EASTSIDE: NEIGHBORHOOD ON EDGE

It was the kind of crime that barely raises an eyebrow in Covington's
Eastside. A woman, driving alone into the Jacob Price Homes public housing
project, suddenly found two men in her car asking if she wanted to buy
drugs. No, she told them. And as quickly as they'd gotten in the car, they
got out, taking her purse with them.

Add one more crime to the Eastside's police blotter. At least no one was hurt.

To read just a week's worth of police calls to the Eastside is to read of
rapes, robberies, drive-by shootings, knifings, gang frays, drug deals
(marijuana, cocaine and heroin), vandalism and prostitution. Stretched over
the past year and half, those weeks account for nearly 2,000 calls
dispatched to a neighborhood just eight blocks long and half as wide.

"You could say the Eastside of Covington is Northern Kentucky's version of
Over-the-Rhine in Cincinnati," said Tony Bracke, who prosecuted virtually
every felony drug trafficking case in Kenton County during the 1990s and
now works in Campbell County.

The Eastside doesn't produce the body count that is crippling
Over-the-Rhine. But its statistics show that the number of police calls to
the neighborhood is the highest in Covington and the seriousness of some of
those calls are the most severe in Northern Kentucky.

Bracke has no doubt what drives the crime: the drug trade.

The Eastside, he said, "has been and remains a central focus for
street-level distribution of cocaine" in Northern Kentucky.

"It is important to remember that these folks exist because of the demand
created by the users," he said. "It's also important to remember that what
goes on in the Eastside of Covington is a reflection of the problems of the
surrounding communities as well as Covington itself."

The crime plays out against a neighborhood that exudes kinship. Parents,
siblings, aunts, uncles, cousins. All are a presence on the Eastside's
streets. Those who moved out return to visit, including hundreds for this
weekend's Old Timers Celebration, an annual reunion that draws former
Eastsiders from across the United States.

Yet children walking to school must push past drug dealers, mostly
catering, Bracke says, to customers driving vehicles with Boone, Campbell
and Kenton county license plates. By day, the Eastside's two playgrounds
ring with the laughter and shouts of children at play. By night, gunplay is
heard.

Elizabeth Green has heard shots often. For 12 years, she has lived in Jacob
Price Homes, the public housing project with 163 apartments that dominates
the Eastside center.

"I don't like it at all, with all the drugs and crime going on around here.
But people have to live where they can afford to live," she said.

She is 66, a widow, a grandmother, arth-ritic and fearless, saying without
boasting, "I refuse to live some place where I'd be scared."

Sometimes she scolds the young drug dealers standing on the corners in
Jacob Price. They always make a respectful show of listening, move along --
and then return.

"I speak to them all the time. Some of the dealers will knock on my door if
they haven't seen me outside for a few days, to see if I am OK," Green said.

But she knows things can turn dangerous in a hurry. She recalls a warm day
a couple of summers ago when she was walking home with her 9-year-old
granddaughter and a group of young men suddenly appeared, running in her
direction. Instinctively, she threw her body between the young men and her
granddaughter and backed the little girl to safety in the nearest yard.

"That's when a huge fight broke out," she said. "We would have been caught
in the middle of it."

The mistake outsiders make about the Eastside is to stereotype it as an
unrelieved stretch of hopeless humanity, drugs and guns. The truth has more
dimensions. Residents -- and former residents who return for visits -- see
the sidewalks where they used to straddle bikes, the churches where they
were baptized, and the small homes where grandparents drew their last breaths.

This is a place rich with social life and commerce. People don't stay
indoors. They get out. They get to know each other. A laundry, a car repair
shop, a funeral home, beauty salons and 18 churches are in the Eastside.

As for the crime, it's not everywhere all the time. In Jacob Price, one
defense is to get an apartment farther away from the corners where most of
the drug deals go down. Outside the projects, where side streets are lined
with row houses and bungalows, everyday life can be remarkably peaceful for
people living so close to so much trouble.

"Most of the people are senior citizens now, but the neighborhood has
always been a real nice place to live, and we don't get a lot of noise,"
said Ruby Carter, who, at 73, has lived in a small, wooden-framed house on
isolated Byrd Street -- all of three blocks long -- for 23 years.

