When WAVE Troubleshooter John Boel walked up to a home at South 26th Street and West Madison Street, people were jumping fences or dashing to their cars to get away from him.
“I’m John Boel with WAVE,” Boel said. Hey, don’t jump over the fence. Hold on, I came here to ask you guys a couple questions. Sir, what is everybody coming here to buy?”
The answer began with emails from two different neighbors claiming that children can no longer play on the streets at 26th and Madison because there are several crack houses there with a window where others on crack are selling and smoking it on porches, alleys, and everywhere else nearby. They claimed nothing happened when the situation was taken through the proper channels.
Boel went undercover on Madison to the east side of 26th Street, where he recorded people standing in front of a church next to a “stop the crime” sign. They attended to a busy drive-up lane of people pulling up, doing hand-to-hand transactions through the windows, while a lookout kept an eye on them.