Amid troubles, a new voice emerges from a troubled place

Black elected officials and neighborhood leaders rally around fighting crime and viewing police as allies in St. Petersburg.

By BRYAN GILMER, Times Staff Writer
© St. Petersburg Times
published February 3, 2002

ST. PETERSBURG -- Johnnie Mack has been saying it for 20 years:

"Some fringe groups try to confuse the issue by yelling that the police are carrying out a policy of containment and that police have declared war on the black community. This is not about police containment. It's about self-containment, community responsibility and community accountability."

But on Monday, those words did not come from the president of the Fruitland Heights Neighborhood Association after people twice threw explosives at officers. They came from the mouth of a much younger and more prominent man: local NAACP President Darryl Rouson.

He is part of a new coalition of black elected officials and civic leaders that is emerging in St. Petersburg. Last week, their voices joined with those of neighborhood presidents and ministers who want to fight crime and drugs in some poor, mostly black neighborhoods just south of downtown.

Drugs are destroying the community, they proclaimed; hard-nosed, hard-working black people with strong Christian values can lift it.

Members of an older generation of leaders had died or become less vocal, and antipolice rhetoric from Omali Yeshitela often filled that void. So Rouson and City Council Chairwoman Rene Flowers held separate news conferences to amplify opinions widely but quietly held by black residents.

"A lot was said that I have always said down through the years," said Thirteenth Street Heights Neighborhood Association president Dorothy Gilliam, 82. "More people now seem to be more concerned. More people are coming together, and they are willing to work."

This coalition shouted things publicly that many black people have preferred to say only among themselves.

"I would prefer that we raise our young African-American men in our house and the church house, not the jail house and the penitentiary house," Flowers said last week. "I say to those that have lost a reason for erring on the side of right rather than wrong . . . find your way back or face a community that will have no sympathy or empathy for the choices you make."

Right moment for crusade

The group that spoke out has the clout of black politicians elected primarily by black voters, the credibility of the nation's pre-eminent civil rights organization and the moral authority of the Christian church.

Its leaders think this is the right moment to launch their crusade.

Flowers, council member Earnest Williams and County Commission member Ken Welch want police to do more to enforce the drug laws. They want residents to do more to help the police. Welch has enlisted the support of his black County Commission colleague from Clearwater, Calvin Harris.

Six years ago and before, few would have claimed that poor black residents and police officers had a healthy relationship in St. Petersburg. Each group held the other in fear and suspicion.

The worst year was 1996. Officers shot and killed black motorist TyRon Lewis. The incident, and the determination that the shooting was justified, touched off two frightening nights of arson, looting and confrontations with the police.

But in the aftermath, black academic Goliath Davis III became chief of police. He demanded that the department treat African-Americans and all residents professionally.

Davis' successor, Mack Vines, used the word "orangutan" in December while commenting on the arrest of a black suspect. Mayor Rick Baker fired him, saying he would not tolerate any chief that might damage relations with black residents. Black voters gave Baker the margin to win office. He joined Flowers and Rouson at the lectern last Sunday.

"I think this is good," Baker said. "The message is important. First is the support of the Police Department. I think that it's going to take us all working together."

Not every antidrug African-American would have fired Vines. At least he was cracking down on drugs, people such as Bartlett Park Neighborhood Association president Charles Payne say.

But Welch, Rouson and Flowers now feel comfortable calling for the police to make more arrests in black neighborhoods.

They trust the police to behave responsibly. Ultimately, they know they have the political might to correct any excesses.

Incidents worry residents

After Flowers' news conference Sunday and Rouson's on Monday, Yeshitela found himself third in line on Tuesday, trying to rebut criticism of his ideas. Rouson irritated Yeshitela by including his Uhuru movement as one of the "fringe" groups that "plays footsie with drug dealers" by opposing a police presence.

Using the TyRon Lewis killing as his prime example, Yeshitela has asked his followers to resist a "policy of police containment" of black people.

Yeshitela called Tuesday for an end to "inflammatory rhetoric." He warned again that a rogue clique of city police officers is "chomping at the bit" to abuse black residents and create "a climate of confrontation."

A week of incidents in the cluster of neighborhoods the city government calls "Midtown" inspired all the news conferences: A young black man shot another young black man who had drugs. People twice tossed small explosives at police officers, causing minor injuries to several officers and making residents in some neighborhoods apprehensive.

Yeshitela's initial response was, "If the police in their actions have declared war with this community, you shouldn't be surprised that somebody out there is willing to engage them."

Flowers fumed: "Don't tell these boys it's okay to go out and chuck something at the police. I couldn't believe his comments in the paper."

Despite their philosophical disagreement, Rouson is writing Yeshitela a conciliatory letter.

"Omali Yeshitela is not my enemy. I'm telling him the things I like and respect about him," Rouson said. "And I'm asking him if we can pick one or two issues we can agree upon and work together on them."

Yeshitela says African-Americans need economic development in their neighborhoods, not more police.

But Rouson, Flowers and Welch say removing brazen drug dealing and establishing a sense of safety are essential to usher in economic boosts such as new houses, new employers and neighborhood small businesses.

"It goes hand in hand," Flowers said. "You've got to have some laws in place and those laws enforced for those companies to feel safe and secure. Companies look for education, quality of life, low crime, potential employees. Do we have a sense of security right now even for our own residents? The answer right now is no."

Drug dealers scorned

That has long been obvious to Johnnie Mack, 76.

"They ought to stop fooling themselves that they'll bring a business in here without cleaning up the place first," she says. "If you've got a nice, clean house, you can get anybody to come into it."

Mack's own house is plain on the outside; she doesn't bother with the lawn because she says her neighbors will only trample it. But inside, there are plush beige carpet, oil paintings of Paris, luxurious overstuffed sofas and chairs and marble-topped coffee and end tables.

"I have to look out my windows and see all this," she says. "I'm embarrassed. I don't know why the mayor isn't embarrassed. It's embarrassing."

Mack scorns the drug dealers she says operate near her. She scoffs when they say life has left them no other way to make a living.

She raised her three kids on the wage she made as a housekeeper. In 1962, when she moved into Fruitland Heights, that was $25 per week, and she remembers school lunches costing $10 of that.

"People tell me they can't make it now?" she says, incredulous. She taught her kids to learn, to persevere. Her son, Kenneth Wayne Mack, grew up to become a freelance computer programmer in Sugar Land, Texas, who makes $400 a day. "Everyone he played with in this neighborhood is in jail and on drugs."

Flowers was raised in the Jordan Park housing project, got elected to the City Council, then became chairwoman.

Rouson went to college and became a successful, highly paid attorney. Then he fell into drug addiction and saw his life ruined. Now in recovery, he has started his own law firm and was elected NAACP branch president.

Welch became an accountant and elected official like his father, but was able to do it much earlier in life than his dad.

"My grandfather had a third-grade education," Welch said. "But he was able to work hard and put his four kids through college. There really are no excuses at this point. You really can become anything you want to be. Look at the generations before us and what they had to endure and compare it to the opportunities we have today."

Mack's seniority has taught her something else: It is easy to say the kinds of things she heard Flowers, Williams, Rouson and Welch say as she sat in the background at the Sunday news conference.

Williams is planning to restore antidrug marches to the city. Rouson and the NAACP are taking anonymous reports of drug activity from residents and passing them along to the police. Rouson asked people to scold drug dealers they know.

"It's fine if they do it," Mack said of the leaders' efforts. "If they had worked with us (neighborhood leaders) in the 1980s, I believe it would have never gotten out of hand. I hope they follow through with it."

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