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Dear Mayor Cicilline
This letter was published in the Pro Jo and in the East Side Monthly.
The writer was viciously attacked by members of the Empowerment Network or formerly, CATCH, for exercising her right of free speech in the press.
Dear Mayor Cicilline,
I'm writing you on behalf of my family the Bavers. I am Ellen, my husband is Uri, and our four children are Nechama, Eliyahu, Elimelech and Chana, aged 10 to three years.
We are an orthodox Jewish family, and we live on Camp Street in Mt Hope, close to Rochambeau. We bought our lovely home about 6 months ago, and we paid almost 300, 000 for the house. That may not be a lot of money in some books, but we saved for years, and Mt. Hope was the neighborhood we could afford and where we fell in love with a house large enough for our big family. We love our home and the nice people we meet around the neighborhood. What we don't understand is what is going on around Mt. Hope with all the drugs and crime, and why don’t the police and the City do more to solve the crime and social problems here. Why are good, tax paying home owners being victimized by home and car break-ins and having to live with fear in their own homes and neighborhood. We feel like hostages to addicts, dealers, thieves and other criminals? Drive a few streets away, to any other East Side neighborhood, and everything is clean and quiet.
Let me take you on a walk down Camp Street with us, from my house to Billy Taylor Park, as I often do with my 4 kids. Our walk to the park is just an experience in itself. We do not feel very safe walking this route with our children, and if you wish to accompany me one day, you would be very welcome. I do feel we have the right to feel safe and comfortable walking from our home to the park.
When we leave our house on Camp Street, near Rochambeau, we often encounter an addict/dealer who lives down the street and hangs out on a corner. He is someone who I do not want my kids to see or know exists. If I know what he’s doing, why can’t the police just watch for a little bit and do something about it? We see him sell drugs on a street corner and hide them nearby. We have spoken a lot times to the community police and the narcotics police, but he is still selling drugs and hiding them nearby.
Further down Camp Street we soon walk through the 200 block of Camp Street. Many times we see drug dealers on the porch of a deserted house at the corner with Camp and Grand View. In the next block, if we walk on the south side of the street, near a Ministries, we pass bags of old clothing left on the sidewalk and old furniture blocking half the sidewalk. If we walk on the north side of the street we pass men who stare with hostilely and men who smell of liquor or who look drug-addicted coming out of a building with a banner saying, Men’s Pride.
My kids ask me why is the street full of garbage and why is there always so many people just standing around. They ask why they are staring and what they want. All 5 of us feel very uncomfortable.
When we get to Billy Taylor Park, and we go down the hill to play on the grassy area, my kids are confronted with the ugly, peeling wall painting of scary looking drug addicts and a graveyard with crosses, and a saying, See Ya at the Crossroads. Again, they ask questions, like, what the pictures are about. They know nothing of drugs, and I want to keep it that way for a while so they can have a childhood. How do you explain that horrendous picture in a park for kids. I do not understand how any one could have put that in a park. If you understand, Mayor, please explain it to me and to my kids without spoiling their innocence.
Of course it would be out of the question to send my kids to the park by themselves, given the circumstances I just described, wouldn’t you agree, Mr. Mayor?
When passing the little police station on Camp Street, I stop to talk with the policemen if they are there. They are real nice and friendly. Once I asked them why they don’t arrest the drug dealers and an officer told me that they can’t, the drug dealer’s friends and relatives would start a riot. That didn’t make sense. If people riot to protect drug dealers then arrest the rioters, right, wouldn’t that make the area better if both us and the police felt safe from dealers and rioters. What he told me made it sound like the police are afraid.
I ask around to people who have lived in Mt. Hope for a long time why is it this way and they shrug and tell me that’s the way it is in Mt. Hope. It’s politics, they say, the police are afraid of being accused of racism and the city tries to contain the drugs and crime in the Mt. Hope neighborhood. That way the other east side neighborhoods don’t have to cope with it. Is that true, Mayor Cicilline? That is the word around here.
Within 2 blocks of my house, I know at least 7 other new homeowners who bought here in the last year and paid top dollar for their home and pay high property taxes. We all wonder the same thing. Did we make a mistake to buy a home in Mt. Hope. Should I put my home back up for sale and move out? I have heard of others do that because of the climate of fear and crime in Mt. Hope. I hope that we won’t have to do that. But I don’t want to have to walk a street like Camp Street with my kids. I know of no other street on the East Side where such things are allowed by the City, nor do I know another park here that portrays drugs in a park wall-painting.
I would like to hear your comments and suggestions, Mayor Ciciline, because I am wondering what to do.
Very truly yours,
Ellen Y. Baver
Posted at December 16, 2006 1:03 PM