Antoinette Wassilyn is fed up with the drug dealers littering her Moss Park neighbourhood. So, for the past few weeks, she and other Toronto Community Housing tenants have been assembling every night in an effort to kill them — with kindness.

“We go up to the crack dealers, face-to-face, and we say, ‘Hello, how are you?’ says the 56-year-old woman, who uses a wheelchair. “‘It’s a beautiful night out. I love your coat. May we sit with you?’”

Thus far, she says, their good manners have had miscreants fleeing the area. “They just get up and leave. They don’t want to be bothered with us.”

Wassilyn launched her neighbourhood patrol after a 28-year-old man was shot several times in the parking lot of 275 Shuter St., a TCH building, on July 18. Her idea is an offshoot of the TCHC’s recent community safety council initiative, in which agency officials work with tenants at 20 of the city’s “high need” highrises to drum up ways of making their buildings safer.

Finding the initiative snail-paced and directionless, Wassilyn decided to mobilize residents herself.

As many as 16 tenants — from grandmothers to children — now walk the Moss Park beat nightly, wearing t-shirts displaying the phone number for TCHC security, watching for suspicious activity and politely invading private areas routinely used for drug deals. They’ve noticed a visible decline in crime in the neighbourhood.

“What we’re doing is better than [Gene] Jones’ approach because tenants are doing this out of their own will, not because they want a new kitchen,” says Wassilyn, referring to the TCHC CEO’s decision last week to reward Swansea Mews residents with repair money for helping police solve a murder. “The prize for us is we get a decent neighbourhood.”

TCHC spokeswoman Sara Goldvine says the agency has been supportive of Wassilyn’s initiative and that “there’s no one-size-fits-all solution to community safety.”

But while police and security experts applaud tenants’ efforts to take an active role in their own safety, they warn they could be endangering themselves by approaching shady individuals.

“I certainly wouldn’t want to encourage folks to put themselves at risk of harm by walking up to folks, not knowing who they are or what they’re capable of,” says Sgt. Mike Hayles of 51 Division’s community response unit. “Especially when you’re approaching somebody in numbers, there’s concern over how that person may react or what state of mind they may be in.”

Nevertheless, Hayles says crime has decreased in Moss Park over the past few weeks. While this could be explained by a recent police crackdown on cocaine trafficking in the area, he adds “it could also be a result of the [neighbourhood] group’s efforts.”

Brent Kleinschmidt, 46, a member of the group, says, “The dealers get thrown off when we act friendly with them. They just leave because they want private spots to do their business.”

Research shows neighbourhood watches where residents “take ownership of their environments” have been very effective at reducing crime in U.S. public housing communities, says independent security analyst David Hyde. Such programs help residents “extend a sphere of influence over communities” that criminals wish to avoid, but they are not typically as intrusive as Wassilyn’s approach.

“These programs are passive in that, when they see something suspicious, they will report it but not engage,” he says. “That is not recommended in their DNA. There’s a lot of risk that can come into play. At the very extreme of it, look at the Trayvon Martin case.”

Hyde says the TCHC and police should harness the group’s enthusiasm into a more coordinated approach that verges less on vigilantism.

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But Wassilyn insists her group is simply disarming wrongdoers with smiles.

“Treat them so kindly they’ll walk away,” she says. “Hello won’t hurt.”