Court Street businessman Clinton Mohammad has refused to be frightened away after drug dealers daubed slogans on his building in a bid to intimidate him after Saturday?s anti-drugs rally.

Mr. Mohammad said he got into a row with pushers who lurk by his boarded-up maintenance business headquarters yesterday and they retaliated overnight, even wedging a twist of what is thought to be fake drugs into a panel they had damaged.

But yesterday, amid jeering onlookers, Mr. Mohammad told he was going to stand his ground and his organisation Bermudians Against Narcotics (BAN) would continue the fight to rid Court Street and the rest of the island of deadly drugs.

Pushers had told him to take his campaign elsewhere.

He said: ?They are trying to intimidate us and our organisation but our message to them is we are not leaving, we are not going to go.

?But BAN is bigger than us ? Mr. Takbir Sharrieff and myself ? we have a lot of supporters. Some of our supporters have not heard about this as yet. When they do they will be very upset.

?This will just increase our support. We kind of expected retaliation in that way, we were ready for them and we will outthink them against intimidation. We have support from Government and moral minded people.?

Slogans daubed on the property, which he had recently repainted, included ?Huslas corner? and ?We got crack?.

Tenants upstairs had to put up with 24-hour drug deals on their doorstep, said Mr. Mohammad, who is hoping to turn the downstairs into a restaurant having bought the building about 18 months ago.

?I came back to Bermuda about three years ago hoping to do something to make this area better but his is what we are up against,? he said. ?People are strung out on drugs and fighting with machetes.?

And his BANS partner Mr. Sharrieff called on Police to begin immediate patrols in the area that the pair label Bermuda?s most notorious drugs hang-out.

Mr. Sharrieff, a Policeman for nine years, said Police had dropped the ball on patrolling the area. He is demanding a beat officer be immediately assigned to the patch or else BANs would take the law into its own hands.

He said: ?We demand the authorities responsible for the protection of that area ? the Attorney General, the National Drug Control Minister and the Police Commissioner im-mediately take steps to eliminate the scourge of drugs in this particular area.?

At the weekend BAN rally in Court Street Attorney General Larry Mussenden pledged Government would target 17 crack houses across the island.

Mr. Sharrieff said one of them was very close to Mr. Mohammad?s building, which is on the Elliott Street junction, and he urged authorities to get on with it.

?BANS will not tolerate promises without action.? He said a regular Police presence was needed ?today if not sooner?.

He added: ?If not, BANS will respond appropriately. I don?t want to elaborate on the things we are going to do.?

Last night a Police spokesman said narcotics officers and the Police Support Unit team did regular sweeps of the area while the Community Beat Officer tried to foster crime prevention efforts with store owners.

He said residents and store owners who are complaining about lack of Police actually wanted a constant Police presence and he reminded them CCTV would be up by the New Year.