TO THE RESCUE

Putting Up The Good Fight On Orange Street

It's not as bad as living in Beirut in the 1980s, but it's plenty bad
enough. Residents of Fayetteville's Orange Street feel like they're under
siege every night of the week.

Drugs -- and the trouble and noise that arrive with them -- keep
law-abiding folks from sleeping easily.

Mary Dixon is afraid to leave her house alone, even in daylight. Frankie
Brodie yearns for the days when the street was quiet. They, and
neighborhood watch chairman Carl Lennon, are among residents still awaiting
rescue for their street in a neighborhood off of Moore Street, in the area
between Ramsey and Hillsboro streets.

Police are trying to turn things around for Orange Street. When neighbors
call, police respond. The authorities are figuring out how to work with
landlords whose tenants cause problems. It's not a solution. It's a start.

Lennon says law enforcement's efforts are like "putting a Band-Aid on cancer."

That's an appropriate description.

The cancer is the drug war and its accompanying trades and related crimes.

Local law enforcement can't stop the global trafficking problem. It's too
big. Trafficking affects U.S. foreign policy, twists the economy, and
stretches its ugliness in some form or another into every neighborhood. One
police force can't take on international cartels from Colombia to the
heroin trade in Afghanistan.

That's not to say a Band-Aid is worthless. Law enforcement can't keep the
drug trade out of the city permanently. But local police are able to arrest
the drug trade's most violent and troublesome characters. Aggressive
enforcement serves notice to other troublemakers. They may move to other
neighborhoods, but keeping up the pressure throughout the city will
eventually send them to some other city or county to become someone else's
problem.

The people of Orange Street are doing all they can do to rid themselves of
a problem. They're not cowering.

It is courageous to call the police when the troublemakers know exactly who
placed that call. And if those calls are affecting a criminal's cash flow,
the danger can't be underestimated.

Police, in turn, are taking the complaints seriously. The idea of working
with the landlords of rental property is one way to go about stabilizing
the street.

No single effort will work overnight.

But if the rest of the city cares about the plight of these people, and
promises to cheer them on and to help, then by next year the story of
Orange Street may be sweeter.