PROGRAM PLANTS SEEDS TO WEED OUT BAD NEIGHBORS

GASTONIA -- Dementrica Doster needs one thing before she can let her
3-year-old daughter play outside her Crescent Lane apartment.

"Get all the drug dealers and bad people away from here," said Doster, 18.

The apartment buildings occupy a broken up parking lot off Crescent Lane.
Boarded up windows greet visitors.

Doster may soon get some help. The Crescent Lane area, along with four
other West Gastonia neighborhoods, have been named a "Weed and Seed" site
by the U.S. Department of Justice.

The program teams up law enforcement with social service and economic
revitalization organizations to help weed out bad elements and seed in
quality of life changes.

A main component of Gastonia's strategy will be to set up safe places in
the target areas. The safe havens will provide educational, recreational
activities and job skill development for residents, said Jo-Ann Davis,
Gastonia's Weed and Seed administrator.

Davis said she believes the main problems in the target neighborhoods are
low income, at-risk children and drug-related crime.

The program's steering committee must revise its strategy each year for the
next five years.

Police believe the program will build on existing community policing efforts.

"It's more than just enforcement," Gastonia Police Chief Rodney Parham
said. "It's a cooperative effort to not only do law enforcement, but to
enhance the neighborhoods."

The program targets Highland West, Highland East, Crescent Lane area,
Mountain View and Linwood Terrace neighborhoods. There are about 18,000
people living in those areas, which equals nearly 29 percent of the city's
population.

But crime in those areas comprises about 60 percent of violent crime for
the entire city, according to program officials.

Lashawn Starr, 22, who shares an apartment with her cousin Doster, said she
sees drug deals happening but feels helpless to do anything about it.

"The people who come around here selling aren't from here," she said. "I
guess there'll always be drugs."

Faye Caldwell, 75, lives up the road from Doster and Starr's apartment
building. She said Crescent Lane has so much activity she can't sleep at night.

"This is the worst street in Gastonia," she said.

Caldwell said she's seen prostitutes proposition passing drivers in front
of her house.

One apartment complex, Highland Hills off Weldon Street may serve as an
example to the Highland and other communities. The complex has had its
problems, but they seem to have eased in the past eight months, according
to property manager Brenda Wilberforce.

The complex is privately owned by Southwood Realty, but is sandwiched
between public housing areas. Wilberforce said property improvements to
buildings and the grounds have restored a feeling of safety in the complex.

"We have started to work on the visual appearance of the property to give
people more of a sense of ownership," she said.

But she'd like to see the city bus route detour deeper into the complex.
And she wants the police to be more active with community policing efforts
in the complex.

But here children play outside without worry, she said.