They call it the Landfill Town Watch.
On unlighted streets in a remote corner of Southwest Philadelphia, a handful of residents is waging war on illegal dumping, car theft and other crimes.
``I saw two guys who were dumping in the middle of Mario Lanza Boulevard,'' patrol leader Larry Lawrence said. ``It was in a pickup truck, and they were dumping furniture - an old couch, a refrigerator. In the middle of the street.''
The area around Mario Lanza - heaped with broken concrete, wood, tire piles, a burned-out boat - is one of many Philadelphia neighborhoods that bear the brunt of thousands of tons of illegal disposal every year.
Yet, in the six years since a ``tough'' new state law threatening five-year prison terms was touted as the beginning of the end for dumpers, only one man has served time for the crime in Philadelphia.
Nearly half the defendants accused of heaping rubbish on the city simply disappear.
And despite aggressive undercover work by police - who most recently netted several alleged dumpers at the city's No. 1 chronic dumping spot in Kensington - the vast majority of dumpers do their dirty work unseen, unpunished and undeterred.
The Landfill Town Watch actually chose its name from the history of Eastwick, where marshes were filled to make solid land. But the name is edged with a double meaning; the city's illegal dumpers threaten to turn communities into landfills.
``It just ruins neighborhoods,'' Deputy Police Commissioner Richard Zappile said.
This year - with attention drawn to illegal trash piles by the disastrous March tire fire under Interstate 95 - Mayor Rendell's office called a huddle among police, prosecutors, courts and city departments to target the problems and ways to deal with them.
One likely outcome: some form of special trash court where dumping is treated consistently as a major threat to the quality of life. President Judge Alan Silberstein of Municipal Court said he was ready to do that. The catch, he said, is the low volume of dumping prosecutions - fewer than a dozen a month hit Municipal Court, or a total of 239 in the 21 months ending in September.
To make an impact, he said, the problem requires targeted resources and efforts to get a critical mass of cases into court.
``It's got to be a recognition on everyone's part that hey, we've got a problem here, we're going to do something about it, we're going to step it up,'' said Silberstein.
