ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Wednesday, July 3, 1996 TAG: 9607030065
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: DIANE STRUZZI STAFF WRITER
PUBLIC HOUSING residents pointed out maintenance problems in Hurt Park Housing Development to Mayor David Bowers and accused police officers of harassment.
Walking through a neighborhood of crumbling concrete, graffiti-marred walls and sidewalks buried by mud slides, Mayor David Bowers vowed Tuesday night to clean up Roanoke's Hurt Park Housing Development.
"I'm not pleased by what I've seen," he said after a 90-minute tour of the public housing neighborhood in Southwest Roanoke.
"The purpose of this housing was to make this a great place in this neighborhood to live," he said. "That's not what I've seen, and it disappoints me."
Bowers and other city officials stopped residents along the way to talk about the problems residents saw in their community. They spoke of piled-up debris, dilapidated structures and harassment by members of the Roanoke Police Department.
Tuesday night, the Roanoke chapter of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference - which coordinated the tour - focused the end of the meeting on complaints they have heard of police abuse. As children played in a nearby field, SCLC members said they have confirmed four incidents of abuse, including the manhandling of a 9-year-old boy nearly two weeks ago at Hurt Park.
The complaints about the police concentrated on the department's Community Oriented Policing Effort, which was created to patrol the city's housing developments. The unit, targeting drug dealers who loiter on corners and late-night visitors who don't live in the complexes, has been successful in reducing crime in the public housing neighborhoods.
But in the effort to do that, several officers have begun treating residents with disrespect, say some who live in the Hurt Park community.
Tuesday, SCLC members said some officers In the unit harass teen-agers they only suspect deal drugs, break up any group that congregates on a porch and try to get information from children by bribing them with baseball cards and candy.
"We're in a dangerous situation now because the young men and women are getting sick and tired," the Rev. Lenord Hines, first vice president of the organization, told Bowers.
"The Police Department is adding to this. ... It's like pouring gasoline on a fire. You have some renegade policemen," Hines said. "Chief [M. David] Hooper needs to go."
Hines said he once saw a COPE team stop a basketball game, frisk its players for drugs and then laugh when none were found. He said it occurred near the Lansdowne Housing Development.
"Now, you need to give me a specific on this because that's an unconstitutional invasion of their civil rights," Bowers said.
But Hines said he did not know when it happened. He said he did not make an official complaint to the city but instead brought the incident to the attention of the SCLC.
"We're just going to have to pull that COPE unit, maybe," Bowers said to Hines.
Contacted at home, Hooper said he had no comment about Tuesday night's meeting. But he said that he has not received complaints about the COPE team.
"I see no support for any of those allegations," he said. "What concerns me more than anything else is that they be taken without any other support and inadvertently promoted."
That is one reason the Police Department has established a police community information telephone line at 981-2133, Hooper said. The line is open between 8 a.m. and 5 p.m. on weekdays for anyone with a complaint or question. Callers are not required to identify themselves.
Tuesday night, city officials pressed SCLC members to provide details of the alleged cases of abuse. And Bowers said he will talk with the city housing authority to put up drain spouts, clean up the mud flows and mow the yards at Hurt Park.
"We're going to clean up Hurt Park," Bowers said. "We need to clean up Hurt Park."
LENGTH: Medium: 84 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: PHILIP HOLMAN/Staff. Roanoke City Councilman Carrollby CNBSwain (from left), Assistant City Manager Jim Ritchie, the Rev.
Lenord Hines (in shirt sleeves) and Mayor David Bowers listen to
Hurt Park resident Angel Cartwright air her concerns about
conditions in the housing development. The man behind Hines is not
identified.