He said the strategy brings together drug dealers, their families, law enforcement, social service providers and community leaders to eliminate open air street corner drug markets.
“The success rate has been very good across the country,” Adkins said. “About 80 percent of the communities that have used this strategy reported that the target drug market was still closed a year later. That’s what got us excited.”
While violent drug dealers are arrested and removed from the target neighborhood, Adkins said non-violent, first offenders are offered job placement and other needed social services to get out of the drug trade with immediate arrest and prosecution for those who return to drug dealing.
“This is a way to take the neighborhood back and work to re-establish lines of communication between the community and police,” Adkins said.
During some of the out of town trainings in the communities where the initiative has been successful, Adkins said those police chiefs said they were also skeptical at first about the initiative.
“But they said, ‘You wouldn’t believe how well this worked for us,’” Adkins said.
The Drug Market Initiative is not primarily focused on changing individuals. It is about transforming neighborhoods, shutting down open air drug markets, and building new relationships between the residents and city officials including the police, Adkins said.
The federal Bureau of Justice Assistance provided funding for the city to implement the program.
A team was formed in early 2009. It included Butler County Prosecutor Robin Piper, Middletown police, the city prosecutor’s office, Freedom Community Development Corp., MALICHI, and the Middletown Chapter of the NAACP.
During 2009, the federal grant paid for the team to travel to High Point, N.C., Milwaukee, Wisc., and Nashville, Tenn., for training and technical assistance to implement the program locally.
Adkins said the steps in the program include selecting an open air drug market for implementation, conducting undercover operations to build criminal cases against open air dealers, mobilizing community resources for implementation, and then shutting down the street corner open air market with law enforcement/neighborhood follow up and cooperation to keep the open air drug market shut down.
Adkins said the undercover operations are now complete and the community resources have been gathered for implementation.
The final stages of the DMI program will be implemented later this month with ongoing follow up and evaluation of results of the program.
City Manager Judy Gilleland said Middletown City Council will be briefed on the operation at its Tuesday, Nov. 17 meeting.
For more information on the intervention program, follow the links below.
http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/BJA/topics/DMII.pdf
http://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/nij/225760.pdf
Contact this reporter at (513) 705-2871 or erichter@coxohio.com.
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