TAKING A STAND TO KEEP NEIGHBORHOODS SAFE

Debbie Lovas wants Warren to fight back against the prostitution and
drug crimes that are frightening residents and ruining many of the
city's once proud working-class neighborhoods.

''We are tired of the gunfire, the innocent people and children that
are getting harassed, shot at, wounded, targeted and murdered,'' she
told City Council last week. ''We want the drug dealers, users and the
prostitutes out of Warren.''

As chairperson of the Northwest Warren Neighborhood Association, she
would get complaints from residents at all hours of the day, and she
set out to find a solution.

''After two and a half months of research about how to get rid of drug
dealers and users,'' she said, ''I kept coming up with the name
Michael Levine, Michael Levine.''

Levine is a former Drug Enforcement Administration agent who grew
disillusioned with America's war on drugs and came up with his own
solution. He described the Fight Back approach to drugs in a chapter
in a Cato Institute book, ''After Prohibition.''

Levine summarized the war on drugs in this sentence: ''What mainstream
media does not seem to realize, or does not want to realize, is that
while the repetitious drug war 'victory' headlines may sell newspapers
and get ratings points, it also sells a deadly and wasteful drug war
to a too gullible American public.''

Instead, Levine created the controversial Fight Back approach, which
targets drug users, not dealers and suppliers. He wrote: ''Drugs are a
business like any other. The American way in business competition is
to focus on demand. Supply follows demand, not vice versa, as our
bureaucrats would have us believe. Discourage buyers and the dealers
go out of business.''

He argues that if programs that go after johns are successful in
battling prostitution, why won't the same strategy work with drugs?

That does not mean he wants to put users in jail. That is a last
resort.

''In fact, if we changed our focus from supply to illegal drug buyers,
there would instantly be a drastic reduction in jail populations,'' he
wrote.

Lovas said she contacted Levine and then was contacted by Michael A.
Bonventre, a colleague. Lovas wound up talking with Bonventre daily
for almost four months.

Along the way, she told others about the Fight Back approach, and she
tried to get others interested. She even held a community meeting in
May.

''Nobody was interested,'' she said, even though everyone attending
had drug problems in their area.

Undefeated, Lovas and her husband started trying to raise money on
their own to bring Bonventre to Warren. Finally, convinced that the
Fight Back strategy can help Warren, the Lovases decided to sponsor
the visit themselves. They are paying for Bonventre's travel expenses
to and from New York and for his meals.

For his part, Bonventre is paying for his own lodging, although Lovas
has received a few donations and is hoping for more to cover that
expense as well.

She is convinced the Fight Back strategy will work in
Warren.

After a couple of scheduled radio appearances Friday, Bonventre will
give a two-hour program describing the Fight Back strategy at 10 a.m.
Saturday at Kent State University Trumbull Campus. If there is time
afterward, Lovas said, Bonventre will go into a neighborhood and
demonstrate how it all works.

While police and other officials have been cool to the
Levine/Bonventre approach to drug problems, Lovas sees it as a source
of hope for her neighborhood.

She said people ''don't know what to do. They hope the police can
solve the problems, which is what our hope was. But the police can
only do so much. Their hands are tied in certain respects.''

Fighting back is not complicated, Lovas said. You basically let
everyone coming to and from the drug house know that they are being
watched and information - including license plates and photos - is
being turned into police.

''We're telling them we won't tolerate it anymore, and we want them
out of our neighborhoods,'' Lovas said.

Oravecz is political editor of the Tribune Chronicle