In the summertime, a steady stream of grandchildren and other young
visiting relatives run into her home and back out through her unlocked side
door. Many Eastsiders have found a way out, often by moving far away.

Not Carter.

"I'll be here 'til I die," she said.

But Carter knows things are not so rosy several blacks north, around East
Robbins and Greenup Streets, where youngsters the same ages as her
grandchildren must share sidewalks with drug dealers and abusers.

"I'd like to see them have a real nice place where they could go and enjoy
themselves," she said. "Maybe it would make a difference and get them off
the street and keep them away from all the killing."

The Eastside has Northern Kentucky's largest concentration of
African-American and poor people.

That's not been a recipe for influence in a region that is mostly white and
mostly prosperous. According to the 2000 census, blacks are only 3.8
percent of the population of Kenton County, 1.6 percent of Campbell County,
and 1.5 percent of Boone County's. In contrast, the Eastside is 58.4 black,
while Covington as a whole is 10.1 percent.

The economic comparisons are stark. The median household income in Kenton
County is $43,906; in the Eastside, the figure is less than half as much,
$20,541. Countywide, the percentage of families living in poverty is 7; in
the Eastside, it's 28.6. The percentage of homes rented rather than owned
is double, 68.9 in the Eastside versus 33.6 countywide.

Those numbers aside, the neighborhood has always gotten attention at City
Hall, in part because rules for distribution of federal funds require that
some of it go to minority needs. In Covington, that means the Eastside is
going to get a share of the spending.

In addition, savvy candidates for City Commission court Eastside voters,
since its precincts can make the difference in victory or loss in a close
election.

A veteran of every City Commission race since 1977, Mayor Butch Callery
knows all that. He also knows that the Eastside is a neighborhood that
requires the attention of his police department, his housing department and
his legal department.

He began holding meetings last month about the neighborhood and how to
help. Short-term, the mayor said, the intent is to reduce crime; longer
term, the intent is to keep a dialogue going among City Hall, police,
neighborhood leaders and religious leaders about what the Eastside needs if
it is to turn around.

There have been ideas in the past, especially for fighting crime. Some
never got off the ground (surveillance cameras mounted to record
street-corner drug buys), lost popularity (neighborhood watch programs) or
were gutted by court rulings (laws designed to stop people from loitering
for drug sales and to fight sexually-oriented businesses).

Asked what's different this time, Callery recognizes the subtext in the
question.

"I've been on the City Commission for 24 years, but not as mayor," he
replied, referring to his election in 2000 to the top city post. "I think
we've got the right people together, and they have very good ideas."

Besides, Callery says, the city already has launched a number of "very good
ideas" -- including outlawing outdoor pay phones believed used in crime;
boarding up property for up to a year if landlords fail to evict tenants
engaged in drug crimes, prostitution and outdoor gambling; creating a
housing Code Enforcement Department and a citizens' Code Enforcement Board
to address vacant and blighted housing; and sending letters to people
convicted of prostitution arrests saying they are not welcome to solicit
sex in Covington.

Although these are citywide initiatives, they can't but help fight crime in
the Eastside, he said.

"We have to create hope in the community. The Eastside is a city
neighborhood that is as important as any other city neighborhood, and we
have to turn that area around," Callery said.

It's a race of sorts. If the city is slow, then more people are likely to
move out of the Eastside -- or try.

Theresa Dixon, 43, thinks she's found a ticket out.

A recent day found her, her husband and their three children loading up a
truck in front of their home on Greenup Street for a move to Columbus.

Then again, Dixon has been moving in and out of the Eastside most of her
adult life.

She tried to make a go of it in California, then in Tennessee.

"Every time I leave, I come back," she said.

Dixon, a black woman who was adopted by a white couple and grew up in
Latonia, sees some changes for the better in the Eastside. She's noticed
the community is becoming more racially diverse as Hispanics and a
smattering of Asians move in.

"I think it's wonderful," she said. "It's only going to help humanity as a
whole if we all get to know people of different races."

That said, Dixon doubts the Eastside ever will be an especially popular
place to live -- whatever its racial makeup.

"It's a matter of economics," she said. "If you're poor, things won't be
perfect."