Beware, keeper of the jungle lawn.

You, with the yard so trash-infested that it looks like Woodstock on the day after, consider yourself warned.

Oh, and that lovable junker with two flats out by the curb? Prepare to part with it.

Roanoke officials are fixing to clean up this town, and they're starting with property owners who don't mow and keepers of junk cars.

The city's long-talked-about tougher approach to enforcing nuisance codes is in place, bringing to Roanoke the belief that if you crack down on the little things, big changes can happen in neighborhoods. It's a model made famous in New York City, but embraced all over the country, including in Norfolk.

Rapid and more muscular enforcement of nuisance codes will improve the quality of life in Roanoke, reduce the crime rate and keep Roanoke's neighborhoods attractive, city officials say.

How far officials will go with measures to make code enforcement more effective is only "limited by our imagination," said Fire Marshal Daniel Rakes.

Officials are looking at the issue holistically. That explains why the city:

n Has cross-trained officers from wide-ranging law enforcement departments who will now have the power to issue code enforcement violations;

n Assigned a $65,000 per year commonwealth's attorney who will eventually prosecute code offenses full time;

n Formulated a "code team" made up of heads of various law enforcement departments. The team is compiling a working list of the community's "problem" properties it can target.

n Has worked with the city attorney to make changes to city code to allow for cleanup of weeds, trash and inoperable vehicles in a week instead of three or four weeks. Officials also say it likely will be necessary to lobby the General Assembly so the city can have more authority when prosecuting code enforcement issues.

Before July 1, the code enforcement was left to the city's 10 code enforcement officers. Now there will be about 16 additional sets of eyes cross-trained to look for weed, trash and inoperable vehicles from the police department to solid waste employees and fire inspectors.

"The way the old system worked it was pretty much going to be an unsatisfactory process," said Ford Weber, the director of housing and neighborhood services who is heading the city's code enforcement effort. In late June, the city council approved measures that allowed code enforcement citations to be posted on the spot. Under the old system, a certified letter would go out and had to be signed by a property owner to acknowledge receipt.

"This could mean four weeks passing before the yard gets mowed," Weber said. Now, the turnaround is closer to a week, he said.

Officials say the 120 citizens who attended five meetings about the issue in April and May thought it was a great idea. However, they had a "blatant distrust" the city would follow through, said Commonwealth's Attorney Donald Caldwell.

"It was pretty depressing," he said.

Norfolk as a model

Leaders of the effort say all involved have enthusiastically embraced their new responsibilities. That vigor, they say, comes from talks a delegation of city officials and law enforcement had with Norfolk officials both in Roanoke and Norfolk this spring.

Norfolk's philosophy is simple: Using environmental codes to force property owners to keep their places in order will ensure neighborhoods look better and criminals will get the idea that people who live there care enough to keep criminals out.

Norfolk officials have said the key to stricter enforcement has been getting more departments involved and working together.

Aside from the 16 cross-trained officers, the city has formed a "code team" to increase cooperation. Headed by environmental administrator Paul Truntich, the team is essentially the special operations arm of the effort.

It has six members: Truntich; Lt. Todd Clingenpeel, from the police department; Fire Marshal Daniel Rakes; codes compliance coordinator Dan Webb; prosecutor Andrew Stephens; and Weber.

They meet periodically -- lately once or twice a week, Truntich said -- to discuss problem properties and how they can best tackle the issue comprehensively. Truntich said the team has a list of four or five properties that are eyesores or have generated consistent complaints in the past. He wouldn't identify the properties.

"We hope people will make changes on their own," Truntich said. "These are issues that we've been able to put a Band-Aid on but not really correct."

Problems beget more problems, and it's that Band-Aid approach that just creates more work for the city in the future, Truntich said. For example, weed and trash negligence have a cumulative effect, said Rakes, the fire marshal: If you have broken windows, then you probably have tall weeds, and if those problems are prevalent there may be fire code violations or criminal activity.

"Norfolk looks at it as grime equals crime," Rakes said. "The biggest key has been communication ... talking to other departments we haven't talked to previously about code issues.

"It becomes easier for everyone."

Increased cooperation among departments, however, doesn't mean code enforcement will be used as an excuse to get at other criminal activity, Caldwell said.

"It is incumbent upon us to strictly adhere to code compliance," Caldwell said. "It's not going to be used as a pretext to get to other issues."

The underlying theory

The guiding principle for Norfolk's -- and now Roanoke's -- aggressive code enforcement was first popularized in a March 1982 Atlantic Monthly article by George Kelling and James Wilson titled "Broken Windows."

The authors wrote that serious crime stemmed from failing to enforce lesser offenses, such as allowing broken windows to remain on an abandoned property. The theory set off a revolution in looking at code enforcement issues. In the 1990s, then-New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani and his police chief put the theory into action and cracked down on everything from evading subway fares to public drinking. New York's crime rates fell significantly.

More recently, however, academics have debated some of the theory's pitfalls. A 2004 study by Harvard University professor Robert Sampson and University of Michigan professor Stephen Raudenbush, published in Social Psychology Quarterly, raised some eyebrows. After a comprehensive look at 196 census tracts in Chicago and a survey of more than 3,000 randomly selected people, the study found that people's perception of disorder was linked to a neighborhood's race and class makeup rather than the actual level of disorder. The findings held more or less true across racial lines: whites, blacks and Latinos all made those observations.

"That's why people can see three black kids on a corner and automatically assume" it's a problem, Sampson said in a recent phone interview.

"Whereas they see three white kids, they don't think about it. Whether people perceive disorder to be a problem is not a function of how much disorder there is but who lives in the neighborhood," he said.

Weber said he doesn't see certain neighborhoods getting branded as having more disorder because of who lives in them.

"People of all races are getting involved and asking us to do this," Weber said. "The worst criticism is for them to say we're neglecting an area."

Future plans

Roanoke city officials say there will be plenty of activity in the coming months and years.

"We're taking baby steps," said Rakes, the fire marshal. "We wanted to roll out three things and do them at 90 percent instead of 10 things at 25 percent."

Stephens, the prosecutor who will be dedicated full time to these issues, is planning on a busier schedule in the coming months as the city looks to prosecute more offenses.

"A lot of this is going to be feeling our way as we go along," Stephens said.

Future plans also call for the city to look at more solid waste issues and eventually find a way to better enforce zoning ordinances.

Caldwell said he's proud the city didn't get aggressive on code enforcement in response to a major problem and community uproar. The city could be a leader in the Roanoke Valley, Caldwell said.

"What we're doing now," he said, "everybody better look."

jeremy.borden@roanoke.com 981-3340