By Jane Prendergast
The Cincinnati Enquirer

Hooded Cincinnati police officers ticket Chauncey Jones (center) at Forest and Burnet avenues in Walnut Hills on Tuesday afternoon. (Glenn Hartong photo) | ZOOM |

Cincinnati police on Tuesday staged their latest citywide response to neighborhood complaints, spreading almost 100 officers throughout the city for about a dozen hours.

The list of complaints was long: 109 problems in 28 neighborhoods.

They included drug activity by a church playground in Pendleton, at McHenry and Baltimore in Westwood, and along Kennedy Avenue in Kennedy Heights. Police also targeted prostitution on Salutarius in East Walnut Hills, where people find condoms on the ground at night; near the library in Northside; and on State Street in Lower Price Hill.

It was the department's sixth Community Response Team effort. They began in January and have happened monthly since then in response to increasing violence, said Capt. Paul Humphries, commander of the vice squad.

Thirty-three people had been arrested Tuesday as of 6 p.m. Nine of the 33 were for felonies, mostly drug-related.

"It is a focused application of resources to address community problems," Humphries said. "The best way we know how to do that is by talking to the community, by our presence, and by putting the bad guys in jail."

From 10 a.m. to 10 p.m., officers made drug buys along Whetsel Avenue in Madisonville. They watched suspected drug dealers in a park in Corryville. They wrote tickets for drinking beer in public on a church stoop across from Washington Park in Over-the-Rhine.

They cited a man in Avondale - on his 18th birthday - for littering after he threw something on the ground on Burnet Avenue in front of officers making drug arrests. Bystanders hollered that police were being unfair.

"You do have to pay attention to the little things, too," said Sgt. Lisa Davis, supervising a team working in Over-the-Rhine. "Those are the quality-of-life issues."

The most significant arrest as of late afternoon, Lt. Steve Kramer said, came at Oak and Stanton streets in Walnut Hills, where officers said Dwight Wilkerson threw down a bag of crack cocaine. Already wanted for failing to show up in court on a charge of carrying a concealed weapon, Wilkerson, 25, of Avondale, was arrested and charged with drug possession and drug trafficking.

Doug Kohls, president of the Sedamsville Civic Association, was glad to know the spots his group complains about the most - along Sedam Street - caught the attention of the response team. They made the list of 109.

"It sounds like they're listening to us,'' he said. "But it's hard to tell because it's just a constant battle."

E-mail jprendergast@enquirer.com