Pubdate: Sun, 17 Jul 2005
Source: Record, The (Hackensack, NJ)
Copyright: 2005 North Jersey Media Group Inc.
Contact:  http://www.bergen.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/44
Author: Douglass Crouse and Carolyn Salazar

DRUG CROSSROADS (Part 1 of 3)

Thriving Drive-through City Drug Markets Fuel Suburbanites' Habits

The Record; July 17, 18 and 19

In a three-part series, Record staff writers Douglass Crouse and
Carolyn Salazar go inside a New Jersey city that has become a regional
hub for open-air drug sales - from heroin to cocaine, crack, marijuana
and Ecstasy.

The series seeks to raise awareness of who is running the drug trade
on the streets, who is buying the drugs and how it's affecting
surrounding communities - and states. It also examines how current law
enforcement tactics are falling short despite the fact that other
cities have been able to sharply reduce similar problems.
===============

PATERSON'S DRIVE-THROUGH TRADE LURES USERS FROM NEAR AND FAR

Special Report: Drug Crossroads

NOTE: All of the drug users quoted in this story agreed to be
interviewed as long as their real names weren't used.

It's 2 o'clock in the morning and Justin is curled into a fetal
position on his bed, quivering in a cold sweat. He's nauseous. His
body aches. He feels like he could jump out of his skin.

He can't wait any longer.

With the stealth of a cat burglar, Justin tiptoes to the living room
of his two-story brick colonial home in Kinnelon and rummages through
his mother's purse. He plucks $50 from her wallet, snatches her car
keys and then, after slipping out the front door unnoticed, gently
pushes her Ford Escort down the driveway.

It's been 17 hours since Justin's last hit of heroin. He's disoriented
as he starts up the car and leaves his picturesque neighborhood along
the slopes of the Ramapo Mountains. Yet he knows exactly where to go
for quick relief.

Justin heads to Paterson.

Twenty minutes later, he's at the graffiti-coated Alexander Hamilton
projects, the city's toughest public housing complex. He pulls up to a
man idling in a corner, hands him $30 and gets three bags of heroin. A
few blocks away, he snorts them all.

By 3:15 a.m., Justin is snuggling into bed. His withdrawal symptoms
are gone.

He falls asleep. At last.

"You do whatever it takes to get to Paterson," Justin says later. "You
don't think about the consequences."

There are thousands of Justins. Day after day, night after night,
young users from North Jersey's suburbs - plus many others from
throughout New Jersey, Rockland County and eastern Pennsylvania -
stream into Paterson's downtrodden neighborhoods for drugs.

For the last decade, and particularly since 9/11, this
eight-square-mile city has become their primary destination. Lured by
drive-through service, and scared off by tighter law enforcement
across the Hudson River, they find cheap, 24-hour access to everything
they seek - from the purest heroin on the East Coast to cocaine,
crack, marijuana and Ecstasy.

The percentage of out-of-towners arrested by Paterson police for
buying or seeking drugs has nearly doubled over the past five years,
to 35 percent this year, an analysis by The Record found. Bergen,
Passaic, Morris and Hudson county residents accounted for more than
two-thirds of that group.

Investigators insist the number of suburban customers is even higher.
More than half the license plates recently checked in the hottest drug
spots, for instance, came from outside the city, said Thomas Murray,
chief of the Passaic County sheriff's narcotics bureau.

The consequences have been severe.

This year, a Hasbrouck Heights teenager was killed in a gang gunfight
in Lodi after a drug deal in Paterson went sour. A 26-year-old woman
had a fatal seizure in Ringwood after smoking crack cocaine that she
and two friends bought in the city. Police are also investigating
whether heroin sold in Paterson caused at least nine deaths this year
in Mahwah, Upper Saddle River, Wanaque, Rockland County and
Pennsylvania.

"We can't isolate ourselves and say, 'That's Paterson's problem,'Y"
Elmwood Park Police Chief Don Ingrasselino said. "It's spilling over
to us, and we are all having to deal with it. It's becoming everyone's
problem."

