"When we first moved in 44 years ago it was nice here, then in the past couple of years all that went out," said a woman who lives on South Oakley Avenue on the Hilltop.

Four generations of her family live in this one block of South Oakley Avenue on the Hilltop, and the photos covering nearly every inch of every wall stand as evidence that she has called the duplex home for more than 40 years.

Yet it was only in the past couple of years that her grandson first spotted different women washing themselves in the trickle of water from any available outdoor spigot along the street.

Stories that inspire. Coverage that informs. Investigations that affect change. This is real news just when it's needed most. This is The Columbus Dispatch. Subscribe today.

Last summer was the first time her daughter saw paramedics time and time again try frantically to save overdose victims in the same back alley.

And it was just this past school year that the longtime resident became too worried to let her great-grandchildren walk to school alone.

But because several times in the past few months she has sat in her easy chair and peeked out her front window to watch as a parade of blacked-out police vans — carrying armed officers in tactical gear — rumbled down her street, she is not desperate.

She is hopeful.

“It had gotten bad — so, so bad — with all the drugs,” said the woman, who agreed to be interviewed only if her identity was protected, because she isn’t afraid to live here on Oakley — and she doesn’t want to have to be.

“When we first moved in 44 years ago it was nice here, then in the past couple of years all that went out,” she said. “But it sure made a difference, them shutting down all these drug houses along here. It made a great difference to us.”

Microcosm of drug epidemic

In 2019, City Attorney Zach Klein’s office used court orders and the city’s public-nuisance code to shut down 16 homes and two apartment complexes where authorities proved drug trafficking, prostitution and sex trafficking were persistent and rampant.

So far this year, five houses have been secured and boarded up.

Of all of the houses shut down last year and this, four were on South Oakley Avenue, not far off Sullivant Avenue, and another one on the street was shuttered in 2018. In addition, the house at 668 Wheatland Ave., just on the other side of that drug-infested alley that the longtime resident referred to, was boarded up in November.

Klein calls South Oakley “a microcosm of the drug epidemic our community is fighting every day.”

On Jan. 8, the city raided and boarded up a two-story home at 628 S. Oakley and, two weeks later, did the same thing to a nearby home at 543.

Police accounts from just the home at 524 S. Oakley show what the neighbors are up against. Police were called to that property at least 47 times in two years for narcotics trafficking, overdoses, sexual assaults, stolen vehicles, domestic violence and robbery, and at one point, the owner and his son told officers the drug users the two catered to had “taken over the home.”

Klein said he knows the public sometimes grows frustrated when the illegal activity seems unending and blatant, but building a solid case takes time.

“We can’t just show up and shut a place down on a hunch,” he said. “I wouldn’t want to live in a country where we can do that without due process.”

The Columbus Division of Police sent 404 letters to property owners last year warning them of evidence of illegal activity. Some property owners received multiple notices. The letters tell property owners they are required to post three-day eviction notices.

That’s the first step in a process that, without eventual compliance, allows the city to obtain a court order to board up the property, said assistant city attorney Zach Gwin, who is responsible for cases in Police Zone 3, which extends from Franklinton through the Hilltop to beyond I-270.

Gwin said responsible property owners take immediate action. If they don’t, law enforcement and the city continue to investigate until a court order to board it up becomes necessary. That action means the owner loses access — and any rental income — to the property. He says that is not insignificant.

Klein said he recognizes that some residents think it’s just a high-stakes game of whack-a-mole, in which the drug dealers run out of one property only to set up shop in another nearby.

But the actions, over time, matter.

“Doing nothing is not an option,” Klein said. “These hardworking moms, dads and grandmas who live in these neighborhoods deserve to do it without gang activity, fear and violence.”

The cavalry arrives

Longtime Hilltop advocate Lisa Boggs said problem houses are shut down only if people speak up. Enforcement is a complaint-driven process and it takes the neighborhood’s help, she said.

If residents are afraid, they can complain to 311 anonymously, use an advocate such as herself or speak discreetly with the Columbus police liaison officer. In the end, she said, the vigilance pays off.

When that caravan of police vans roll into a neighborhood, the relief felt by law-abiding residents is palpable.

“We’d rather have an empty boarded-up house than one filled with bad people,” Boggs said.

Sgt. Mark Miesse understands the reluctance of people to talk. But he is grateful for those who do.

He heads the Police Division’s investigative tactical unit, an elite narcotics squad of 20 officers and two sergeants who physically shut down these nuisance properties.

Even as officers stand guard and investigators question people found at the home, workers from the city’s Department of Development measure windows and doors for sheets of plywood and board the place up.

At a recent operation at 1667 Minnesota Ave. in Linden, Miesse and his officers jumped from their vans, guns drawn, and stormed the front and back of the house where the upstairs windows had long ago been shot out and the siding was riddled with bullet holes.

Officers pulled three men and three women onto the rickety front porch. They were basically squatters with no pending charges or warrants, so they were questioned and let go, all wandering off toward Cleveland Avenue.

A city worker nailed a warning sign on the now-boarded-up front door and everyone packed up. The whole operation took less than an hour.

Miesse noted that there wasn’t exactly dancing in the streets when his unit rolled up. That would be too risky for the neighbors. But one woman cracked her screen door and gave the officers a thumbs up, and another man came outside and raised his fist in solidarity.

“That means a lot,” Miesse said. “We’re helping give these people back their neighborhoods.”

hzachariah@dispatch.com

@hollyzachariah