BRATTLEBORO — On a grey, chilly Saturday morning in early October, a large handful of people - 10 to 20, a number that fluctuated throughout the day - were busily painting a mural, an activity of the Frost-Elliot-Elm-Triangle Neighbors group (FEET) designed to spur community engagement.
To the FEET members, it appeared that many in the neighborhood were not aware of the event. While a few people stopped and asked about the mural, many passersby were uninterested when invited to come and paint a bit.
In the year and a half since it formed, the organization has held a few events and created some change in the neighborhood, but they had yet to spark the community's interest. Broadly speaking, residents are intrigued by the idea of a stronger community in their area, but the vision and actions of FEET have yet to lead the neighborhood to fall in stride with the organizers.
The recent early-morning stabbing of a juvenile on Elm Street has brought attention back to the mixed perceptions of the neighborhood's identity and highlights a call for clarification of the area's identity and the community's goals.
One potential reason is the evolution of the organization itself. It was founded in response to neighborhood concerns that were based on the reputation that has dogged that part of Brattleboro for years. But in the process of founding the organization and doing research to quantify the problems, its organizers have come to see their own neighborhood through different and more sympathetic eyes.
“There has always been a sense of a diversity of people who come through [the neighborhood], but in the last two years there has been more of a sense of drug dealing, more loitering, more young people hanging out who have gotten into fights,” said Dr. Rebecca Jones, the founder of FEET.
Jones and her husband, Scott Wade, own the building at 134 Elliot St. that houses her dermatology practice and the couple's nearby restaurant, the Elliot Street Café.
Each enterprise handles a different crowd of people each day, but, as a geographic inevitability, they both have the shared experience of interacting with some Brattleboro residents who do not often frequent their businesses.
Behind Jones's office and next to the parking lot is a nine-unit grey apartment building at 15–17 Elm St., which has generated a lot of foot traffic in the area. It's tucked away behind the shared parking lot, right behind the office, so people coming in and out of the house inevitably walk by each of the businesses, more so in the summer.
If the residents of this house wanted to head downtown, they walked past the windows of Jones' office. It could get loud at times. Jones would often have to walk around a group of people hanging out to get to her car in the parking lot.
These groups have had consistent interaction with each other but weren't part of the same community. This foot traffic appeared to be just a part of living in the area.
But the activity of summer 2011 crossed a line.
One day Jones witnessed a fight in the parking lot. On the same day, she discovered someone shooting up heroin in the bathroom of her dermatology office.
Tension in the neighborhood was rising, and some of Jones's patients felt intimidated. Driving east down Elliot Street, she said, one could see more people spilling into the streets than in years before. There were more strangers walking around, more out-of-state license plates.
Jones decided to do something about the problem.
She called Robin Rieske, a certified prevention consultant of the Vermont Department of Health who works with communities around Windham County, to see what could be done to improve the neighborhood.
“I wanted people who would effect change to hear [Jones],” said Rieske. “I called together a meeting. There were people from the Brattleboro Selectboard, the fire chief, the chief of police, local residents...about 12 people total.”
Jones and Rieske held this meeting at the café to discuss the need for a community organization in the area.
“Many in attendance didn't see a distinct issue,” said Rieske. “Increased foot traffic wasn't enough for them, and some were not convinced [this was an organization in which they should invest].”
At the end of the meeting, this initial group decided to focus on the “walkability” of the neighborhood. By improving the lighting, physical design and aesthetics of the area, this group hoped they would be able to improve the neighborhood.
* * *
By October, a core FEET planning group had formed with between five and 10 area residents attending biweekly meetings and two goals coming into focus.
Their first task was community engagement: How could this group be as inclusive as possible? How can they work with neighbors to strengthen the community?
FEET didn't want to make the issue of community engagement about “that house” or “those people,” even though concern about the comings and goings from that one particular house - and the activities witnessed there - had prompted the group to form in the first place.
So the members' second and larger focus - their perception of crime in the area - conflicted with their first goal by nature of their approach.
In February 2012, FEET conducted a survey to see how the neighborhood felt about the area's crime and community.
The survey consisted of eight questions. The first asked whether the respondent was connected to the area as a renter, owner, visitor, or business owner. The second asked for a rating of the respondent's personal sense of safety from 1 (very safe) to 5 (very unsafe).
In one question, respondents were asked whether they had witnessed drug dealing, sharing drugs, verbal or physical threats, weapons, or verbal or physical altercations, or whether they had been a victim of a crime.