Quick, easy access

Paterson has reached this crossroads through a mix of factors: urban
renewal efforts that have tamed some of New York City's once-teeming
drug dens, stepped-up security on Hudson River bridges and tunnels
since the terror attacks and the availability of cheap and potent heroin.

"It's all about convenience," said Murray, a former New York City cop
who patrolled Washington Heights, a drug destination just across the
George Washington Bridge. "Paterson is surrounded by highways, so
people can get in and out very quickly."

Those arrested during the last 18 months came from 150 municipalities
across New Jersey and elsewhere, The Record's analysis shows. Some
traveled over two hours; one made a 130-mile trek from Ventnor in
Atlantic County, another came 123 miles from Berwick, Pa.

But most addicts get there in under a half-hour:

Justin, a bright, well-spoken 24-year-old, tried to fit in on the
city's streets by wearing low-slung pants and a bandanna. He
shoplifted to support his habit.

David, 22, the smart son of an affluent oil trader, grew up in a
multimillion-dollar home and was cared for by an au pair and a
stay-at-home mother. At his most desperate times, he took two buses to
get from Ho-Ho-Kus to Paterson.

Amanda, an attractive 23-year-old from Hackensack, kept a crowbar at
her side when she drove into Paterson in case a drug dealer tried to
rip her off.

Eric, a tall, thin 28-year-old, still draws straws with his 10 buddies
from Mahwah and Upper Saddle River to determine who will make their
drug run into the city.

Frank, 24, of Paramus abandoned his dealers in Washington Heights for
Paterson when he realized his toll money could buy an extra bag of
heroin.

Snorting dope made him feel like Superman, he says.

"It relaxes you, gives you that extra boost," he says. "I'm not a
social person, but when I do it, it gives me more confidence. When you
are left without it for one day, it's like having the flu.

"Heroin would take all the headaches and pain ... and take it all
away."

'The descent'

Just beyond Ridgewood, Lincoln Avenue straightens out and plunges
south to the Bergen-Passaic border, ending at a bridge that crosses
the Passaic River.

Along the way, two-story homes with French doors, swimming pools and
flowerpots on porches morph into worn apartment buildings with peeling
paint and boarded-up windows. The streets are littered with garbage,
every other building tattooed with graffiti.

It is a route one former addict calls "the descent."

"You cross that ... bridge and it's a whole different world," says
David.

Paterson's abandoned textile mills, in hopeless disrepair, serve as
eerie reminders of its key role in the Industrial Revolution. There
are no cul-de-sacs here. No Starbucks cafes. No downtown with swanky
boutiques and upscale restaurants.

Certainly, parts of the city are healthy and vibrant, home to working
people, growing families and old-timers invested in their community.
There are no open-air drug bazaars, no piles of trash on the street in
those areas.

It's different on Godwin and Governor, Alabama and Sparrow, where
crowded apartment buildings line up next to 99-cent shops and bodegas,
and many corners are commandeered by dealers and their crews.

"It was a culture shock the first time I went to Paterson," says
Amanda. "I was like, 'Oh my God. How do they live like this?' I was
like, 'Oh my, she has two different-colored shoelaces.'Y"

Says Justin: "I come from a pretty decent area, so to come down here and
see this ... it's a totally different lifestyle. The first time I went I
was scared as hell. I didn't know if I'd get robbed, shot or pulled over."

No matter.

Some enjoy the fear, the thrill of dodging the police, the brief
flirtation with danger.

"It's like playing Russian roulette," says Justin. "It's the
excitement you got over the law. It's almost like cops and robbers.
There's been times when I had to run from cops in Paterson, down an
alley, behind a car."

But mostly, it's the round-the-clock, drive-through service that
entices.

"Growing up in the nice suburbs, you hear rap, and the stuff you see
on MTV about the ghetto is so glamorized. The ghetto becomes this
mythical place, and it seems exciting. It's so different than hanging
out in the suburbs," David says. "But at the same time, when you get
everything you want in life, like me, I wanted to see what it was like
to have some sort of struggle."

"But ultimately I realized: Struggle sucks."

David turned to heroin at 19 after his girlfriend left him. At first,
he snorted it. Two months later, he shot up for the first time, asking
a friend to jab the needle in his arm as he looked away.

