty. He was prepared to
fight to save his neighborhood.

Like Arrington, he still remembers how bad things had
become.

"It was a heck-hole before," he said of Ninth and Benner. "There was a
cutting or a shooting on Benner Avenue about every other week."

CHAD went on the offensive, following Herman Wrice's
strategy.

"We had 75 or 80 people marching the neighborhood," Arrington said.
But not everyone was supportive. Some were too scared.

Said Arrington: "A lot of them were afraid the drug dealers were going to
act against them, and set the house on fire ... but we didn't have any
reaction like that."

Official reinforcements

The police had their backs.

"You can't do anything without law enforcement," said Lockett,
recalling how police, sheriff's deputies and deputy marshals would
back CHAD by setting up roadblocks to question drivers coming through
the neighborhood. Officers would check driver's licenses, car
insurance and registration. They'd catch motorists with guns and open
containers of alcohol, and find some for whom arrest warrants had been
issued.

The city deployed other forces as well, and developed a template for
cleaning up drug-infested areas.

"We called them our Neighborhood Improvement Programs," said Carmen
Cavezza, a former city manager. "Every time we started one, we wanted
to start off with something special, like the first one we started
with a picnic. The second one we started with a drug bust."

That was in East Highland, where an undercover operation was followed
by a wave of arrests. "We moved in with our cleanup program right
after it," Cavezza said. "What it does is, it gets people out --
they're not afraid to come out, and get on the streets and talk to you
and work with you."

What city officials learned to do first was recruit neighbors for a
leadership program -- inviting them to a dinner where they got training
- -- then start the cleanup.

Code enforcement and building inspections went in. "The basic premise
was clean up what needed to be cleaned up, to use code enforcement but
not citations, to help them resolve it," Cavezza said. In other words,
don't alienate the residents you need on your side: "We're in there to
make friends."

To help residents feel safe on the streets at night, city crews would
trim trees that blocked street lights, and replace any lights that
were damaged. Firefighters offered to install free smoke detectors,
porch lights and house numbers.

Protecting, assisting and reassuring homeowners invested in the
neighborhood was the primary goal. "We heard some really rewarding
things, like a lady said, 'This is the first time I've been able to
get out at night, and go for a walk in my neighborhood, in years,"
Cavezza said.

The primary obstacle to such improvements was the absentee landlord
who didn't care to spend money maintaining cheap rental property.

Said Lockett: "A dollar's a dollar to him. He doesn't care where it comes
from."

Said Cavezza: "Therein was the problem, and we would put whatever pressure
we could put on them."

That remains the challenge today, he said: "Until we get after those
absentee landlords, it's going to be a very difficult challenge to get
these areas cleaned up."

New neighbors

In some areas, buildings had been allowed to deteriorate to the point
that inspectors could condemn them as unsafe, and have them
demolished. The city's Community Reinvestment office then could come
in, acquire property and clear lots, which the city then would sell to
the nonprofit housing initiatives NeighborWorks Columbus or Habitat
for Humanity. Those organizations would build new houses and recruit
new homeowners.

Homeowners are crucial in stabilizing a neighborhood. Those who own
the houses in which they live will fight to protect their property and
ensure the safety of their families. If crime threatens their area,
then like David Lockett and Jodie Arrington, they will fight to defend
their homes.

The city has applied this redevelopment initiative in East Wynnton,
East Highland and Beallwood.

"In our redevelopment areas, we've kind of got three different
examples of where we're at," said Joe Riddle, head of the Community
Reinvestment office. "That area over there in East Wynnton is an
example of how a revitalization effort can look in the end, in that we
purchased slum and blighted properties, cleared it all up, reassembled
those properties, and sold it to folks to come back in and revitalize
the area."

Beallwood, the area north of Manchester Expressway and west of
Veterans Parkway, is in more of an intermediate stage. "We sold all
our property we had up there to NeighborWorks," which is now building
new homes, Riddle said.

"In the East Highland area over there -- 16th, 15th and 14th -- that's
an area we haven't been able to get into yet," Riddle said of the
avenues south of Talbotton Road. "That's kind of an example of where
we start from. You start seeing those vacant, boarded-up houses, and
you get in there and start buying those up."

Unlike a drug march or a police raid, redevelopment doesn't happen in
a day. It takes years, even decades. East Wynnton is not done yet. But
Ninth and Benner is nothing like it used to be.

Redemption

Police Sgt. Rick Stinson, special agent in charge of the regional
Metro Narcotics Task Force, drove up to Ninth Street on Benner Avenue
recently and looked around at the new homes and cleared lots.

"This was a hellhole," he said, recalling the infamous intersection's
1980s reputation. Carver Heights Against Drugs redeemed it, he said:
"That group did more to clean this up than all the policing in the
world."

Police admit they can have only a limited effect on street-corner drug
dealing because street dealers seem to be in inexhaustible supply.

"It's like a set of shark's teeth," said Stinson's Metro colleague,
Sheriff's Sgt. Jonnie Ellerbee: Take out the front layer and another
replaces it. "You've always got somebody else."

That's why the city needs residents to police their own neighborhoods:
They see what's going on night and day, so they can be much more
effective in fighting crime than the law enforcement officers who come
and go.

"The drug dealer can be standing on the street, looking as innocent as
can be, and still have drugs somewhere on the ground in his vicinity
where he can watch it, pick it up and make a sale," said Arrington. "I
had a man living across the street from me on apartments that used to
be here on Ninth Street and Benner Avenue, who was hiding drugs in the
corner of my front yard."

Arrington threatened to come after the man if he did that again. "He
looked at me and laughed, and asked me would I really do that, and I
told him I would. That let him know that I knew what he was doing, and
was man enough to stand in his face and tell him what I thought about
him."

Today Habitat and NeighborWorks houses line the streets around East
Wynnton, the former distinguished from the latter by flower boxes on
the front windows.

Cathy Williams of NeighborWorks said homeowners like the planters.
They also prefer another architectural feature: "They said they wanted
their houses to have front porches," Williams said.

That kind of redevelopment changes the atmosphere of a neighborhood,
making it a place where people feel safe walking the streets and
sitting on front porches.

"There's a direct correlation between that kind of change and reducing
crime," Williams said.

But the work never ends.

"Right now we have a lot of vacant houses throughout this
neighborhood," Arrington said. "Some of them are boarded up; some of
them are not, and drug dealers and homeless people are in those houses
also. ... We're having problems with neighbors over on King Street."

Does he think they're dealing drugs?

"Yes, they are," he said. "But we're on their back."