Residents and business owners in a neighborhood near Colorado’s state Capitol in Denver are fed up with blatant and pervasive drug dealing and drug use, and they are determined not to take it anymore, says the Denver Post. They want the pushers and users moved out of their neighborhood – sometimes known as “1300 Penn/Pearl.” “We need 50 more cops in District 6,” said Daniel Anthony, a nearby resident, a property manager, and a Guardian Angel. “We need a mobile force of cops walking the neighborhood and walking the dealers right out of the area. “It’s not the cops’ fault. There’s not enough of them. We have so few cops and so many calls for service.”
Anthony was one of about three dozen people – including Denver police command officers, state Sen. Jennifer Veiga and Denver Councilwoman Jeanne Robb – expressing their frustrations and looking for a solution at a neighborhood meeting yesterday. The area surrounds a boarded-up former 7-11 store, a spot that used to be the hub of drug dealing. Residents complain that drug use and sales on the streets and in alleys is a constant part of their lives, and it has on occasion moved into the stairways and hallways of apartment houses. Police Cmdr. Deborah Dilly said that so far this year, 738 drug-related arrests have been made in the area; 104 of those were people arrested multiple times, two of them had each been arrested 11 times. “It can’t be a police-only effort,” Dilly said. “It has to be a community-generated effort to say, ‘We’re tired of this.”‘
Link: http://www.denverpost.com/Stories/0,1413,36~53~2520919,00.html