DEWERT AVENUE HOUSING DEVELOPMENT NOT A HOTBED OF CRIME

Let's be real.

Drugs are everywhere.

No community - no matter how rich or poor - is immune from society's ills.

Yes, government subsidized housing projects like Fairfax Gardens on
DeWert Avenue are breeding grounds for criminals.

In the communities I've covered over the years as a police reporter,
I've seen my share of so-called housing projects.

There was "the Hill" in Rockland County, N.Y., and "Bethune Village"
in Daytona Beach, Fla.

Like DeWert, which has close to 300 residents, the above mentioned
projects I covered were home to predominantly single mothers and
small children.

Next on the population ranking in these communities? The elderly.

And last, but not least, young men.

The residents who live in public housing are simply poor. That
doesn't make them criminals. It's easy for police to nab small-time
peddlers, who because of the law, are back out on the street the next day.

It's like picking apples from a tree.

But the real tough police work is not in DeWert. It's in the rich
neighborhoods where powdered cocaine, rather than $10 rocks of crack,
are distributed for big bucks.

Witness country-like Middleboro, where a drug trafficker, who lived
in a mansion, was dealing millions in cocaine for the past half
decade before he was finally nailed last May in New York City.

In most of the communities where I worked as a police reporter, the
high-volume crime totals didn't come from the projects. They came from the mall.