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HAZLETON — After nearly 19 long months, police Chief Frank DeAndrea finally saw his dream of “turning something evil into something good” realized on Thursday.
On his signal, DeAndrea’s young daughter pulled back a curtain on the stage of the Hazleton One Community Center to reveal a 92-inch Mitsubishi smart TV seized in a drug raid.
“That’s yours,” DeAndrea told approximately 50 youngsters from the center’s after-school program seated on the floor in front of the stage. “That 92-inch flat-screen color TV is the community’s.”
The television, which retailed for about $6,000 in 2011, was the first thing law enforcement agents saw in the living room of a home at 5th and Carson streets they raided in September 2013.
It was the first raid conducted under state Attorney General Kathleen Kane’s IMPACT initiative, and included the Hazleton Police Department and the Luzerne County Drug Task Force.
“We seized it because the attorney general said we need to hit these drug dealers where it hurts, and that’s in the pocket,” DeAndrea said.
From drug house to community center
The drug house was just over a block away from the community center.
“My immediate idea was to turn something evil into something good, meaning take the TV from this drug house that’s plaguing the community and hurting these kids most of all, and try to turn it into a teaching tool for them, to be used here for educational purposes,” the chief said.
DeAndrea said the TV could have ended up in some “Harrisburg conference room,” but Kane was receptive to his request.
“The attorney general, the day she was here, immediately said without batting an eye, ‘I cannot think of any better use for this television than to put it in the community center,’” DeAndrea said.
By law, the attorney general can only turn over seized assets to the district attorney of the county in which the criminal activity took place and request they be used in a certain manner, DeAndrea noted. So he made it clear to everyone in the room that thanks were due to Luzerne County District Attorney Stefanie Salavantis.
“She also supports the thoughts and efforts of the community center and said there is no better use for this television than, in fact, at the community center,” DeAndrea said. “And through her good graces, the TV is here today.”
Helping unify a community
Salavantis commended the center volunteers and staff for the work they’ve done on the Hazleton Integration Project to help unify an “increasingly diverse community” and for “advancing the needs of the less fortunate.”
“On behalf of law enforcement throughout the Greater Hazleton area as well as all of Luzerne County, it is my pleasure to make our contribution to the Hazleton Community Center. It is a great opportunity to be able to provide this equipment to be used toward furthering your education and benefiting the children that are sitting before me today,” Salavantis said.
DeAndrea also noted that Republican Mayor Joe Yannuzzi could have snubbed his request to have Kane’s task force come to Hazleton, noting she is a Democrat. But Yannuzzi welcomed her involvement.
“If it wasn’t for his accepting and allowing that task force to come here, Attorney General Kane would have taken her task force to another town and the TV wouldn’t be here today,” DeAndrea said.
Big league baseball on the schedule
One of the uses of the TV in addition to providing educational opportunities, DeAndrea said, will be to allow Major League Baseball players to interact with children at the community center through Skype — software that enables real-time verbal and video conversation between people over the Internet.
The first public use of the television will be at 6 p.m. on April 5, Easter Sunday, as well as opening night of baseball for the Chicago Cubs, who will play the St. Louis Cardinals at Wrigley Field, DeAndrea said.
“That 92-inch TV is going to broadcast the game while ESPN is going to be here covering the event. This is going to be turned into Wrigley East, and it will be packed. There will be hot dogs, cotton candy, Cracker Jack, popcorn. And we’re hoping 500 people will fill the room and celebrate the opening day event,” he said.
The community center is an initiative of the Hazleton Integration Project, the brainchild of Hazleton native Joe Maddon, who signed on to manage the Chicago Cubs last fall after opting out of a management contract with the Tampa Bay Rays. Maddon’s mother, Albina Maddon, was at the center for Thursday’s announcement.
Giving something back
Bob Curry, a founding board member of HIP, reminded the children that Salavantis said everyone has an opportunity to give something back to the community.
“And that’s what we’re trying to do. … But the day is going to come when somebody like you, or you, or you, is sitting in those offices,” he told the children. “And that’s going to be when we’re the most proud, because this is your community. We want you to feel something. Every time somebody says ‘Hazleton,’ you say, ‘I’m proud to be from Hazleton.’”
“And every time you have that sense of pride, you emanate like a candle, and you light another candle, and another, so that everyone in this community understands what it means to be a Hazletonian,” Curry said. “That’s what we want — proud Hazletonians.”