Thrown in jail once for refusing to allow an unreasonable inspection inside his home, Julius Davis was understandably wary when he opened a letter dated Oct. 27 from Winston-Salem's Neighborhood Services Department.
City officials wanted him to know about a public meeting scheduled for 6 p.m. today at Easton Elementary School -- a show of good faith on their part after the debacle that resulted in the arrest of Davis on June 18.
Davis, you might remember, is the Easton neighborhood activist who was charged with a misdemeanor for refusing to allow city inspectors inside his home during Operation Impact, a well-meaning neighborhood-improvement initiative that went too far when city officials decided that they had the right to use far-reaching search warrants to enter private residences to look for code violations.
While he was pleased that officials seemed to have learned from a mistake, Davis was nonetheless concerned about the timing.
"I'm worried that it wasn't enough notice to get people out," Davis said. "Me and Mr. (Robert) Leak (another Easton resident) have been passing out fliers so people know. We're getting them in Spanish, too."
Violation of civil rights
Outrageous as it sounds, city representatives were indeed going into people's homes looking for such problems as faulty plumbing and balky electrical outlets.
Operation Impact was a good idea carried too far. It was originally intended to help curb urban blight by flooding troubled neighborhoods with city representatives looking for code violations.
In their zeal, however, officials started getting blanket administrative warrants to look inside houses. Leery of being charged with selective or biased enforcement, they instead decided to go into every house in a given area.
That stopped abruptly after Davis was arrested. The use of Operation Impact was suspended pending review.
"That's a violation of my civil rights," he said after the charge against him was dropped in August.
Not surprisingly, the Sept. 6 column about the incident created a minor stir. Other homeowners came forward with stories where they felt that officials had overreached. Reactions were decidedly in favor of Davis for standing up for his rights.
"The government does not have the right to force themselves into our homes unless we are breaking the law. Mr. Davis was not breaking the law. Public servants who would request an administrative warrant should be sent to the back of the unemployment line," one reader wrote.
Davis was pleased by the support he received, yet determined to see that Operation Impact's original goal -- neighborhood improvement -- doesn't get lost in the shuffle.
"We still have the same vacant houses with broken doors and windows where nothing's been done yet," Davis said earlier this week.
Learning from mistakes
To their credit, city officials realized quickly that they had gone too far -- Davis was one of those who originally asked for a neighborhood-improvement program in the first place --and pledged to re-examine Operation Impact.
Ritchie Brooks, the city's neighborhood-services director, said in September that officials would discuss all aspects of the program at the next meeting of the Winston-Salem City Council committee that deals with community development, housing and general government.
True to Brooks' word, that discussion took place last month, and officials decided to go one step further by holding the public meeting scheduled for tonight at Easton Elementary, 734 E. Clemmonsville Road.
"We'd like to get 50, 60 people to the meeting," Davis said. "A lot of people might not know about it and the more people who go, the better chance we have to be heard."
No law-abiding citizen should have to sit idly during a search of his home conducted under the flimsiest of reasons, but it is comforting to know that change for the better can happen if mistakes are made.
ssexton@wsjournal.com
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