Tuesday May 6

Under their watchful eyes

Sisters transform seedy E. Palo Alto street

By Banks Albach / Daily News Staff Writer

The 2200 block of Euclid Avenue in East Palo Alto is a work in progress for Faye Brown and Erma Moore, who head a neighborhood watch group.

The sisters have lived two houses apart for nearly 70 years combined and remember the days when their street was marred with potholes, lacked a sidewalk and housed a handful of drug dealers. Many houses were unkempt and the street often strewn with litter.

"In the early days, that was quite a problem," Brown said. "People sold drugs on the street. But we got rid of them and haven't had any real problems for about eight years."

After East Palo Alto incorporated in 1983, the newly formed police department tried to recruit block captains - volunteers tasked with monitoring everything from criminal activity to unsightly code violations, such as untrimmed yard growth. Moore and Brown were two of the first captains, said Sgt. Rahn Sibley, who helped set up the program.

The two sisters eventually formed a tightly knit neighborhood watch that held monthly meetings and street clean-ups. They were also instrumental in pushing the city to build sidewalks and repave their stretch of Euclid between Runnymede Street and East Bayshore Road about eight years ago.

At first, Brown and Moore said, they tried to confront the young men selling drugs. After all, the sisters had watched them grow up from toddlers. But there was too much anger, and arguments only exacerbated matters. So the sisters switched tactics and started being nice to the dealers, while praying for them daily.

"We treated them the way we treated our own kids," Moore said.
That seemed to work better, but Moore recalled one particularly difficult person, an older man who was running what appeared to be an organized distribution center down the street.

"We were so angry with that man," Moore said. "Just anger, anger, anger. It wasn't doing anything."

Brown said they called police several times, but the responding officers rarely had probable cause or enough evidence to make an arrest. Then one day, in the early 1990s, police raided the house and arrested the man.

"No one has sold drugs in that house since," Brown said. "They're all gone. And we don't have any problems with that."

Neighborhood diplomacy is crucial to community policing, Sibley said. The block captain program not only provides extra eyes and ears for the department, but also empowers people to take initiative in their community. Sibley said East Palo Alto still has several neighborhood watch organizations, including ones on Ralmar Avenue, Lincoln Street and in the Gardens area.

"I think by putting the right kind of pressure on people, they engineered a lot of the change we've seen in the last 23 years," Sibley said. "I've always said, it's not completely up to us. It's up to the community as well."

What is posing some challenges for Brown and Moore is the language barrier created by the demographic shift from a predominantly black and white population to one that's now largely Hispanic.

About five years ago, their neighborhood watch lost a translator after she moved, and Moore is seeking a replacement. The language issue is part of the reason regular meetings stopped happening about three years ago. But the occasional block clean-ups have made those meetings less critical.

Moore and Brown still pass out fliers to residents in English and Spanish, thanks to some part-time help. The most recent one lists contact information for code enforcement and lists several examples of violations to watch for.

"It's an ongoing process," Brown said. "We have to be vigilant and let people know, or they'll forget."



E-mail Banks Albach at balbach@dailynewsgroup.com.