For each scenario, respondents were asked to check a box to indicate whether the events happened “never,” “sometimes,” or “often,” then to say whether the police were called, to note if the incident was reported to anyone else, and to provide other relevant details.
Some questions pertained to police response to the incidents. Three others were open-ended, asking about other concerns in the area involving improvements in lighting, traffic, or environmental issues. To these questions, respondents were given a space to discuss ideas and solutions or ideas to improve the FEET area.
Of the 175 area residents invited to participate, 45 responded, a response rate of a little under 26 percent.
To the first question of personal safety, the survey report stated, “Overall perceptions of safety in the community were in the middle ranges, i.e., neither 'very unsafe' nor 'very safe.' Most respondents (84.0 percent) picked a score of 2, 3, or 4 on the scale.”
As for conclusions to the survey questions about how and to what degree the Brattleboro Police Department was involved in their incidents, the response rate to those two questions was too low.
Respondents' answers to the final three questions expressed what these residents want from their neighborhood and from a community organization.
Survey respondents' suggestions fall into a few main categories. Many asked for an increased police presence: “Police come more often”; “Police on foot patrol. Video cameras that focus on drug dealing areas.”; “More patrolling.”
In total, a third of respondents called for raised police presence.
* * *
When FEET formed, Police Chief Gene Wrinn attended the organization's meetings to discuss the role of the Brattleboro Police Department (BPD) in the area and in relation to the organization's goals.
Before the formation of this organization, Jones had called the police and was told - by her account - “It's Elliot Street. Don't bother. At least they're all in one place.”
When asked about his approach to police involvement in the community, Wrinn said, “If there was a cry for police presence [in the neighborhood] then we can do it. It would be a tougher area to have a walking patrol, but we could have an increase of law enforcement.”
“That means more people getting pulled over,” he continued. “This could mean an increase in arrests and whatnot. It may look like an increase in crime and make it look worse than it really is.”
But, Wrinn said, “If there is clearly a cry for an increase, then we'll take that into account.”
Some respondents suggested intervention outside the realm of the police force, like, in the words of one resident, “finding ways to deal with interpersonal harm that are democratic/non-hierarchical and community-based.”
“If there is any sort of 'improvement' process, I hope that the people leading the effort are a diverse group of residents and employees who are accountable to the other people in our neighborhood,” this survey respondent continued.
“Brattleboro is in serious decline,” the survey response continued. “and it is a shame...you definitely feel you are 'in the hood' in most of it.”
* * *
FEET, right now, is not led by a “diverse group of residents and employees.”
Not that they don't want to be. The FEET planning meetings are open to the public, but there has been a lack of response among people in the neighborhood.
“We've always been very inclusive - the problem is nobody comes!” said Stewart McDermet, FEET organizer and neighborhood resident. Stewart and his wife Kris often hold FEET planning meetings in their house on Spring Street, right behind the Samuel Elliot Apartments, but have yet to see any attend beyond the core group of organizers.
“First and foremost, and some would argue only, to have a successful community organization the issue at hand has to be important to people...it has to be addressing something in people's lives that they can see how [their lives] would be better if this community came together,” said Ken Schneck, a Selectboard member who last fall taught a course on community engagement at Marlboro College, where he serves as dean of students.
If the goal of an organization is “an abstract concept that doesn't have this very clear mission statement,” Schneck said, “then people are not going to be involved, and people are not going to care.”
At the moment, FEET is trying to clarify its mission statement.
The neighborhood boasted the largest turnout of any Green-Up Day event in town last May and held a potluck to hear people's ideas. Now members are trying to figure out their goals.
“Becky [Jones] and I came in thinking “Oh my god, we think there's a drug problem in part of the street[...]but really people just want to have a sense of ownership in the community,” said Rieske.
“We did the survey [and] we heard from the community that they feel pretty safe. But there are things they'd like to see be better. They'd like to connect with their neighbors. Many think that would increase the sense of safety.”
* * *
To create those connections, FEET, which started as a direct reaction to specific drug-related activities, is now continually battling the neighborhood's reputation as a seedy area.
One survey respondent called the FEET area a neighborhood of “crack houses,” a term used by other respondents as well.
But despite this widespread perception of drug activity in the neighborhood, few drug-related arrests have taken place there in past years.
From 2009 to 2012, three arrests took place in the FEET area. Two were the result of police searches on residences, and the third was for a drug deal in the Elliot Street park, a transaction that a police officer on foot patrol observed. All had to do with marijuana.
