KOKOMO, Ind. – The Village Pantry convenience store on West Jefferson Street in this small northern Indiana city had, over the years, developed an unwanted reputation as a crime hotspot — a meeting place for drug dealers, street gangs and other criminal elements.

“We have a history where we can say by visibly watching, that there has been nothing but bad stuff, drug dealing, loud music, fighting, robbery, murder going on in that place that sits in the heart of our community,” Chris Wendt said.

The situation came to a head last October, when 17-year-old LaMarcus McGraw was shot and killed behind the building in what police described as a drug deal gone wrong.

Wendt and others started a local crime watch group, Peace Watch, with the goal of making the area safer.

Following an extensive and ongoing campaign to walk the streets near the store – to be present in areas where crime was prevalent in order to discourage illegal activity – visible crime in the area had noticeably decreased, Wendt said. However, eventually a criminal element allegedly snuck back into the area, with Wendt saying the Village Pantry had become a known meeting place for drug deals.

“It had been that way for years,” he told the Kokomo, Indiana Tribune. “We know that because we all had teenagers. We know things, we hear things and you see it happen. We got it on videotape. This is not in our minds.”

Wendt said he and Peace Watch members had visual proof of a drug deal occurring inside the Village Pantry. Shortly after, a sign was posted in a storefront window by a staff member asking customers not to deal drugs on store property. The sign was taken down a short time later.

The sign in the window, Wendt said, felt like an admission that there was a problem at the store. There was a perceived sense of apathy displayed by store employees toward crime that was happening on the premises.

Peace Watch used that as leverage, he said, to start a campaign to bring change to the store. In March, the group organized and encouraged a boycott of the store.

“We issued a boycott that was so easy to issue because they had allowed what was going on to happen for so long that the community was so sick of it,” Wendt said. ”As soon as we said that word, it was like dominoes falling.”

The group presented a list of demands to the company, with a $50,000 restitution donation to the community being at the top of the list. That number was something they had pulled out of the air, said Wendt, and he was hoping it would grab attention – and it succeeded, in both positive and negative ways. To monitor the boycott, Wendt and other crime watch members staked out the store to ensure that a scant number of customers were going inside.

“People were actually criticizing us on social media,” he said. “They said, ‘How do you know the boycott’s working? What, are you sitting in the parking lot watching it?’ We were like, yep, we’re here now.”

Some also said the group’s boycott was picking on a business unfairly. Wendt countered that stance by claiming the business was acting in a “negligent” way – negligence he believes escalated to the point that the store served as a venue to a deadly drug deal.

The parking lot and area around the store also was frequently littered with trash, he added, creating a visual scene of apathy.

“Our thing is also symbolism,” he said. “If you look like you don’t care about your place, then people will not care about you, and they will think that you don’t care about your neighborhood, so they will go and do things over there because they don’t think that anybody’s watching.”

Executives from GPM Investments, Village Pantry’s parent organization based in Richmond, Virginia, later that month came to Kokomo to meet with Peace Watch members and to discuss how they might help to improve the location.

Kokomo Police Department Captain Kevin Summers helped bring the meeting together.

“(Peace Watch) shared some concerns with me, and I thought, you know, rather than me trying to be a translator or mediator in-between, let’s just bring the parties together and let’s sit down,” said Summers.

The meeting contained a lot of information sharing, said Summers. They talked about inadequate lighting inside and outside the store that could create an unsafe atmosphere at night, and measures to address concerns.

“As we walked away from there, we came up with some additional thoughts and ideas that Village Pantry was very receptive to,” said Summers. “They were very cooperative and willing to step up and take corrective measures.”

In the days following the meeting, the boycott was called off as improvements to the store started to take shape. Lights were installed outside to ensure the parking lot was well lit at night. New security equipment also was installed. They’re planning for a community mural to be painted on one of the exterior walls.

Peace Watch never received any money from the company – Wendt stressed that they would not have kept any of it – but their open conversation with the company and ongoing improvements to the property were enough for the boycott to be called off.

“What was absurd was that the situation was so easy to control that a group of people could actually come along and actually make such change,” Wendt said. “A neighborhood stood up against a corporation and actually won.”

The Kokomo, Indiana Tribune contributed to this story.