AGENDA #5e
MEMORANDUM
TO: Mayor and Town Council
FROM: W. Calvin Horton, Town Manager
SUBJECT: Update on Efforts to Reduce Drug Traffic in Northside Neighborhood
In September, the Chapel Hill Police Department embarked on an initiative to improve the quality of life in the Northside community by reducing and removing illegal drug activity in the area. The goal of this effort is to seek for the residents a safe environment, free of crime, drug activity and nuisance problems.
On September 24, 2001, several citizens from the Northside community presented a petition to the Council requesting assistance with continued drug trafficking in the area. While acknowledging that the Police Department has worked to eliminate open-air drug sales, the residents are concerned that the problem persists. The citizens requested that the Town strengthen its efforts to resolve this on-going problem.
For more than a year, representatives of the Police Department have attended Northside Community Watch meetings on a regular basis. In these meetings, residents provide officers with information that is used in the enforcement of local, state and federal regulations. In return, the residents have the opportunity to learn how they can assist law enforcement officers in their efforts to eliminate illegal activity.
Members of the Department’s Community Oriented Policing Unit have worked with organizations such as EmPOWERment to help rehabilitate structures that have previously housed drug activity. The Department has been successful in securing “Agent to Act” agreements with many of the property owners in the Northside district allowing officers to trespass or arrest persons who are on those properties without authorization. The department has worked with judicial officials to impose geographical restrictions on persons convicted of drug related crimes or persons awaiting trial for such offenses.
For the past three years the Police Department has assigned eight officers to work solely in the Northside community. These officers provide coverage daily in the community on foot, bicycles and in patrol cars. Coverage is provided in the neighborhood from 1:30 p.m. until 5:30 a.m.
These officers provide a regular police presence in the area as a deterrent to criminal activity. These officers also work closely with the Department’s narcotics unit to aggressively enforce drug violations and nuisance crimes such as trespassing, littering, public consumption. Their presence also provides opportunities for residents to share information directly with officers.
Officers have been aggressive in their efforts to trespass convicted drug offenders from Town property and from private property when given authorization to do so. They work in concert with probation officers to enforce curfew restrictions imposed by the courts. The Department’s Court Liaison Officers tracks all criminal cases related to the Northside area to ensure that offenders receive maximum sentences from the courts. The Police Department has also assigned security monitors to the Hargraves Community Center to augment patrols by officers.
From August 29, 2001 through November 2, 2001 a task force consisting of narcotics officers and community policing officers made eighty-five arrests in the Northside area. Twenty-eight of these arrests were drug related; three involved weapons offenses. Of the eighty-five arrests, approximately three quarters of the defendants had prior arrest records, including many that had previously been arrested in the Northside community.
The Police Department is also working with the Inspections Department to remove abandoned vehicles from Town property, starting with those in Northside. We will continue to enforce parking restrictions to prevent loitering that is often associated with the use or sale of drugs. We will also continue to work closely with the Sykes Street Steering Committee to develop alternative means of improving the neighborhood and to help further reduce crime in Northside.
ATTACHMENT
1. Petition from the Northside Community (p. 3).