"I thought to myself, if I'm going to do this, I might as well do it
the right way," he says.

David was living in a suburban New England town then. When the urge
struck, he called his dealer's beeper number, punched in a code and
met him in a nearby city's financial district 45 minutes later.

After he moved to Ho-Ho-Kus three years ago, David found out about
copping drugs in Paterson.

"I had never gone to cop before, I didn't know much about it - only
what I had seen in movies," he says. "I liked the fact that I didn't
have to wait for a pager service anymore. Because in Paterson you
could get dope 24 hours a day, seven days a week, four weeks a month,
12 months out of the year, whether it's raining or during the worst
snowstorms.

"You could get it always, always, always."

Spillover Effects

Police throughout North Jersey are becoming more familiar with the
consequences of Paterson's growing dominance in the metropolitan-area
drug trade.

In Elmwood Park, Paterson's neighbor to the east, Police Chief
Ingrasselino formed a two-person narcotics bureau nearly two years ago
after drug dealers began moving beyond the city limits.

"The dealers in Paterson started thinking: 'We're selling here. Why
not just cross the bridge to Elmwood Park? It's so close,'Y" he said.

They also showed up in South Hackensack: In April, Detective Sgt. Robert
Kaiser said, a Paterson man was arrested after supplying drugs to dozens of
people in five motels on Route 46.

He remembered a woman who drove up from Toms River to buy drugs in
Paterson, then spent the night shooting up at the Stagecoach Motel on
Route 46 before police arrested her.

"She said Paterson is known for having the best heroin," Kaiser
said.

In other nearby towns, though, Paterson's drug supermarkets have
actually cut into local drug sales, police say. More people seem to be
bypassing those suburban dealers - who often dilute their product and
jack up prices by as much as 100 percent - and going straight to the
source.

"It's been a big turnaround here," said Pompton Lakes Detective Sgt.
Steve Seifried. "We used to have a lot of people who were dealing in
town. But I found that instead of dealing, folks are going down to
Paterson."

"People are realizing it's so easy to go to Paterson," said Detective
Lt. Kevin Smith of Paramus, where narcotics arrests have swelled by 10
to 15 percent over the past few years. "Most people are going there
because New York has stepped up its efforts - and in Paterson they
haven't really done that as of yet."

Once buyers zoom out of Paterson, they are virtually free of law
enforcement's grasp. Many surrounding police departments say they are
too busy to pursue users and focus solely on drug dealers in their
areas.

"Our guys will follow people if they're under investigation already
and then try to get them on the way out [of Paterson]," said Lt.
Daniel Dooley of Pequannock. "Other than that, it's not something
manpower allows us to do. We don't have any actual ties with Paterson
following up on that type of stuff. We don't have a specific narcotics
bureau. We'd be completely overrun."

A few departments are taking action.

Elmwood Park's narcotics unit makes random checks of people leaving
Paterson, Ingrasselino said. Detectives also study the habits of the
borough's addicts and stop their vehicles if they think they have
drugs on them. The unit arrested 150 people on drug charges last year,
and has arrested more than four dozen so far this year, the chief said.

Paramus narcotics detectives follow people in and out of Paterson,
sometimes even setting up surveillance there and running license
plates. The anti-crime unit arrests about 10 people a month, said Smith.

Murray, of the Passaic County sheriff's office, said there has been
talk of forming a task force of local, state and federal agencies to
address Paterson's drug problems.

But so far, it's been just talk.

"Something has to happen," he said. "Because Paterson's drug culture
is a major problem."

Racing To Customers

It is a bright Wednesday afternoon when a Volvo inches through Godwin
Avenue and Straight Street, past a gaggle of young black men with
bloodshot eyes and calculating stares. The car slows and two men race
each other toward it, grinning widely. One curls his finger, urging
the driver closer.

"When you're white coming through this neighborhood, you've got a VIP
pass," says David, a former addict, sitting coolly on the passenger
side. "You're nothing but a dollar sign."

