Open-Air Drug Market

Shootings and homicides are often just the fruit of the tree called crime. The roots are usually in drugs. Dr. William Morehouse has been helping people for 35 years at Grace Family Medicine on Arnett Boulevard. But how he and his wife Susan need help to save their neighborhood from the drug dealers right outside their front door.

"Is there a real safety issue here," I asked him.

"The patients certainly think that there is. They're very worried when they get out of their car and they see people like that and they have to walk past them or through them," Morehouse answered. "You battle it and you fight it and you say no not here. We've got patients coming in, we've got little kids; and they go away and then they come back," Susan said.

Empty bags of marijuana litter the sidewalk in front of the clinic. We showed them to Rochester Police Officer Ben Caruso.

"Why this quantity? Is is so they can't get into trouble," I asked him.

 "Well the folks out here are dealing in the hand-to-hand stuff. It's a difficult arrest," Caruso answered. "As fast as they're arrested on this charge, they'll be released on it just as quickly."

So how can a small inner-city medical clinic fight back against drug dealers? What is at stake if they lose?

Kevin Doran for WHEC-TV, Channel 8 News, Rochester, NY, November 12, 2013