LOCALS, POLICE PLAN MARCH

Over the speed-humps of Prospect Avenue, the hard-working locals will march
in what they believe is the first step to taking their neighborhood back
from drug dealers and delinquents.

At 7 p.m. Tuesday, city officials and police will join members of the
area's neighborhood association in marching through the Orangedale subdivision.

"We want to say that enough is enough. We don't want to live under siege
anymore," said the Rev. Eddie Howard, a resident and community organizer.
"We're out to tell the drug dealers and thugs to leave us alone."

The community between Fifth Street Extended and Buford Middle School is
primarily single-family homes and townhouses with some public housing.
Portions of the neighborhood have been home base for drug dealing for some
time, said Officer G.W. Mills, of the Charlottesville Police Department.

Mills is one of two city police officers involved in community policing who
work the Prospect Avenue/Orangedale neighborhood. He said the department
was approached by citizens about the march.

"We've been working with residents over the last two-and-a-half years to
find out what they want to see done, what their concerns are and we've
tried to address them," Mills said. "They wanted speed humps to slow
traffic on Prospect Avenue and they wanted help in taking care of wooded
areas and poor lighting on Rock Creek Road and that's been done. The march
is part of that effort."

The Orangedale citizens' efforts come as criminal behavior has painted an
unflattering portrait of the community, so much so that local pizza parlors
have declined to deliver there after certain hours.

"We were concerned, too, how the police would respond to citizens in the
community," Howard said. "As a black man on Prospect Avenue, police might
look at me in a different light than they should. We approached the police
department to get to know them and for them to get to know us and we're
working together on a lot of issues. It's making a big difference."

As police cracked down on crack cocaine in other city neighborhoods over
the years, the trade settled on Prospect Avenue and Orangedale Avenue, most
notably the 700 blocks, Mills said.

"In some ways dealing with drug dealers is a little bit like herding cattle
in that you move them out of one place and they look for some place else to
go," Mills said. "One of the reasons they hang around particular areas is
that word on the street is that neighborhood is where you go to buy. They
have to be where the customers are."

But most of the dealers don't live in the neighborhood, Mills said.

"This is a good, hard-working community and 99.9 percent of the people are
good folks. It's that one-tenth of a percent that causes trouble and they
don't even live in the area," he said.

Having drug dealers on the doorstep affected ways that neighbors
interacted, Howard said. That's one reason why community members started
banding together.

"We're getting to know who's who in the community and who the police are.
The police are getting to know who's who, too," Howard said. "We're seeing
a lot of positive things happen. Now we're inviting the neighbors, the
police and city officials into our community. We're saying come over, meet
us and see who we are. We're saying to the thug elements that we're going
to be watching and that they're not wanted."