THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Monday, July 8, 1996 TAG: 9607080042
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY ANGELITA PLEMMER, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: PORTSMOUTH LENGTH: 226 lines
When Glenn Perry began policing Swanson Homes public housing community four years ago, it was commonly called ``The Candy Shop.''
Dealers openly hawked heroin and crack and powder cocaine to strangers who strolled or drove into the South Street neighborhood where two-story row houses nestle beside Interstate 264. They sold and swapped guns like kids trading baseball cards.
Things had changed in Perry's old neighborhood, where he grew up with seven brothers and sisters. It was a place where he once shot marbles, played hop-scotch and fist-fought with other boys.
The decay started in the mid-'80s, soon after he moved out. By the early 1990s, Perry said, things had gone from bad to worse.
``In the early '90s, it just went down,'' Perry, 35, said. ``It was like a jungle. Guys were just standing around . . . and we had a shooting out here once a week.
``A long time ago, this was one of the best parks.''
When Perry, a 16-year police veteran, came back to Swanson homes in 1992, his mission was clear: Clean up his old neighborhood, where his 62-year-old mother still lives today.
His first year on the job, there was a 73 percent drop in crime in the neighborhood. The effort involved narcotics detectives, the Portsmouth Redevelopment and Housing Authority and residents.
Often, Perry's eight-hour shift would extend into a 16-hour day or an overnight stay. An apartment in the middle of the complex serves as Perry's office and sometimes bedroom. When he first began policing Swanson Homes, he would often sleep on a small cot placed underneath his kitchen window. His desk, strategically located downstairs between the kitchen and living room area, allows him to survey both ends of the complex.
Back and front entrances let him slip in and out unnoticed.
``I'll come in the front door in my uniform,'' he said, smiling. ``Then I'll go out the back door in my own clothes and people will think I'm still in the office.''
And while Perry suspects dealers use parts of Swanson Homes to store drugs, the open-air market has been stifled.
Standing near his former home - apartment 1802 - Perry's eyes scanned the perimeter of the housing complex on a recent afternoon, searching for familiar and unfamiliar faces.
He spotted a suspected drug dealer, who quickly made a bee-line to a relative's apartment.
``Being that his mother lives out here, I am a little lenient,'' Perry said.
Perry knows most, if not all, of the residents in Swanson Homes, a neighborhood with more than 200 apartment units and an average of three residents per unit, Perry said.
Perry is a neighborhood impact officer, one of the city's first in its effort to use community policing. The concept calls for officers to be problem-solvers, combining traditional and nontraditional methods of police work.
Perry can name some of the complex's best basketball players and brightest students, in addition to its law-abiding residents. Similarly, he can recognize most of its convicted trespassers, crackheads, thieves, drug dealers and troublemakers. ``The drug dealers try to get slick, (sending in) new faces I don't recognize,'' he said.
In one case, when Perry asked an unfamiliar young woman entering the complex whom she was visiting, she said ``a friend.'' However, she couldn't remember her friend's name or address.
``People hanging around cause problems,'' Perry said. ``It's still some drugs out here, but it's not out in the open.
``You can't change in a couple of days what happened in several years.''
When he began patrolling Swanson Homes, Perry's first order of business was to clear out the dealers.
``I told them to find a job . . . but a lot of them said they didn't want to work for minimum wage. . . . Some of them left - some of them went to jail.''
One suspected drug dealer was shot to death across the street from the complex in January. He was 29.
``It led him to an early grave,'' Perry said. ``And unfortunately, it happens too much to young people.''
A constant reminder of the complex's vulnerability is the alley on its east side. Listless young men hang out there, behind a corner convenience store.
As Perry drove through the alley, several of them casually moved on.
A woman, wearing a long wrap skirt and a shirt showing her midriff, slowly emerged from behind a tall bush. Several men followed.
Pointing to a slender young man with glasses, Perry said, ``He got a scholarship to go to college, but look at what he chooses to do - hang out here all day.''
Perry got out of his squad car and checked the area carefully, looking for signs of drug paraphernalia.
``There's something back there,'' he said, peering in his rear view mirror as he drove away.
``But I have to see the drugs to get a good bust or I have to have someone tell me the drugs are on their person,'' he said. ``I must have probable cause to search.''
Hours later, Perry warned another man sitting under a tree that his presence would attract the drug dealers across the street.
A few minutes later, after driving around the block, Perry found the man still under the tree, surrounded by several of the young men.
``What did I tell you?'' Perry asked the man, who shrugged his shoulders with a sheepish grin.
``I'm not doing nothing,'' he said.
``You all need to move along,'' Perry said sternly.
Four years ago, Perry used to give out 20 trespassing citations a week. Trespassing convictions help to keep drug dealers and buyers out of the complex. ``No parking'' signs now dot the complex. Speed bumps have made it safer for neighborhood children.
``Judges have really helped a whole lot by giving the guys some time and telling them to stay off the property,'' Perry said.
In his apartment/office, an answering machine records messages from anonymous tipsters or residents with concerns. Other remnants of home are scattered throughout his sparsely furnished office - a small radio with cassettes of Mariah Carey and Wayman Tisdale, his police bicycle, two small chairs and a couch.
