Theresa Anderson, a 58-year-old grandmother who faces prison this week for presiding over a twelve-year crack-dealing operation out of houses she owned on Buffalo’s east side, helped bring order and security to the neighborhood, neighbors told the Associated Press. And things have decayed in the year since she was arrested, they said. “I actually felt safer. Now my place has been broken into,” one said. “There was people here. There was people watching,” another said. Anderson “wasn’t a gang-banger drug dealer who would threaten you,” but rather a nice lady whose family kept her properties tidy. Common Council member David Franczyk doesn’t buy that, comparing Anderson’s influence to the steadying hand of the mob: “It’s a false sense of security. She’s bringing criminals into the neighborhood.”
