Sneakers on your feet may help you run more comfortably, but hung from a powerline they can represent nefarious activity.

That is why a pair of sneakers hanging in the Cottage Hill, Hamilton Parish area made Esme Williams, long time resident, and executive director of Big Brothers & Big Sisters determined to see the area cleaned up.

"I was really disturbed by the tennis shoes over the power lines," she said.

Although there can be many different reasons for tennis shoes slung outside, Mrs. Williams said in this case, it was a definite signal to drug users.

"Kids were hanging out on the wall at all hours of the day and night, and drugs were being dealt openly screened only by a nearby rubber tree," she said.

Mrs. Williams was recently part of a community-wide clean up of the area.

The clean up started with a meeting that included the Eastern Community Action Team of the Police, the Minister of Works and Engineering, Derrick Burgess, Curtis Charles, Principal Engineer for Highways, Thania Redman and Joydeep Ghose of Belco, Anne Hyde, Acting Executive Director of Keep Bermuda Beautiful (KBB) and Vanese Gordon, Education Officer for Waste Management, and Rev. Dean Furbert minister at the nearby Gospel Hall.

The sneakers were removed from the power lines within hours of the meeting. The nearby bus stops were cleaned of graffiti, trash was picked up, and drug hiding places were removed, among other things.

Mrs. Williams' family, the Warners, have lived in the neighbourhood for several generations.

She got tired of calling the Police about the situation in the neighbourhood.

"A combination of kids from the area and people involved in drug activity were in the driveway," said Mrs. Williams. "They were down by the rubber tree. There was a lot of drug dealing going on.

"The activity was going on inside my gate. Drugs were found in the crevices in the long wall along my gate. The Police on several occasions conducted raids to the gate area and have arrested individuals and retrieved drugs.

"Thus the reason for resurfacing the bus lay-bys and cutting back the large rubber tree that often hid the activity."

She knew many of the young men in the area from her time as deputy principal at Devonshire Academy. "I didn't have a lot of trouble with the young guys," she said. "But it gets old after a while. They kicked down the no trespassing sign and took that off the wall."

She said previously, whenever the tennis shoes were removed, they were immediately put back up and the drug activity continued.

But (so far) they have stayed off the lines.

Acting Deputy Commissioner Mike Jackman said the Police took symbols of drug and gang activity seriously and tried to have them removed as soon as they were notified.

"We are not saying that all of the kids that sit there (on the wall in the Cottage Hill area) are doing drugs," said Mr. Jackman. "But some are. Some are using the area to shield and mask the behaviours that they are doing.

"If you keep addressing all the areas eventually there has to be some compromise," said Mr. Jackman. "Once you put that level of attention to it, the people who sell drugs will disappear somewhere else because they don't want that level of attention."

In terms of the kids who were sitting on the wall, but not participating in drug activity, he said they needed to be engaged.

"We are not going to 'beat them up', but we need to make them understand the issues they are causing."

He said behaviours like noise-making, littering and harassing people in nearby shops had to stop.

"If they address those behaviours, the Police won't bother them," he said. "If they are doing drugs, drinking alcohol, harassing people the Police will keep bothering them."

There are similar community units in the western and central parishes. Each with approximately six officers.

"We want projects like this to work in more areas," he said. "We can arrest people and lock them up but that doesn't solve the problem."

He said the kids were more receptive when it was people from their own community trying to help them.

"When they see people from the area getting involved there is a whole different dynamic," he said.

"I have seen it work in the United Kingdom. Not using the Police alone, but also involving the clergy and business people in the area."

Mr. Jackman said attention to the problem had to be sustained to stop it from re-occurring.

Mrs. Williams said as a resident she could see a definite change for the better in her neighbourhood.

"Every once in a while they will come back and sit on the Dub City side," she said. "Every once in a while I see them, and they say 'hi, Miss Williams, everything is cool.'

"Other than that odd occasion I haven't seen them.

"Everytime I drive out the gate I am like 'please don't have any graffitti on the bus stops'. The bus stops look so nice now."

KBB played a key role in improving the area and held a marine clean-up one Saturday at the wharf below Francis Patton School.

This required the help of two Police divers, a barge operator, and the Dolphin Club Swim Team.

"They removed metal debris and trash from the water such as bicycles, grocery carts, buckets, fishing line and so forth," said Anne Hyde, acting executive director of KBB.

Mrs. Hyde said Bermuda needed to get back to the neighbourhood spirit of the old days.

"You used to know all the dogs' names in the neighbourhood, and all the people in your neighbourhood," she said. "Now in our busy go-go life you don't see children playing out in the yard anymore.

"There are changes. It would be nice to swing the pendulum back to having some cohesion and camaraderie in the neighbourhood to identify when something is going on in the neighbourhood.

"By something going on, I mean something or someone creating litter or a crime, or a new group hanging out in the neighbourhood. It is great to have people get right on it."

A few years ago, Jason Trott was one of the kids hanging out in the wee hours of the morning in the area.

Now a Police constable assigned to the Eastern Community Action Team, PC Trott, 33, was recently part of a Police team effort to clean-up the neighbourhood.

PC Trott said the Eastern Community Action Team was just following what Mr. Jackman has implemented. "It was a team effort," he stressed. He said it is 'problem-oriented-policing' as opposed to 'saturation policing'.

"It is a new way of solving long term problems," he said. "We look at a complete method of solving and correcting a problem, and getting all stakeholders involved."

As a team the community action team scanned and analysed the problem and then talked to everyone involved including area residents, the boys on the wall, clergymen and the area Member of Parliament.

"We decided it would be beneficial to get everyone to meet at the St. George's Police Station. During the meeting everyone was able to express their concerns.

"Within hours we were cutting down sneakers from the power lines.

"Of course some young people have approached me and said 'you seem to be taking your job a bit too seriously'.

"There was definitely whispering that something was happening."

In the process of cleaning up the neighbourhood, Minister Burgess found a job for one of the boys hanging out.

"Some people felt intimidated about shopping in the area," said PC Trott.

"The boys who were hanging out had no idea they were giving that impression. This new interaction was good for everyone.

"We found that as the neighbourhood started to clean up a bit more everyone's perceptions started to change."

PC Trott said he had a good rapport with the boys in the area, because he use to be one of them.

"I was one of those young men sitting on the wall," he said. "That is not a lie. At 3 a.m I was sitting on the wall.

"I have always hung with strong spirited young men, but I was also a cub scout. I was a member of the junior leaders programme."

As a young man, he was known for standing up for what was right, and teachers would often ask him to intervene in school disputes.

"They had just implemented peer to peer mediation when I was in high school," he said.

PC Trott won the Teen Service Leadership Award.

In addition to his Police work, he now teaches self-defence at the Youth Centre on Angle Street in Hamilton.

To contact the Eastern Community Action Team about neighbour watch programmes, illegal activity in the area or neighbourhood concerns telephone 297-1122.