Sealed off from the violence of East Baltimore by hydrangea bushes and a brick wall, the grotto at St. Frances Academy is a peaceful oasis for prayer and contemplation.
At least, it used to be.
Drug dealers in the academy's troubled neighborhood have invaded the school grounds, selling their product on the sidewalk in front of the Catholic high school and hiding their stashes in the grotto, next to the statue of the Virgin Mary. Teachers and students have seen the dealers shuttling between the street and the grotto during school hours.
Until recently, there was "a buffer zone" around the school, said Sister Marcia Hall, principal of St. Frances. "That's now been broken," she said. "It's as if there's new people around who don't know the history of the place or don't care about it."
Those new people, officials at St. Frances believe, are coming to the school's Johnston Square neighborhood from parts of East Baltimore where there has been development, large-scale land clearance and the beginnings of gentrification.
In adjacent Oliver, 155 lots are being prepared for houses, and community activism has forced out dealers. Farther east, the nonprofit East Baltimore Development Inc. has cleared 31 acres in the past four years to make way for the new biotech park.
"We're mindful of the fact that what we may be doing could unintentionally have spillover implications for others in our city," said Jack Shannon, president of EBDI. Despite the nonprofit's efforts to fight crime, he said, there are too many areas of Baltimore rife with vacant homes and too many people willing to engage in dealing because they lack legitimate jobs.
Police say they don't know for certain where the new dealers in Johnston Square are coming from. The commander of the Eastern District, Maj. David Cheuvront, said the idea that they are coming from elsewhere in East Baltimore is a theory that hasn't been proved. To deter drug activity, he has placed a patrol car outside St. Frances at dismissal time and assigned a narcotics detective to work with the school.
Experts in gang activity say that when dealers are forced to move, they look for places where drug dealing has a foothold and where vacant homes and lots provide sanctuary for their activities. In those places, an infrastructure is in place that allows dealers to operate.