Perry actually lives a few minutes away in Cavalier Manor, a predominantly black working- and middle-class neighborhood.
``I would go home thinking about what they were doing in Swanson Homes, and I couldn't sleep,'' he said. ``I would get up and go back out there.''
Residents honk their horns or wave as they catch glimpses of Perry throughout the day and evening. Sometimes he drives his marked car, sometimes he rides his bicycle, other times he walks at night in plainclothes.
``If you knew I was working from 9 to 5, at 5:30, you're going to do what you want to do, right?''
There were 23 percent fewer crimes reported in Swanson Homes in the first five months of this year than the first five months of 1995. The total of 32 crimes was the lowest in any of the PRHA's six public housing communities. By comparison, Ida Barbour reported 193 criminal offenses. Swanson Homes has 210 housing units, Ida Barbour about 600.
Each year since 1992, Swanson Homes has had the lowest, or next to lowest, number of total reported criminal offenses of the six PRHA communities. It is the second-smallest of the six neighborhoods.
Margaret Alston, who has lived in the complex for about six years, said she feels safer now than when she first moved in, but she still won't sit on her porch after dark.
``It used to be real bad,'' she said, recalling how she came home from work one evening to find several young men firing guns into the ground near her home.
``(People) used to be very, very afraid of retaliation,'' she said. ``Now, if they see something that's going wrong, they will call the police.''
Christine Taylor, watching her son and his friends play dodgeball outside, said the increased police presence has made a difference since she moved in five years ago.
``You had a lot of drug trafficking - moving back and forth,'' she said. ``I feel better about sending my son out to play.''
Perry is well-known among residents for his talk-first, nonconfrontational approach to policing.
``I try to talk to these tenants who I know are doing wrong,'' said Perry, who hasn't had a physical confrontation since patrolling the area. ``I'm not going to mistreat anybody. That's why I give warnings first - so when I put you in jail, my conscience will be clear.
``I try to encourage (the kids) but it's hard,'' he said, pointing out one of the neighborhood's best teenage basketball players.
``I know he's headed for trouble.''
Perry lived in Swanson Homes for 17 years. As a youth, he seemed headed for trouble.
He is the youngest of four sons and four daughters raised only by his mother, Hester Perry, who survived on public assistance.
His father, an alcoholic, made sporadic appearances in his life.
Growing up, he said, ``I know I was a headache.''
Perry would often fight with teachers as well as students. In the seventh grade, Perry was suspended from school for half a year for disciplinary problems. He was reading only on a fifth-grade level. His mother sent him to a special learning center.
Although he dropped out of high school in the 11th grade, his mother forced him to get a GED.
``I did not have an education,'' Hester Perry said, and ``I promised myself what I didn't get, they would get.
``When I moved out here in 1967, I told them we were moving in public housing, but we were not of public housing,'' the North Carolina native said.
She discouraged her children from cursing, fighting, drinking and premarital sex.
``People didn't like us then because they thought we acted uppity, but I told my children, they couldn't do like other children were doing,'' Hester Perry said.
``It was a trying time and I did some crying, but I didn't give up on my children,'' she said. ``I did the best I could.''
Two of her daughters are corrections officers. Another daughter is a counselor. Another works as a nursing assistant and is about to become a full-fledged nurse.
One son heads a maintenance department. Another son, who is disabled, was recently employed as a maintenance worker. Another, who was in the Army, was killed while living in New York in 1977.
When Glenn Perry was 19, police officers kicked in the door of the family's Swanson Homes apartment looking for his uncle, charged with murdering a man for $10 or $20, he said.
``My mother filed a complaint'' after the officers put guns in their faces and searched their home, he said.
``I saw some of the things police officers would do to make a situation worse than what it should have been, so I said to myself I would try to correct some of the things they were doing in my line of duty.''
Not long after, Perry applied to the police force.
Hester Perry still worries about her youngest son. He works only a few hundred yards from the modest one-bedroom apartment she refuses to leave in spite of his pleas.
``When he was assigned out here four years ago, I was afraid for him because it was so bad out here,'' she said. ``But I told him, if anything should happen to me because of the good job you're doing, don't give up your job - continue doing what you're doing.''
Glenn Perry said that while things are improving, the pressure remains to keep the drugs out, crime down and residents safe.
``I look at the good people that really need help or really appreciate what I'm doing . . . that keeps me going.'' ILLUSTRATION: RICHARD L. DUNSTON photos
The Virginian-Pilot
[Color Photo]
As part of Portsmouth's community policing effort, neighborhood
impact officer Glenn Perry has become very familiar with Swanson
Homes; he can recognize the law-abiders and the troublemakers. Here,
Perry plays horseshoes with 16-year-old Koran Colden in the public
housing community.
Glenn Perry moved to Swanson Homes in 1967 with his family. As a
youth, he seemed headed for trouble. He dropped out of high school,
but his mother pushed him to get his GED.
When he was 19, police officers kicked in the door of his
family's apartment looking for his uncle. Perry says he saw the
mistakes police made. He thought he could do better.
Four years ago, Perry was assigned to work in the public housing
community as a neighborhood impact officer.
In his first year on the job, crime dropped 73 percent.
KEYWORDS: PROFILE by CNB