May 2005
STREETVIBES Drug Dealing Prevention Barrier Taken Down in OTR by Jimmy Heath The controversial 13th Street barricade in the downtown neighborhood of Pendleton in Over-the-Rhine - put up on the recommendation of police and residents in an attempt to block easy access to and from I-471 for drug buyers - came down last month, 10 months after it went up. Cincinnati City Council voted 5-4 to ask the City Manager to take the barricade down. It was originally slated to be a six month “test” closing of the street, but since its erection in July of 2004 it has been a source of controversy and debate. An increasingly common technique of community policing is limiting access to a neighborhood. In many cases, the police, with the cooperation of resident leaders, erect barricades and guard posts at street intersections in threatened neighborhoods. Municipalities have become interested in the prospects for controlling crime through the introduction of traffic barriers and traffic flow controls. Cities as different as London and Chicago have begun to experiment with the use of street barriers, parking prohibitions and other impediments to traffic flow. The idea is to create dead-ends, cul-de-sacs and neighborhoods that are difficult to enter by motor vehicle in the expectation that the levels of crime on targeted streets and neighborhoods will be reduced. The Pendleton Community Council asked for the barricade at the intersection of 13th Street and Reading Road after a drug deal ended in a fatal shooting and because of speeding cars, petty crime and other dangerous activity. In 2004, there were 3 murders in this area of OTR, all drug related. Some Council members and residents said the barricade was installed without properly surveying residents’ opinions. They also said the barricade merely pushed the drug dealing a block away, to 12th Street. Complaining that it was losing business, a Pendleton car wash, Mr. Bubbles, led the opposition to the barricade. Other 13th Street business owners have complained that the effect of the barricade drove down business. The city’s Department of Transportation and Engineering
also said the barricade should never have been erected because it’s designed for crime control rather than traffic control. In a report to council, City Manager Valerie Lemmie laid out a six-step process for future street closures, which will require approval of 75 percent of property owners, along with other criteria affected by a closure, along with City Council approval. The 5-4 vote to remove the barrier came after Cincinnati City Councilmember Sam Malone, who had previously voted to keep the The barricade, changed his mind. It came as a surprise to the Pendleton Community Council, who thought a decision would wait until their meeting this month, when they planned to hear a presentation on the effects of the barricade from the neighborhood’s community problem-oriented policing (CPOP) team. Police say the barricade has driven crime down by no longer allowing drug buyers from suburban areas and Kentucky easy access to 13th Street from Reading Road and the exit ramp from Interstate 471. The access provided drug buyers an easy route in and out of the city for purchases from street corner drug dealers. But opponents of the barricade, led by the Mr. Bubbles car wash, said the barricade kept too many business customers away. Meanwhile, drug dealers who were inconvenienced by the barricade took up business on other street corners in the neighborhood. Arrest statistics indicate that while there has been a decrease in the number of serious crimes in the Pendleton area, the number of less serious crimes has increased. Several barricade opponents chastised City Council, saying their predominantly black, mostly poor neighborhood had been unfairly targeted. Cincinnati City Council previously delayed a vote on whether to remove the metal guardrail that was installed by police last July. 13th street is lined with turn-of-the-century tenement buildings mostly inhabited by lowincome people of color. There is decay and poverty, but there are families and businesses that are
barricade from Reading Road to 13th Street in Over-the-Rhine hoping to bring safety to this dangerous area. But residents say drug dealing is also common along the Main Street entertainment district and near bars in Mount Adams, which are frequented by affluent white customers, yet barricades aren’t used there. Laketa Cole, who heads Council’s neighborhoods committee, said police had indicated they had overwhelming resident support for the barricade when it was installed. But a recent UC study found otherwise, she said. “There were several residents who indicated the barrier should not have been there,” she said. Many of the citizens and their families feel like they have been abandoned by the police and the city. Blocking a street is not a solution to the drug problem, but it temporarily greases the squeaky wheel – it sends a message to the uneasy upper-class that something is being done to appease the new, more affluent, formerly suburban residents. It superficially addresses the concerns of neighborhood upscale developers. Sadly, drug dealers simply move on to another corner and the problem becomes someone else’s. It didn’t take long before the middle-class residents and businesses realized they had been had by this weak “solution.” There is a growing realization that the best strategies for fighting crime in residential neighborhoods are those where the
police work closely with resident organizations. Such communitybased strategies require residents to believe that others in their neighborhood, including the police, are committed to a crime-free environment. Additionally, as long as the drug-buying customers keep coming to the corners in urban neighborhoods to buy drugs, there will be a willing supplier. For every drug deal that goes down, there is an equal amount of buyers. A message needs to be sent to the buyers that this is not the place to buy drugs. Coming at the drug problem backwards will not solve the problem. It is not enough to create a slight inconvenience by blocking street corner access. Most important is evenly distributed access to safety for everyone, including low-income people who have lived and worked and raised their kids on these tough neighborhood streets. It should never be a matter of economics from the standpoint of who’s “worthy” and who isn’t. It is a sad commentary on our society that money rules the day; that appearance, color and culture judges how precious you are, or aren’t. Soon, it will be necessary to block every street in the community, creating a gated urban neighborhood. We need a community that celebrates each citizen equally – and does not apply weak fixes when rich people come in and start crying. We also need a unified community that will not tolerate the use of neighborhood streets as an open-air drug market.
Greater Cincinnati Coalition for the Homeless