By Tania Valdemoro
The Miami Herald
MIAMI, Fla. — Marta Koller walked along Crespi Boulevard holding a white trash bag in her right hand and wearing a white rubber glove on her left hand.
Her target: papers, aluminum cans, bottles, leaves, dirt, anything “lying on the street that should be in a garbage can.”
Every Wednesday night, Koller joins a dozen of her neighbors on a stroll around Biscayne Beach. Her North Beach neighborhood is composed of single-family homes and apartment buildings. It runs from 77th to 86th streets, from Crespi Boulevard on the east to Hawthorne Avenue on the west.
During the hourlong walk, people point out to police and code enforcement officers graffiti, illegal dumping, broken streetlights and places where they’ve seen suspicious activity. The city employees take note and contact the appropriate departments to fix problems.
Biscayne Beach’s weekly neighborhood walk started in April after there was a shooting involving two groups of local aspiring gang members on Crespi Boulevard. Residents were fed up with crime and decided to organize, said Leonor Hernandez, president of the Biscayne Beach Homeowners Association.
Participants say their patrolling has reduced crime and cleaned up their neighborhood. The Police Department doesn’t release monthly crime statistics, but gang activity, robberies and stabbings have decreased since April because police beefed up their presence in the area with a narcotics investigation team and a Miami-Dade County gang task force at the same time that the residents began walking, said Police Chief Carlos Noriega. He walked with the group on Oct. 10.
“The residents have become our eyes and ears. We communicate with them regularly and work together to solve problems,” Noriega said.
Officer Julio Blanco, the neighborhood resource officer for North Beach, pointed out how residents, police and code enforcement officers fixed up a small makeshift park at Crespi Boulevard and 80th Street after the April shooting.
“We removed the graffiti from the walls around the park, picked up garbage, added trash cans and installed new lights. Now, many people come to the park every day when they used to avoid it,” he said.
On Oct. 10, Koller walked with Mercedes Carcasses, a code enforcement supervisor. Carcasses saw a few front lawns with knee-high grass. And someone left piles of leaves and bags of trash around a broken beige couch in front of their house.
“We’ll cite those folks for the grass, cut the overgrowth and send them the bill. And that sofa will be gone tomorrow,” she said.
The walkers did not see any suspicious activity, though they hooted at a speeder who almost struck Noriega, who wore plain clothes.
While he praised the residents’ collaboration with police during the crime walks, Noriega said more still needed to be done.
“Residents need to continue thinking out of the box, like finding ways to create programs for kids and improve the parks. Miami Beach is still a target-rich environment for crime,” he said.
Copyright 2007 The Miami Herald