Old Rules for Crack Cocaine Dealers

I was on the library web site, searching through old articles about Seminole Heights, seeing what was news when I came across this old 1989 column of Mary Jo Melone's in the St. Pete Times about crack dealers in the old Riverview Terrace Housing Project. Here are some excerpts:

1. Do not assume they are the neighborhood Welcome Wagon, as they run into
the street, waving and smiling at you.

2. Do not assume those little
white things in their hands that they
appear to be hawking are Bucs tickets.

3. Do not stop. Do not slow down.

8. Recognize how Mrs. Warren and other law-abiding people who live in
Riverview Terrace have built their lives around avoiding the crack trade, and
have concocted an etiquette of survival.

9. Never yell at the crack
dealers, even when they are doing business near your front door. Be polite. Call
them sir. ``If I went after them the wrong way, they'd go after me the wrong
way,`` Mrs. Warren said.

10. Do not point out the dealers or speak about
them in a loud voice. Never advertise whether you have called the police to
report the dealers' goings-on. These things make the dealers nervous. Do not,
under any circumstances, make them nervous. `'When you see the violent part of
it,`` said Mrs. Warren, who has heard the dealers' gunfire, ``it's because they
were provoked.``

12. Learn to accept the fact that Riverview Terrace
bears some resemblance to a war zone in which people like Cheryl Warren are the
civilians. At night, she does not:
a. let her children out even under her
supervision.
b. sit on her porch.
c. walk through Riverview
Terrace.

15. Recognize that most people, who don't have crack dealers on
their street corners, may not give a damn what happens in Cheryl Warren's
neighborhood.

16. Wonder whether those people will ever wake up.

Well, things have changed since then. It's been a while since I have seen a drug dealer doing business. Thanks to the increased police enforcement and Mayor Iorio's Operation Committment , the razing of the project and it's replacement Oaks at Riverview, and the Neighborhood Watch Patrols and neighbors actions , the crack dealers have gone to play somewhere else.