A neighborhood effort to kick crime to the curb

What can you do if a major drug dealer shows up in your neighborhood and settles into a home on your block?

I can only speak from personal experience, because my wife and I, with lots of essential help from neighbors, all in the past year made life more difficult for such a drug dealer, a previously convicted felon. After 18 months, he’s moved on with his fellow heavily tattooed pals as he faces court dates for a new round of felonies, including possession of a sawed-off shotgun and ammunition, among others. What do you do?

First of all, identify the problem, which should be obvious once the stream of cars begins to occur at all hours of the day, into the early evening hours, and sometimes, say, at 3 a.m. Then there is the steady stream of suspicious quick comings and equally suspicious quick goings from, say, the front door, a side gate, a garage, or retrievals of stash or cash from vehicles parked in the driveway or curbside.

Secondly, find out the nonemergency dispatch telephone number of your local police department and log it into your smartphone: In Vacaville it’s (707) 449-5200; in Dixon (707) 6787070; in Rio Vista (707) 3746366; in Fairfield (707) 4287300; in Suisun City (707) 4217373; in Vallejo (707) 648-4321. If you live outside city limits in an unincorporated area, the non-emergency dispatch number for the Solano County Sheriff’s Office is (707) 421-7090.

If you can start a relationship with a detective in the police department’s or Sheriff’s drug enforcement units, then so much the better. Get a cellphone number from him or her, so you can text them about suspicious activity. The police can’t be everywhere all the time. When you call, report what you see, of course, but also note the time, the make, model and color of the vehicle or vehicles; a description of the driver (if possible) and any passengers; a license plate number (I gathered that information easily using binoculars, because I had a clear line of sight from my home to the drug house); and anything anyone was carrying from the house. Also tell the dispatcher if you saw the passing of money or the exchange of money outside the drug house or on the street. I rarely saw that, because, from what I understand, today’s drug dealers are using online payment options.

From time to time, the dispatcher would ask me if I saw any weapons, guns or knives, on people going into or walking out of the house. I saw folding knives worn on men’s hips now and then, but I never saw any firearms.

A continuous activity that was so obvious a hallmark of drug dealing was the dealer, who earlier told neighbors that he had a home auto repair business (a lie, it turned out) and “worked” on cars in his driveway and garage. By work, I mean his spending 30 minutes doing something under a car seat while lying down in the street, remounting tires, removing door panels, raising the hoods of vehicles when there was no apparent repair work going on, giving people what appeared to be fake car batteries. It’s my understanding that bogus car batteries are one method drug dealers use to smuggle or hide drugs. Over time, I eventually did a little research and discovered the name and date of birth of the drug dealer/primary tenant at the drug house on my block. I was able to find out that his criminal court record of felonies and misdemeanors — grand theft, drug possession and more — stretched back to 2002. And the police and narcotics detectives knew who he was and knew the home’s occupants were drug addicts. I was sad to hear that the drug house on my street was only one of about five major drug houses in my community, some of them believed to be sources of fentanyl.

Thirdly, organize your neighborhood against crime. Get to know your neighbors, agree to exchange contact information, addresses, cellphone numbers and email addresses. Let all of them know what the local police department’s nonemergency dispatch number is and encourage them to call if they witness suspicious behavior. Talk to each other often, update one another.

On Aug. 3 this year, I sponsored a National Night Out gathering/ cookout in my driveway. Some 30 to 40 neighbors and their children joined in. About 10 of us, at the end of the evening toward sundown, walked up and down our block while we carried colorful posters with wording that ranged from “National Night Out and Crime Out” to, essentially, “This Neighborhood Is Strong.” We walked past the drug house, and, sure enough, the dealer and his pals were in the driveway, watching us. What happened in my neighborhood, with the drug dealer eventually being arrested for felonies and his illegally siphoning off electricity from PG&E and with the house ultimately being condemned, was the collective work of concerned neighbors. There is strength in numbers, to borrow a slogan from the Golden State Warriors. The National Night Out event was a triumph over isolation amid COVID and 21st-century life in general, and I came to believe, as New York Times columnist David Brooks wrote: “Rebuilding community involves seeing that the neighborhood, not the individual, is the essential unit of social change.”

What happened in my neighborhood, with the drug dealer being arrested, was the collective work of concerned neighbors.