THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, October 15, 1995 TAG: 9510130201
SECTION: VIRGINIA BEACH BEACON PAGE: 07 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: Bill Reed
LENGTH: Medium: 70 lines
Sleep for Carver Avenue residents is all too often disrupted by blaring stereos, raucous laughter and the shouts of young punks who mill around the dimly lit street outside their homes.
Peering out darkened windows, these residents see a dusk-to-dawn procession of cars, the glare of brake lights and shadowy figures moving to and from the vehicles to exchange money for drugs.
They hear the clink of cans and bottles and see these same young men stepping into their yards to urinate in the shrubbery or running through their yards to the sanctuary of vacant lots or nearby wooded areas.
Sometimes they wake up to the sound of scuffling, sometimes it's the crack of gun fire. Occasionally, they're awakened by sirens and the flash of lights from police cars.
This is not a neighborhood bordering the city's neon resort district, where residents have been overrun in recent years by roving bands of young marauders.
This is an area known as Morgan Terrace, part of Seatack. It is a small and largely hidden street that branches off Birdneck Road. It ends in a cul-de-sac and is dominated at its western end by the Friendship Village apartment complex. The neighborhood - about 13 homes in all - is predominantly black and comprises modest and low income houses and duplexes. The occupants are a mix of old and young and many of them are women with children. Many older residents have lived there for 20 or 30 years and have seen highway construction, commercial expansion and mushrooming apartment development slowly hem them in.
What these people desperately want, and what they are not getting, is peace and quiet. They want their children and grandchildren to be able to play at the curbside without fear of being run over, beaten up or shot at by the thugs who roam the street outside their homes. They want somebody - anybody - in charge of the city's municipal operations to listen to them.
``We pay taxes, too,'' growled a stocky fortyish man, with a budding mustache and Van Dyke beard. ``You can call me a `concerned citizen,' '' he said when asked his name at an impromptu meeting of neighbors at the modest home of Elbert Parker, on the corner of Carver Avenue and Summerville Court.
The problem isn't coming from Friendship Village, which had earned a reputation as a haven for drugs and juvenile crime, said Parker. That problem has been largely solved by the apartment management, which hired security guards and enforced nighttime curfews.
No, said Parker, the problem has moved farther down Carver Avenue, nearer Birdneck Road. And it doesn't originate on Carver Avenue. Most of the youths who congregate along the street come from other neighborhoods, he said. They're outsiders who know they won't be bothered by the law here.
``They don't have respect for you, your property or anything else,'' he said. ``They killed a guy right in my back yard - with a brick - and the police came by and woke me to tell me about it. That was about 2 1/2 years ago.''
A woman in her 60s speaks up. A young girl was raped last spring in a secluded spot near her back fence, she says. ``They dragged her around my fence and left her there.''
A younger woman, a mother, speaks up. Carver Avenue residents recognize the drug dealers and often know their names, she said, but pointing them out to police invites unwanted recognition and maybe even reprisals.
And, ``concerned citizen'' adds, if Carver Avenue residents take the law into their own hands, they invite instant arrest.
What they want, Carver Avenue residents say with smoldering anger, is the same official attention enjoyed in well-to-do, predominantly white neighborhoods in Virginia Beach. by CNB