Pubdate: Mon, 26 Sep 2005
Source: Toronto Star (CN ON)
Copyright: 2005 The Toronto Star
Contact:  http://www.thestar.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/456
Author: Joe Fiorito
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/coke.htm (Cocaine)

BARKING UP THE RIGHT TREE IN CRACK WAR

The tall slim man in the red shirt watched his big black dog play in 
Cawthra Park. He also watched the street, the dark corners of the 
park, and the fall of the shadows on a recent Thursday evening.

There were a dozen or more dog owners in the park. They stood in 
little knots of three or four, and they talked casually, and they 
also watched the street, and the corners, and the shadows.

Their dogs, some big and some small, some pedigreed and some mutts, 
ran around off leash, tongues lolling, playing a dog game; you chase 
me, and I'll chase you. And I stood very still when the dog of the 
man in the red shirt darted between my legs, and another dog followed 
justlikethat.

I am not overly fond of dogs, especially when they are strange, off 
leash and darting between my legs.

But that, I guess, is the point.

The man said, "There are crack addicts, dealers in the park, and 
there is sex." The park is downtown, near Church and Wellesley.

The man used a rhyming term used on the street to describe the 
exchange of sex for money to buy drugs.

I won't repeat the term but it is short, descriptive and efficient.

He said that the park had become a dangerous place in recent months: 
where there are kids on drugs, there are dealers and guns and knives, 
and there is the danger and the desperation of ill-considered sex.

And so the people who live in the neighbourhood have chosen to take 
back their park. They come out at night with their dogs. It is a 
simple thing, and a social thing, and it seems the neighbours are winning.

The dealers, the addicts and the hookers are getting the point: dogs 
and owners in the park interfere with sex and drugs in the bushes in the dark.

The man in the red shirt - I have no intention of identifying him 
further; dealers come armed, and addicts are reliably unpredictable - 
said, "It used to be rampant, there were 20 or 30 of them in here at 
night. We felt in danger. They're out of their minds."

The man with the red shirt is a writer and you have seen his work on 
television. He said, "We've been bringing our dogs here for a while."

Is it working?

"In the past four weeks, I'd say there's been a 75 per cent improvement."

He also told me that a couple of his neighbours had been threatened, 
had seen knives, had heard gunshots.

A fellow with grey hair who was standing nearby said, "One evening 
three of us were in a circle, talking, and a kid walks up to us and 
says, 'Can I have some ashes?' I said 'No, leave us alone.' He got 
friendly with the dogs for a minute, but then he just started 
swearing at us. He was out of control, saying, 'I'll kick your ass.'"

I was about to ask for clarification of the "ashes" remark when he 
said, "They need help. They can't help themselves. I don't blame the 
addicts. I blame the dealers."

A young woman with pierced ears was smoking a thoughtful cigarette nearby.

She said, "I was here last night, later than usual. As soon as the 
crackheads saw us coming, they left. But one of them came over and 
asked me to ash in his hand."

She mimed the gesture that the crackhead made: her hands cupped, held 
out in front like a begging bowl. She also noticed my puzzlement.

"They put cigarette ash in the bottom of their crack pipe, they tamp 
it down, they use the ashes like a filter."

And they are on cloud nine if they think that cigarette ash somehow 
mitigates, or ameliorates, the effects of crack cocaine.

The young woman called to her dog then, and it came to her happily.

She said it was a Doberman-Rottweiler cross, all teeth and jaws and 
pointy ears, and she said, wryly, that the crackheads call it "Muffin."

She said, "The first night we came to the park, we thought there 
would be just a few people. It was just word of mouth." But there 
were, by some accounts, as many as 150 people that first night. The 
people come out once a week, Thursday nights for the most part, but 
some come whenever they can, to maintain a presence. The woman with 
the pierced ears said she sometimes comes in the morning. "If you're 
here early enough, they're all sleeping."

The man with grey hair said, "You see them sleeping by the fountain. 
You see the crack whores with their box cutters."

The box cutter is an all-purpose tool for a boy or girl who is 
working the streets: inexpensive, with a snap-off blade, useful for 
cutting rock, useful for self-defence. But it is useless against a 
crowd of neighbours with dogs.

As the evening drew to a close, the men and women began to leash 
their pets and go home.

They say the police liken drug addicts in the city to water in a 
balloon: squeeze here, they go there.

Next: a walk at night through Allan Gardens.
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MAP posted-by: Elizabeth Wehrman