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Leader emerges to help transform a community

Jonathan Wade sounds like the kind of leader the North Greenwood area has needed for a long time.

Wade displayed courage and community spirit when he organized a community meeting in Clearwater's North Greenwood area this week to help police uncover leads in two unsolved murders.

Wade hopes the Tuesday meeting was just the beginning of a broad-based campaign by North Greenwood residents to take back their neighborhood from what he describes as a small contingent of residents who commit crimes.

Wade apparently has an influential supporter in that effort: Clearwater police Chief Sid Klein, who was so moved Tuesday night by the emotional stories of Greenwood residents impacted by crime that he suddenly stood up and offered a total of $50,000 in reward money to advance the effort to solve the two murders.

"I think we needed to create a spark to make something happen in these two cases," Klein said in explaining himself the next day. "And I think this is only a starting point and that meeting will be a rally point ... to deal with what's going on in the fabric of North Greenwood."

In 1992, 15-year-old Melanie Warren was killed in a drive-by shooting as she sat on a porch on Jones Street. Police don't believe she was the intended target of the shooting. In 2002, 37-year-old Clarence Bolden was playing cards at a home on Fulton Avenue when two masked men came in and shot him dead.

Wade and Clearwater police believe there are people in North Greenwood who have valuable information about the murders and could help solve the crimes and bring closure to grieving family members.

That murderers could be roaming the neighborhood was only one reason Wade organized the meeting; the other is that drug crimes and other types of criminal activity keep North Greenwood on edge.

"I'd just be damned if I'm going to live in a neighborhood where my kid is scared to be," said Wade, who is president of the North Greenwood Association. Wade said the area's law-abiding residents need to let the criminal element know "that it's not something we're going to tolerate or accept."

North Greenwood has many hardworking residents who just want to live peaceful, quiet lives. The area, located north of downtown Clearwater, has been upgraded through city infrastructure projects and looks better than it has in years.

Yet there is trouble beneath the surface. Many of the area's young men get in trouble and street-level drug dealing remains a deep-rooted problem. Residents know that, but they have not always been willing to speak up or join with their neighbors to combat it.

North Greenwood could and should be a safer place, and residents could and should join arms to fight the lingering elements that keep the neighborhood from being a peaceful refuge for families. In Jonathan Wade, North Greenwood has a resident with the courage and conviction to lead the way.

[Last modified August 11, 2006, 05:40:46]