A firefighter fed up with all the drug dealing taking place on his street in Buffalo, NY, has taken matters into his own hands. When he’s not fighting fires, Dan Milovich waits vigilantly, camera at the ready, for a drug deal to go down so he can rush outside and snap photos of the perpetrators. “The characters there decide to come on to our side of Philadelphia Street and either deal drugs, use drugs, shoot dope, and I got kind of tired of looking at it,” Milovich explains. He has also posted a sign, “YOUR DRUG DEALS ARE PHOTO’D & SENT TO THE POLICE! SMILE”, outside the corner store where the dealers allegedly gather. “I probably put a whole eight minutes into it and another eight minutes into putting it up and it’s been effective,” he says. District Councilman Joe Golombek stands behind Milovich’s efforts. “[The dealers] are like cockroaches to be honest with you,” says Golombek, “Once you put some light on them they scatter. And I want them in jail. I want them out; I want them in prison; I want them arrested. But I want them gone; I want them out of the neighborhood.” Milovich says his efforts are worth the risk to his own safety. “We want to be able to put my grandson, my granddaughter out on the porch and have her play on the front lawn,” he says, “And there are tons of kids.”
