Operation Brownsville: Why an Area of Pensacola that Has Been Begging for a Clean-Up Effort is Finally Getting It

Hint: It's the Economic Potential of Downtown Development, Stupid!

Operation Brownsville is an organized attempt to ambush and drive out drug dealers, prostitutes and other unsavory elements from one of the oldest and most historic sections of Pensacola, Fl. My formative years were spent in Brownsville, in a house on Mobile Highway with my grandparents, mother, uncles, aunts and cousins. My grandmother was a palmist; the oldest and longest-lasting palm reader in Pensacola's history. Back then, and we're talking the 1960s, Brownsville was dominated by mostly lower class white families. It was a nice place to live, during a time when you could count on your neighbors to help you out. I had my very first crush when I was living in Brownsville; one of my Uncle Henry's girlfriends. It was a time when kids could get more enjoyment out of playing with the box that a new refrigerator came in than kids today get from Nintendo and Playstation game consoles. Over the decades as the neighborhood stores that dotted the neighborhood were forced to close with the influx of this newfangled consumer idea called a "mall" Brownsville began to deteriorate. By that time my family had long since moved elsewhere. Brownsville was still mostly dominated by lower class white people who could depend on each other, but a newer element had mad themselves known.

The same streets that I had played in as a kid were now habitually populated by prostitutes; not your Disneyfied Julia Roberts type, but ones even uglier than her. Drug deals took place at every hour of the day. Recently, a decomposed body was discovered that apparently had been there for several months; it was the smell that tipped the locals off. This past week Operation Brownsville was announced. It is a concerted effort to drive out drug dealers, tear down dilapidated buildings and essentially bring the area back to respectability. The question, of course, is why? Why now? Why has it taken so long for Pensacola to focus on a low income area that has been loudly-even shrilly-crying out for help for years?