
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: MONDAY, April 3, 1995                   TAG: 9504050026
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A-6   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

WASENA

WASENA RESIDENTS struggling to drive drug-trafficking from their neighborhood were smart to take their fight to Roanoke City Council. Illegal drug sales, and the crime that goes along with them, will drain the life out of a community as surely as any plague.

Not one more neighborhood should be allowed to fall prey.

Fighting this insidious social illness, though, takes tenacity and courage. To their credit, residents have been cooperating with police, who have responded with a raid and arrests. Yet three residences identified as crack houses continue to operate, continue to draw dealers and petty criminals into the neighborhood.

Clearly, a stronger response is needed. By going to council, residents have grabbed the attention of city officials at the highest level. The mayor and city manager were unaware that drug-trafficking had spread into new territory. They are no more.

It's yet another reminder that crime control must involve more than police response to crimes after they have occurred; the key is organizing law-abiding neighbors in partnership with police.

Residents say the problems started only a year or two ago. That is a long time for a quiet neighborhood to put up with the thuggery, vandalism and thievery that crack houses inevitably spawn. Of course, law-abiding folks are angry and feeling desperate.

It is not a terribly long time, though, in the life of a neighborhood. Wasena is still overwhelmingly a place of charming homes set back from tree-lined streets, populated by good and responsible citizens. Swift and concerted action by the city, combined with continued vigilance and support from the citizenry, will be needed to contain a deadly social virus and stamp it out.

There is an urgent need to recognize the symptoms and respond forcefully, not because Wasena is more important than other neighborhoods that have lain in the path of the crack scourge and have deteriorated, but because we all have seen what happens to such neighborhoods, and should tolerate it no more - in Southwest or any other part of the city.

If drugs are not driven from Wasena, residents with the means to do so will move out, as some, indeed, already are threatening to do. That would leave a pleasant section of town vulnerable to economic blight.

Never again.

by CNB