Not on My Watch: Neighbors band together to stand up to rising crime in Konnoak neighborhood

Credit: Journal Photo by Bruce Chapman

Keeping an eye out as they walk along Anderson Drive are (from left) Gloria Lawson, Mildred Bryant and Carolyn Highsmith. Bryant carries the golf club for use as a dog-whacker.

By: Mary Giunca | JOURNAL REPORTER
Published: September 16, 2009

When Carolyn Highsmith was growing up in the Konnoak neighborhood of Winston-Salem, the wooded areas around Philo Middle and Konnoak Elementary schools provided natural beauty on walks to school and a place for students to hold science labs.

But in the past few years, those same woods have provided the perfect cover for a number of problems that spill into her neighborhood, including underage drinking, fighting and house break-ins.

Highsmith and her neighbors have also noted an increase in littering, graffiti and such signs of disrespect as students urinating from a pedestrian bridge that leads to the school.

In the spring, neighbors in the Konnoak area were hit with a wave of break-ins -- 17 in a two-week period.

"Due to a confluence of forces, we now have a criminal hotbed in our neighborhood," said Highsmith, who is the chairwoman of the Konnoak Hills Neighborhood Watch.

She and her neighbors have formed four separate neighborhood-watch groups under the umbrella name of the Konnoak Hills Community Association.

They have been working with the Winston-Salem Police Department and Winston-Salem/Forsyth County Schools to clean up problems.

The neighborhood is roughly bounded by Buchanan Street and Brewer Road to the west, Clemmonsville Road to the south, South Main Street and Konnoak Drive to the east and Cloister Drive to the north.

Recollections of older residents date the earliest development of the area to 1929.

Much of the neighborhood was laid out in the 1950s, said Glenn Simmons, a principal planner with the City-County Planning Department. Smaller waves of development came in the 1960s and '70s.

Highsmith said that people have told her that for many years the neighborhood was an island of tranquility that was surrounded by less-stable neighborhoods.

That is changing.

Vernetta DeVane, a neighborhood-assistance specialist with the city, said she suspects that social changes in the neighborhood have weakened bonds between neighbors. Many of the older generation have died out. There is more rental property in the neighborhood and more of a sense of fragmentation in the community. Such conditions make a neighborhood ripe for crime.

"Unfortunately, crime roves," DeVane said. "When this crime begins to rove and it hits an area where there is that disconnect between neighbors, it can fester there."

Gloria Lawson, who moved into the area in 1992, said she can't let bullies overrun the neighborhood.

A few months ago, Lawson said, she watched about eight neighborhood children and adolescents playing in the road and daring cars to hit them.

Lawson went outside and told the group: "If you think you're going to destroy this neighborhood, you've got another thing coming because I'm not going to let you."

One of the children told her to mind her own business, but she said that the congregating in the road has stopped.

The neighborhood has concentrated many of its early efforts on working with the school system.

The school system has cut a lot of the underbrush out of the woods, said Theo Helm, a spokesman for the school system. School employees try to paint over graffiti as quickly as it appears. There are also regular patrols to clean up litter.

Community volunteers are always welcome in the schools, Helm said, and the neighborhood might want to strengthen its bonds with the schools by that sort of involvement.

Special Deputy Patrick Merrill, the school system's gang investigator, said that in the past few months, he has rounded up truants and caught two students who vandalized bathrooms at Philo.

He said he has found no evidence of gang initiations going on in the woods, but there has been small-scale gang activity on Philo's campus.

Highsmith said she is encouraged by the progress she and her neighbors have made in a short time, but there is more work to be done. Some of the neighbors have talked about volunteering in the schools and taking on some other projects.

"Before, everybody was saying it was hopeless. We didn't know what we could do," she said. "What I found in starting the neighborhood watch, you realize your neighbors are all having the same problems. A lot of these people who felt very alienated are now feeling empowered."

mgiunca@wsjournal.com

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