When Promise Lee returned to the Hillside neighborhood after a stretch in prison, he found that not much had changed.

Prostitutes, gang members and drug dealers roamed Memorial Park. Crack houses and boarded and broken windows advertised the neighborhood as a haven for crime.

So Lee, who had just finished a fouryear term in the Colorado State Penitentiary for second-degree murder, founded the Hillside Neighborhood Association in 1985 to fight crime and blight.

Twelve years later, the neighborhood won the National Civic League's All-America City Award, largely because of marked decreases in crime.

Crime has continued to fall in the seven years since, Colorado Springs police department ...