But the dialogue around the FEET neighborhood continues to be a discussion of a “drug area.”
FEET shies away from such language, but to many Brattleboro residents, this neighborhood will continue to be perceived as a drug haven. While few law-enforcement statistics back up such perceptions, residents still claim the area's reputation holds true.
Because there is little actual criminal activity but still a strong perception of danger, FEET is trying to figure out where to go from here.
“If someone comes in with this idea and says, 'Hey, I want to do this,' we don't really have a filter to say 'That's part of our vision' or 'That's part of our mission',” said Rieske. “The last couple of months has kind of been like herding cats - figuring out where we are.”
“Really, it's a pretty simple process of asking what people would like to see the neighborhood be,” she continued. “I just really think that before we move forward we need to start with a vision.”
Some in the neighborhood would like to see FEET reassess its goals for a different reason.
A few see FEET as potentially problematic in structure. One respondent to the survey said, “I hope there will be a great attempt to get every household a survey, and follow up or else all of this work will be futile.
That respondent charged that one of the survey questions “will allow for answers that may be based only on stereotypes and especially racial profiling. Someone 'seeing a drug deal' could innocently only be two people shaking hands, for example.”
Those in the FEET planning group recognize this risk and are working to reconcile the potential for prejudice within the organization; last summer saw a decrease in criminal activity and a change in how the the group's organizers approach what they perceive as “criminal activity.”
“One of the things that started to become clear to me is that our perception of drug activity is a bit biased,” said Jones.
Of her relationship to those who live in the house behind her practice, she reflected, “I have been very consciously trying to build relationship with those around me. It really changes your perspective of them as people.”
“I've discovered that a lot of people who have been coming in and out have been relatives of those who live there,” she said. “For me, it is really a process where I am seeing my own prejudices and am able to think about them in different ways, and I'm very thankful to be able to do that.”
The answer to resolving these prejudices has been an emphasis on inclusiveness.
“I love the idea of letting everyone tell their own story - letting the neighborhood tell its own story. Don't have the town tell us who we are, but let us tell our own story,” said Jones.
* * *
Jones and the other FEET organizers want to avoid the divisive labels put upon the neighborhood, but the area is burdened by its history and its reputation.
“It's like if you go to New York City, to 42nd Street, you know what's going to be there,” said Lt. Robert Perkins, FEET's new police liaison, of why the area attracts such criminal activity. “In Brattleboro, if you're looking for drugs, you know Elliot Street is where you go.”
Perkins grew up on Moore Court, right off Elliot Street, so he is familiar with the area and what makes the FEET neighborhood the way it is.
“It's a socioeconomic issue,” he said, simply. “It's been a poor neighborhood.”
Brattleboro resident Harral Hamilton is also familiar with the area. Hamilton has never lived there but had family in the neighborhood when he was younger.
“Growing up, my parents would say that was the area to stay away from - that was in the '70s and '80s,” said Hamilton. “You have a lot of people that are just living their lives in their houses...There's not the best housing, so that might attract people who are not doing up-and-up things. People are struggling and people do what they have to do. Sometimes that means dealing or doing drugs.”
FEET organizers knows this history. To move past it, they are focusing on community accountability and engagement: specifically, a neighborhood watch.
“It will really help in getting to know people as people, not just lumps of people. This is why a neighborhood watch makes sense. We should be treating our neighbors as people. Supporting them if they're doing well and punishing them if they're behaving badly,” said Jones.
Schneck agrees that geographically based action can be really beneficial to a community.
“[This type of organization] often leads to many great connections and moments of self-discovery,” said Schneck. But, he warns, “They need a focus that isn't crime, because that can come across as really patronizing.”
“The numbers [of drug sales] have decreased,” said Perkins. “Our responses to that area have decreased. There are a couple factors to that. A number of people are no longer living there, whether they are in jail or have moved away.”
“I think part of that is the initiative of FEET,” he said. “People are now more organized. FEET is more active, and people are seeing that and becoming more responsive to their neighborhood.”
The recent stabbing has raised questions about what is needed in the area. Though this was the first such incident since 2009, it recalls the neighborhood's more dangerous past.
At FEET's next potluck in the spring, its organizers will be inviting community members to come voice their opinions on what they want the organization to be.
“We want to be as inclusive as we can be. One of the things we're trying to do with the potluck is just really getting the word out,” said Jones.
For FEET to thrive, Schneck believes the organization must ask neighbors what would help them.
“What are folks going to actually sign on to?” he asks.