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Man honored for taking neighborliness seriously

A good neighborhood requires people looking out for one another. Do it well, and you might get an award, too.

By PAUL SWIDER
Published April 26, 2006

That was the reality for Frank Klim, despite the fact that he lives in a Norman Rockwell kind of neighborhood called Disston Heights.

"Our neighborhood was terrorized for six or seven months," said Klim, who is the communications director for Stetson University College of Law. "They turned our quiet neighborhood into a place where people were afraid to walk the streets."

Klim, 54, has been credited with restoring peace to his neighborhood of 14 years, though he insisted he did nothing heroic. He just watched, took notes and pictures and made a lot of phone calls to the police. On April 6, he received the St. Petersburg Neighborhood Partnership's Neighborly Neighbor award during a ceremony at Tropicana Field.

It started in summer 2004, Klim said, when a couple who moved across the street from him on 37th Avenue N began having trouble. Soon after the husband left, the woman, a professional with a respectable job, tried to soothe her troubles with crack cocaine.

The situation deteriorated rapidly, Klim said, as the woman fell hard into addiction and lost control. As many as 15 people lived in the house at any one time, with cars coming and going at all hours, loud noise, fights, prostitution and more, he said.

"These were some very dangerous people," Klim said. "They were a bold group, screaming and cussing and threatening us."

Klim had some confrontations with the drug dealers and users that frequented the house, but mostly he catalogued their behavior and shared it with the Disston Heights Civic Association, Crime Watch and the St. Petersburg Police Department. The neighborhood's community police officers got involved, gathered evidence and started making arrests, but often the perpetrators were out on bail within hours.

"I wouldn't have stood for it," said Carole Griffiths, president of the civic association. "No one should. People were afraid to go out on their porches."

Griffiths encouraged Klim to join the neighborhood groups, which he did, but she also enlisted the help of re-forming Court Watch, a group of volunteers who show up in court to lobby for stiff sentences. Klim and others made court appearances, and eventually the half dozen prime actors found themselves in prison with long terms.

"You've got to keep on it," Griffiths said. "It works."

The Court Watch program also indirectly received accolades as the city recognized Assistant State Attorney Pat Siracusa for his work with the program. The awards are aimed at highlighting such lesser-known neighborhood actions.

"People don't have to be a neighborhood association president to make a difference in their community," said Susan Ajoc with the neighborhood partnership program. "They do it because they care."

Klim said the problems in his neighborhood lasted about six months before tapering slowly as the arrests mounted. The whole affair took about a year, but he said fear was a daily feature for a long time.

The situation turned a year ago, Klim said, when the house across the street was finally sold to a "lovely family."

"Our children can play in the street again," he said. "The elderly can walk their dogs.

"It really makes a difference when neighbors watch out for each other."

Paul Swider can be reached at pswider@sptimes.com or (727) 892-2271 or by participating in itsyourtimes.com.

[Last modified April 26, 2006, 06:52:33]