my observations were probably indicative of drug activity, but I had not provided him with the hard evidence he would need to make an arrest. I was honestly shocked. I assumed that a call from a local citizen to law enforcement concerning criminal activity would bring a large response. I had envisioned SWAT team members being lowered from Sheriff Department helicopters into the drug house. After years of faithfully watching Law and Order on TV, and I had assumed that after my single telephone call to our grateful local Sheriff, our drug house problem would be completely eliminated.

The very patient officer explained that my apparently drug dealing neighbors had civil rights that he was charged with protecting. He could not come “take them away” simply because I was uneasy with their presence near my home. I was honestly shocked and even a bit angry. I naively wondered where my tax dollars were going for. I decided to move on to Plan B.

That evening we had a neighborhood gathering. We sat around the kitchen table and discussed solutions to this problem. We decided that if one telephone call to the Sheriff would not prompt action, perhaps they would respond if we saturated them with calls. We also determined that we would apply neighborhood pressure to the “thugs” in the form of intimidation and scare tactics. We decided to become neighborhood spies and we scheduled lookouts for the nights we had come to expect the greatest activity. We dressed in black and hid in bushes, hoping to be able to get just the right information to the Sheriff’s Department so we could reclaim our peaceful neighborhood. I am ashamed to admit that in our frustration, we wasted the time of the Sheriff’s Department with meaningless calls and we even threw rocks at the drug dealers as they taunted us. One of our neighbors who lived closest to the drug house placed a sign in his yard that read “This is NOT the drug house. The house you are looking for is across the street”.

This frustrating activity went on for the entire summer. We heard about car thefts and burglaries in surrounding neighborhoods and we knew the criminal element that the drug house was attracting was beginning to have a wider impact than just our small area. On some level we became accustomed to the absurd and we just accepted that this was our new normal.

During the holiday season I was out one evening when our good friend called me in a panic. She had been wrapping presents in the living room with her young daughter sleeping upstairs when the dog began frantically barking. My friend looked out the window and she saw an intruder looking into her house. She screamed and called our neighbor who immediately ran down to her home. He was able to take her dog and follow the footprints into the woods while our friend called the Sheriff. The intruder had left a mark on the windowsill indicating he was trying to pry open the window. As I listened to her story, I was shocked. We have daughters the same age…and I knew this time it was too close to home. It was time to act.

This event seemed to galvanize our small neighborhood and we had another meeting around the kitchen table. We invited the Precinct Chief from our local Sheriff’s Office and the Commander from the Snohomish County Regional Drug Task Force. We asked for their help in developing a plan to band together and remove the drug house once and for all. The professionals around the table had suggestions that we had not considered and we had suggestions for them as well. The collaborative plan that emerged that evening became the formula we used to create the strategy for success. Months and months of emotional and scattered response from our neighbors had not gotten us one step closer to freedom from the criminals. The collaborative plan we developed that night was the beginning of the end of our nightmare. Within a few months, the drug house was closed down, the mortgage was foreclosed and the drug traffickers were safely behind bars.

One evening we received a call from a deputy who said he had a woman he wanted to introduce to us. She had suffered from a drug house in her neighborhood, too and so he knew we would have a great deal in common. The friendship with Susan York soon blossomed into Lead On America. The Sheriff’s Department began referring frustrated citizens in our direction. We held neighborhood meetings to provide the education and resources necessary to systematically collect the information to make the necessary reports to the public agencies that can assist citizens with eradicating illicit drug activity.

Today Law Enforcement Against Drugs in Our Neighborhoods- America, or Lead On America, is a homegrown, grassroots organization founded in Snohomish County, Washington that has grown to capture national attention. Lead On America serves as a point of contact to activate neighborhoods and communities teaching the importance of community collaboration to remove the scourge of drugs, one neighborhood at a time.

Lead On America strongly promotes the partnership between local law enforcement and citizens in an effort to increase the community resources that have been impacted by the explosion of illegal drug activity. We seek to alleviate fear and powerlessness felt by local citizens with prompt responses to the drug crisis in neighborhoods. Our goal is to provide drug impacted neighborhoods with resources and education that will help empower neighbors to assist law enforcement with stopping illegal drug activity in their own communities.

After Rolling Stone magazine declared the tiny community of Granite Falls, Washington, the “meth capital” of America, local elected officials took notice of our’ efforts and modeled them across the county. Since the inception of Lead On America, the number of drug homes in Snohomish County has dramatically declined.

Today, Lead On America has developed into a recognized 501(c)(3) non-profit organization. The program is such a success that Lead On America we have been invited into 12 other states to help teach the principles and activism that have been so effective in Snohomish County. The primary target of LOA has been an effort to eradicate the homegrown explosion of meth, a cheap, plentiful and dangerous drug. LOA has toured with Rob McKenna, Washington State Attorney General, giving half hour presentations to high school and middle school students. Our “don’t meth around” anti-drug message, red bracelets and participation in the annual Snohomish County “Youth Meth Summit” and “the annual “Night Out” are nationally recognized tools designed to help get the anti drug message out to our children in terms they can use and understand.

Youth drug prevention is one element of the three prong approach that LOA has initiated in our community. Getting local high school and middle school students invested in preventing drug use is one method of reducing the demand for drugs on the street. Teaching neighborhoods to collaborate with law enforcement increases the efficiency of the limited resources of the local criminal justice system and close down drug houses is our biggest focus. Finally, increasing business awareness to the strategy of the criminals who are producing the drugs that are sold in our neighborhoods is the final ingredient to working all together to make the world a safer place.