Pubdate: Sat, 19 Oct 2002
Source: New York Times (NY)
Copyright: 2002 The New York Times Company
Contact:  http://www.nytimes.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/298
Note:  by The New York Times

FIRE FATAL TO 6 LEADS A CITY TO SCRUTINIZE ITS DRUG WAR

BALTIMORE, Oct. 18 - In this city where 60,000 people, about one in 10 
residents, are addicted to narcotics, a simple message appears on 
billboards, police cruisers, city buses, T-shirts, brochures and in 
television advertisements: "Believe."

That slogan, from a $2 million antidrug campaign Baltimore began six months 
ago, is part exhortation, part call to action, part desperate plea to take 
back the neighborhoods, to report drug dealers, to seek drug treatment, to 
become a police officer or a mentor to a troubled youngster.

But for many, it just became harder to believe that the war on drugs and 
violence can be won. Angela Dawson believed enough to confront dealers 
outside her East Baltimore row house and report them to the police - with 
horrific results. Early Wednesday morning, Mrs. Dawson, who was 36, and 
five of her young children burned to death in their corner row house in a 
fire the authorities said a 21-year-old drug dealer set in retaliation for 
Mrs. Dawson's crusading against the drug market outside her home. Mrs. 
Dawson's husband, Carnell Dawson Sr., was struggling to live after 
suffering serious burns over half his body.

Now Baltimore is trying to come to grips with what Mayor Martin O'Malley 
calls "the most barbaric act in the recent history of our city."

The fire heightened already rampant fears about possible retaliation by 
drug dealers, but community activists promised to fight back against the 
dealers and demanded more police protection in violent neighborhoods.

Baltimoreans United in Leadership Development, a citywide group of about 50 
religious congregations, said it expected 500 members at a rally on Sunday 
outside the Dawson house. "There are people willing to stand up to drug 
dealers in this neighborhood, but for people to stand up, this mayor has to 
offer them protection," said Robert English, an organizer with the group. 
"We're calling on the mayor to devise a plan to protect this neighborhood 
and others because people are being terrorized."

Mr. O'Malley, who has made crime-fighting the chief goal of his 
administration, praised Mrs. Dawson's antidrug crusade and clung to the 
belief that the deaths would galvanize the city in its fight against drugs. 
"These deaths are a strange combination of line-of-duty deaths and the 
slaughter of the innocents," said Mr. O'Malley, a Democrat. "There are a 
lot of us who have been asking what will make us stand up and say, `Enough 
is enough.' Maybe this it. This city is in crisis."

Mr. O'Malley has repeatedly criticized what he called lax prosecution of 
gun and drug crimes by the city state's attorney and the United States 
attorney for Baltimore.

Today and Thursday at closed-door meetings attended by the city's police 
commissioner and city and state lawmakers, there were heated exchanges and 
criticism of what many view as inadequate police protection and a criminal 
justice system that routinely returns violent offenders to the streets quickly.

"The Police Department locks drug dealers up, they make cash bail and 
they're out again," State Senator Nathaniel J. McFadden said. "It's a 
revolving cycle that we are going to break. This arson has made the Dawson 
family martyrs in our efforts to rid the streets of crime."

Mr. McFadden said he would push for more crime-fighting help from the 
governor, the Legislature and the Maryland Congressional delegation.

"Just like resources have been made available for fighting Al Qaeda and 
Osama bin Laden, we want the same thing available for the citizens in 
Baltimore City," Mr. McFadden said. "We consider this an absolute terrorist 
attack on the community."

Downtown at a hearing, the suspect in the case, Darrell Brooks, was ordered 
held without bond today on six counts of first-degree murder, arson and 
related charges.

Prosecutors read witnesses' accounts detailing how Mr. Brooks kicked open 
the door of the Dawsons' home after 2 a.m. Wednesday, poured gasoline on 
the floor and ignited it, then went back to his house a few doors away. 
Inside a closet at Mr. Brooks's home, the police said, they found a 
measuring cup and a jar containing gasoline.
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