MIAMI – A known drug house in Miami's Little Havana neighborhood was demolished Monday.
Miami police said the home had four bedrooms and people would do drugs inside the home, as well as sell drugs to others.
"There's no electricity, there's no running water -- none of that. And what happens is people from the area that are homeless, people who sell drugs, they come here, they buy the drugs -- sometimes they even use them inside the house," Miami police Cmdr. Nerly Papier said.
Officers said they used to make arrests at the house every week.
Construction crews used a front loader to rip up and then clear out the lot.
Police said the house was pretty much abandoned -- other than the drug dealers and homeless squatters -- and was a nuisance to the neighborhood.
But for the most part, neighbors were too afraid to come forward.
"They're afraid to talk," Papier said. "They don't want to say anything, because they don't want the people in the area to attack them -- retaliation against them for giving us any information.
"They've come up to us little by little and they've said, 'Thank you, God bless you, we love you, oh my God, I can't believe you got this done,' so this is actually encouraging to us to keep doing our jobs, and that's what we're looking for -- for them to come out, join us and help us clean (up) the area."
Local 10 News was at the home Monday morning as one man tried to get back inside the home before it was fully destroyed.
Miami police said four other drug houses in the area have already been demolished this year, and one more is scheduled to be demolished next week.