When years of corruption settle into a neighborhood, it takes a massive effort to get rid of it. That’s what Woonsocket Police undertook in 1992 when they shined their spotlight on two of the city’s worst neighborhoods.
East School and Rathbun Streets were their objects. Filled with abandoned homes and populated by drug dealers, the streets were prime candidates for intervention. And when police received a dose of federal money for the “Weed and Seed” program, they gained the funds and the manpower they needed to rid the area of criminals and bring new residents in.
Over a period of months that year, police, working with state and federal agencies, flooded the streets with undercover officers who infiltrated the drug scene. When enough evidence had been gathered police raided the neighborhoods, made many arrests, and generally removed the ‘bad elements.’
That’s how Capt. Normand A. Crepeau Jr. describes it seven years later, now that those streets have been cleaned up and the department has established community police units in the area.
“We arrested many dealers,” Crepeau recalled. “We called it ‘Operation Grim Reaper.'”
The areas of the city are known as the Constitution Hill and Fairmount sections. Each was popular for residents at one time. Over time, however, the neighborhoods declined, and when the state credit union crisis of the early 1990s struck the decline turned into a free-fall. Houses were abandoned, longtime residents left, and criminals moved in.
The police raids of the early 1990s, however, made it possible for community groups to complete the work of bringing the neighborhoods back. The Woonsocket Neighborhood Development Corp., located on the line between Fairmount and Constitution Hill, rallied residents to embark on a revitalization program that began in 1995 and is just finishing up now.
Some $8 million has been spent to rehabilitate houses and clean up the streets. Thirty abandoned houses were renovated in all. The money came from a variety of sources, including the Rhode Island Housing and Mortgage Finance Corp., BankBoston, and private financing. Some of the houses were donated by banks that had foreclosed on them.
“We pretty much fixed them all up,” said Joe Garlick, executive director of the Woonsocket Development Corp.
The houses have been made into one to four-bedroom units, and the historical details were preserved during their renovation, Garlick said. Most impressive, he noted, is the increase in population. From 7,500 to 8,000 residents live in the two neighborhoods. But in the early 1990s the population had shrunk to only about 500.
“It was a very popular neighborhood,” Garlick said. “A lot of the old residents that have lived here have come back.”
They’ve come back largely because crime in the area has slowed down. Part of that, police and Garlick agree, can be traced to the department’s community policing efforts in the area.
Community policing is the new wave of patrolling which is in fact a throwback to the 1950s: the officer walking – rather than driving – the beat, getting to know his or her areas and their people. Constitution Hill and Fairmount get their share of the department’s attention from officers assigned to the community policing role.
“In the late 1960s and early ’70s we became mobile, and in doing so we did a disservice to the community,” explained Sgt. Daniel Pion, who heads the department’s five-member community policing unit.
Community policing is a 180-degree turn from that. The aim, Pion said, is to establish a rapport with the people so that you can diffuse problems before they occur.
Pion also said he believes that young people who get to know police officers, and thus realize that the officer has certain expectations of them as a person, are deterred from committing crimes for fear of disappointing the officer. Conversely, the same expectations apply to the officer who must respond to the needs of his or her community, he said.
But Pion noted that the program isn’t perfect. Under the system, community police officers work their areas for a five-month period before being replaced by someone else. This hinders the relationship-building process, he and Garlick agreed.
Crepeau said community policing does not necessarily lead to more arrests because the point is to prevent, rather than react to, crimes. But while the benefits of community policing do not always show up in statistics, Crepeau nonetheless cites it as part of the reason crime is down in the city.
According to police records, the total number of serious crimes – homicide, rape, assault to rape, armed robbery, unarmed robbery, assault with a weapon, assault, breaking and entering, larceny, and stolen vehicles – has dropped from 1,971 in 1997 to 1,708 in 1998.
Rapes, assaults to rape, assault with a weapon, assaults, breaking and entering, larceny, and car thefts all dropped. Robberies stayed the same – eight – while homicides and unarmed robberies increased slightly in 1998 compared to the previous year.
