GRANT TO HELP CHARLESTON FIGHT DRUGS

CHARLESTON -- Charleston and federal officials have teamed up to fight the drug war in the city on several fronts.

Within the past month, Charleston has learned it will receive more than $200,000 in federal grants to reduce crime and to stabilize its troubled neighborhoods. Specifically, the federal funds will be used to fight illegal drugs in the city's public housing.

Edward L. Dowd Jr., U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Missouri, announced on Oct. 15 that Charleston, along with Cape Girardeau, Caruthersville and Poplar Bluff, had earned official Justice Department designation as a Weed and Seed site.

With such a designation, Charleston became eligible for a portion of the $750,000 Weed and Seed grant approved earlier this year for the Southeast Missouri region.

In the funding request submitted by Southeast Missouri Weed and Seed Inc., the Charleston Division is slated to receive $124,740 for fiscal year 1998.

Then, on Oct. 26, Housing and Urban Development Secretary Andrew Cuomo announced that Charleston was one of 14 Missouri communities to receive a grant to fight drug abuse and other crimes in public housing and HUD-assisted housing.

"These grants are good news for some of the poorest families in Missouri and bad news for drug dealers for drug dealers who terrorize them," Cuomo said in announcing the grants.

"We will fight drug abuse with prevention and treatment programs and with a crackdown on drug dealers and other criminals," he said. "We are telling drug dealers in HUD housing to find another line of work or be sent to another type of subsidized housing -- a prison cell."

More than $4 million will be awarded to the Missouri communities, of which Charleston is slated to receive $84,000 in drug elimination grants.

The $84,000 will be used for Project Safe Community, the drug elimination program of the Charleston Housing Authority. Two contracted city community police patrols will be used to combat the problem of open and concealed drug trafficking in public housing.

In addition, a summer youth and children program will be established to provide alternative activities in a safe, structured environment. The purpose of the program will be to prevent youth and children from having too much idle time that would allow them to become involved with illegal drugs and crime.

Nationwide, HUD is awarding $305.2 million in drug elimination grants this year, the majority of which will go to public housing authorities.

"HUD is transforming public housing from isolated ghettos of poverty, drugs, despair and crime into safe and economically integrated communities of opportunity," Cuomo said.

The grants are awarded on a competitive basis, based on the seriousness of the drug and crime problem facing a housing authority and the strength of local plans to address the problem.

The Weed and Seed grant money will also be used in a targeted area in and around Charleston's public housing.

Tentative plans are for $60,456 to go for personnel, including funds for police overtime pay and money to pay a Weed and Seed coordinator. Another $24,284 will be used to purchase equipment in the targeted area.

The remaining $40,000 of the grant has been earmarked for the safe-haven programs for the community.

The city has established two safe havens within the Weed and Seed area -- the Helen Currin Center at 106 Iron Banks Road and the Bowden Center at 700 S. Elm.

The Bowden Center, a renovated school building managed by the director of the Public Housing Authority, has been instrumental in providing both educational and recreational resources for youth in the targeted area. It is used for GED classes, developmental classes and cultural arts, basketball, music and dance programs.

The city has also established a police substation in an eight-room building provided by the Public Housing Authority in the targeted area. The purpose of the substation is to provide an increased police presence in the neighborhood. Two police officers work out of the substation.

Operation Weed and Seed is a Justice Department initiative designed to weed out violent crime, drug use and gang activity in targeted neighborhoods of a community. The program also aims at seeding communities with a variety of resources to revitalize the targeted neighborhoods. More than 160 sites nationwide have implemented the Weed and Seed strategy.

Charleston and the three other communities named last month join Sikeston to make up the only regional Weed and Seed initiative in the country.