THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, April 2, 1995 TAG: 9504020014
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A15 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY TONY WHARTON, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: NORFOLK LENGTH: Medium: 98 lines
It's tough for any stranger to loiter in Lafayette-Winona without being noticed.
A few months ago, civic league president Carl Meredith was driving home one night when he noticed a man in a dark, hooded sweatsuit wandering near a church.
Meredith stopped and asked: ``Are you lost? Can I help you?''
Immediately, a car pulled in behind Meredith's, lights came on, and another man appeared by his window, informing Meredith that his target was an undercover narcotics detective.
Chalk up one more for Lafayette-Winona, the neighborhood that can look out for itself.
Last year it had the largest decrease in reported major crimes of any neighborhood in the city - 26 percent. Somehow, people here are coming out of their houses, overcoming their fear, and turning back a threat to their neighborhood.
It wasn't always so. In the early 1980s, people were moving out of this nearly century-old neighborhood. Burglary and petty theft were commonplace.
Worse, neighbors weren't talking to each other. Crime was driving them indoors and the community was losing its sense of self.
Leonard Parker Jr. noticed it when he moved to Lafayette-Winona from Roanoke in 1980. Parker, 45, is a signal maintainer for the Norfolk Southern railroad.
``The thing I found about Norfolk is that people didn't speak to each other that much,'' Parker said. ``When I went down the block and spoke to someone, they'd look at me like I was crazy. The crime made people suspicious of each other.''
Bordered by the Lafayette River to the west and Tidewater Drive to the east, Lafayette-Winona was established at the turn of the century as one of the first suburbs when cars became practical.
Like many neighborhoods, Lafayette-Winona had a problem with cut-through traffic. It was hard for residents to keep track of who should be there.
The rental apartments of Lafayette Shores also were a thorn in Lafayette-Winona's side. Residents said most of the renters were law-abiding, but a small contingent was involved in drugs, break-ins and robberies.
Residents pressured the city to make the landlord of Lafayette Shores take action. Nothing worked, they said, until Lafayette Shores was torn down in 1987.
That did not eliminate Lafayette-Winona's crime problem. Drug gangs were roaming Tidewater Drive. Burglaries continued to plague the area.
But in the late '80s, the neighbors began to work together. They found that there wasn't any one magic solution to crime. Rather, they built a whole package of tools.
First there was a Block Watch program, an organized system of neighbors watching out for each other, reporting suspicious activity, and engraving identification numbers on their valuables.
``People were concerned about seeming like Peeping Toms,'' Parker said. ``Well, we let each other know that we're not going to peep, we're going to open the blinds and look.''
It wasn't easy. As new resident Lisa Billow said, the network of personal associations that help make for a safe neighborhood don't always come naturally.
``Unfortunately most of us have not been raised to do civic things,'' said Billow, 38, who moved from Philadelphia. ``With suburbanization, the habit is to just go home, stay in your living room, and that's it.''
A nearby neighborhood, Fairmount Park, has encountered difficulty. Iona Mitchell, president of the civic league there and a 68-year resident, said it has been hard to organize neighborhood watch programs. Meanwhile, burglaries have continued in Fairmount Park at a steady pace.
``I think it has improved a very little bit,'' Mitchell said. ``But we still have a number of boarded-up houses and some drug activity.''
The neighborhood was one of the first to open a ``mini-station'' in cooperation with the police department, a development that gave residents a tangible sign of achievement.
For its part, the police department began bicycle patrols in Lafayette-Winona, started a citywide program of community policing, and showed residents how and what to watch for.
Lt. Dan Hall, a 10-year resident of Lafayette-Winona, gave some of his officers responsibility solely for that neighborhood. They went to its civic league meetings, they made themselves known.
Residents began to know officers by name and felt comfortable calling on them.
Parker said, ``We realized we had to become a small town again. You don't know a stranger if you don't know your neighbors.'' ILLUSTRATION: Photo
D. KEVIN ELLIOTT/Staff
Carl Meredith, president of the civic league in Lafayette-Winona,
says his neighbors learned to look out for each other.
Map
STAFF
KEYWORDS: CRIME NORFOLK STATISTICS NEIGHBORHOODS by CNB