Camden Courier-Post – November 21, 2006
By ALAN GUENTHER, Courier-Post Staff
Two dozen Camden residents recently took a nighttime walk on the wild side, past rows of abandoned homes, through neighborhoods so infested with crime and drugs that the dark streets are illuminated at night only by flashes of gunfire.
"We hear gunshots. We hear a lot of hollering and screaming. We hear people all night long — drug addicts, drug dealers — walking up and down the street," said Lisa Amegatcher, 34, who is trying to provide a safe home for eight adopted children in the Cooper Plaza section of the city.
Since Nov. 3, seven people have been found dead in Camden. Five were shot and killed. One was strangled. Another was stabbed.
"That’s too much. Way too much," said Arturo Venegas, Camden’s new top law enforcement official. "We’re going to stop it."
That’s why at 4 p.m. today, Venegas said, he is launching a drive he’s calling Call for Peace, Call to Action. At today’s press conference, he said, he will challenge every church, every community group, every school organization to join police and walk through their neighborhoods together.
"This is about neighbors caring about neighbors," said Venegas as he walked along Berkley, Pine and Line streets with residents Friday night.
"We’re going to take it street by street, block by block… We’re going to keep at it until we take our city back," Venegas said.
Friday night’s walk covered about six city blocks. In that small area, residents pointed out three "hit houses" to police. Hit houses are abandoned buildings where addicts come to cook their heroin in spoons held over candles. They suck up the liquid with a syringe and inject a dose, or "hit," into their veins.
Three people were found in the hit houses Friday night, police Capt. Harry Leon said. Jennifer M. Lilly, 21, of National Park, Kareem Gardner, 29, of Williamstown, and Van Simmons, 39, of Camden, were all issued a summons for defiant trespass, Leon said.
Gardner denied any wrongdoing, saying he had visited a girl in the neighborhood and was trying to find his way back to the Hi-Speedline station when police found him. Simmons declined comment.
Lilly began to cry as police questioned her outside the squalid abandoned home at 772 Line St. Old sofas, a rug smelling of cat urine, burning candles and empty heroin packets littered the home, said Patrolman Stephen Garcia. He said he found Lilly sitting on a bed upstairs, surrounded by burning candles.
"I was just waiting for somebody," Lilly said. "A guy, ‘Twin,’ stays here. I was just seeing him, I guess. I was just waiting for him to come back."
Tears gathered in the corners of her eyes as Lilly said she had been living on the street — "on and off" — for about a year. She is the mother of a little girl, Autumn, who will turn 4 in January and is living with Lilly’s mother.
City resident Sheila Roberts, president of the Cooper Lanning Civic Association, confronted Lilly as she stood outside the house.
"You all destroy our neighborhood," said Roberts. "Don’t come back here, because every time I see you here, I’m going to call the police… You’ve got to find somewhere else to live. Get yourself some help."
As she led the tour, Roberts took police back to an area called the LEN triangle — a small area bordered by Line, 8th and Newton streets.
Years ago, state Superior Court Judge Louis Hornstine helped the community raise $15,000 to install a basketball court, a playground and a garden.
"But today, kids can’t play in the area," Roberts said.
"The drug dealers came back here and took it over and tore it up," she said.
"I live right here," Roberts said, pointing to the back of her house on South 8th Street. Drug dealers try to elude police in high-speed car chases, roaring through the narrow alleyway at night.
"They drove a car right through the back of my house," Roberts said, about a year ago, ramming through a bathroom at 2 a.m. and spraying water everywhere.
"Kids can’t come back here," she said. "It’s not safe."
Venegas said police will be available to help groups that want to do walks to take back their streets. Asked how he will find the manpower to get the job done, he said Friday night that he didn’t know.
"I just came up with this this morning," he said. "We’re working out the details."
The city police force currently does not have a police chief and is under state supervision called "supersession." Venegas was recently hired by the state as the "Supersession Executive" to lead the department.
State and county officials said that when Venegas was police chief in Sacramento, Calif., he was known for demanding results from his officers in a tough-talking, no-nonsense way. He also was well known for working closely with community groups and paying attention to their requests.
For more than a decade, studies have called for the police to be more involved in the community, to get out of their squad cars and interact with neighbors.
"We’re not going to ‘try to do this,’" Venegas said. "We’re going to get this done… The future of the young people of our city is being stolen by the criminals who feel that they can do whatever the hell they want in our parts of the city. And we’re not going to tolerate it."
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