Welcome to the East Chattanooga Weed and Seed and East Side Task Force website. 

This website contains information and news about the East Chattanooga community.  

The ECWS and ESTF work together to improve the quality of life in East Chattanooga for all residents and businesses.

The ESTF/ECWS community is an approximately 8 ½ square mile area bordered by Amnicola Highway and Riverside Drive to the west, Wisdom and Wilder Streets to the north, Glenwood Drive and North Chamberlain Avenue to the east, and McCallie Avenue and East Third Street to the south. 

What is Weed and Seed?

Weed and Seed, a community-based strategy sponsored by the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ), is an innovative, comprehensive multiagency approach to law enforcement, crime prevention, and community revitalization. CCDO oversees the Weed and Seed initiative.

Weed and Seed is foremost a strategy—rather than a grant program—that aims to prevent, control, and reduce violent crime, drug abuse, and gang activity in designated high-crime communities across the nation.

There are more than 250 Weed and Seed sites, ranging in size from several neighborhood blocks to several square miles, with populations ranging from 3,000 to 50,000.

The strategy involves a two-pronged approach: law enforcement agencies and prosecutors cooperate in "weeding out" violent criminals and drug abusers and public agencies and community-based private organizations collaborate to "seed" much-needed human services, including prevention, intervention, treatment, and neighborhood restoration programs. A community-oriented policing component bridges the weeding and seeding elements.

The Weed and Seed strategy is a multilevel strategic plan that includes four basic components: law enforcement; community policing; prevention, intervention, and treatment; and neighborhood restoration. Four fundamental principles underlie the Weed and Seed strategy: collaboration, coordination, community participation, and leveraging of resources.

In most Weed and Seed sites, joint task forces of law enforcement agencies from all levels of government aim to reduce both crime and fear of crime, which gives back hope to residents living in distressed neighborhoods and sets the stage for community revitalization. Community policing embraces two key concepts—community engagement and problem solving. Community policing strategies foster a sense of responsibility within the community for solving crime problems and help develop cooperative relationships between the police and residents.

The prevention, intervention, and treatment component concentrates an array of human services on the designated neighborhood and links law enforcement, social services agencies, the private sector, and the community to improve the overall quality of services to residents. Every Weed and Seed site is required to establish a Safe Haven, a multiservice center often housed in a school or community center, where many youth- and adult-oriented services are delivered. Through coordinated use of federal, state, local, and private-sector resources, neighborhood restoration strategies focus on economic development, employment opportunities for residents, and improvements to the housing stock and physical environment of the neighborhood.

To learn more about the Weed and Seed program, click on this link: http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/ccdo/ws/welcome.html

The East Chattanooga Weed and Seed office hours are:

Mon-Thur 10 a.m. - 4 p.m.

Friday 10 a.m. - 2 p.m.