The horns are blowing and the intersection is thick with cars. Mom and
pop shops line the block. The sidewalk bustles with mothers pushing
baby strollers and distracted shoppers hastily passing through.

The dealers are easy to spot. They sit on stoops and linger on corners
wearing long, white T-shirts, loose-fitting jeans and Timberland
boots. They look for cues from their prospective customers: a car
slowing down, a half-open window, a sly stare, hungry eyes. Sometimes
all they have to see is a white face behind the wheel.

"Yo! Yo!" they call out to the commuters. Or they'll wave them
over.

"I'd hear people yelling 'Yo, yo! Diesel? Base?'Y" says David, using
slang for heroin and crack. "All you had to do was slow down. They
would yell out: 'Yo! What ya need?' and I'd say 'Diesel.' That was the
extent of the conversation."

David says a panhandler who lived near Van Houten Street usually
directed him to the day's best batch. He called it the daily dope report.

"I became proud of walking down Godwin Avenue and Governor Street or
12th Avenue and Rosa Parks Boulevard," David says. "When they'd see me
in certain areas, they'd know what I was there for and would race each
other to get me. I guess I stood out."

Instinct and need lead addicts to the hot drug areas.

"The spots always changed, but when people see you out there all the
time, and you start seeing the same faces, you know where to go and
who to go to," says Amanda.

City Councilman Aslon Goow said outsiders coming to the city for drugs
clearly is a problem.

"But half the people buying drugs are our residents, and that's a
problem too," he said.

Paterson is pretty typical of cities throughout the country where
narcotics are flagrantly sold in the open, said Professor David
Kennedy, director of the Center for Crime Prevention and Control at
John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York and architect of a
new strategy to combat intractable drug markets.

"These types of areas are usually exclusively poor, minority
neighborhoods," Kennedy said. "They usually have white people who come
in and out in five minutes, then do what they do in their homes. And
all the violence and crime stays in the drug market."

In Paterson, drugs are sold every day and night in a square-mile
stretch just north of Interstate 80. Not every street has dealers
stationed on corners, but in some areas - including stretches of Rosa
Parks Boulevard and Summer Street - drug peddlers can be found
virtually block after busy block.

Dealers also fan out farther west, near the Haledon border, and
farther east, near Fair Lawn. They go to quiet residential streets and
bustling commercial districts, in front of churches and beside the
Straight & Narrow rehabilitation center - a cruel, in-your-face
riposte to addicts trying to mend their lives.

When City Hall closes at 5 p.m., the dealers are out there. When
businesses shutter because of severe snowstorms, the dealers are out
there. When it is pounding rain and most everyone is huddled indoors,
the dealers are out there.

Once, during a heavy winter storm, Paterson narcotics Lt. Heriberto
Rodriguez drove past the popular corners. The dealers were there. So
were the buyers.

"I would even go in December when it was snowing," says Amanda. "It
would be such a mission to find the right person to buy from."

Heroin 'Took Control'

Justin was 19 when he lost his best friend to heroin. He promised
himself he would not fall into the same deadly spiral.

But a year later, after losing his job with an auto parts maker,
Justin tried heroin.

"I didn't want to deal with issues in my life," he says. "At first I
thought it was fun, but it completely took control of my life. I've
seen people have everything and lose everything in a few months."

At first Justin went with others to buy the dope. But he eventually
gained the confidence to drive the 18 miles on his own. Going to
Paterson became entertainment.

"I would try to blend in," he says. "I'd wear hooded sweatshirts, big
baggy pants, a bandanna, whatever it took. Your brain is so clouded by
drugs you don't think in a normal way."

He lost 25 pounds, hitting the scale at 148. He started shoplifting
CDs, batteries and electronics, then bartered with drug dealers or
sold the goods to bodegas. He stole cash from his mother. He landed a
job as a waiter, but hardly showed up.

At his worst, Justin says, he was driving to Paterson four or five
times a day. Prosecutors seized his license after several drug arrests.

So he'd take the bus.

Justin went through detox and stayed clean for more than a year, but
relapsed 10 months ago. His girlfriend noticed right away.

He became unreliable, more edgy, she says.

"The worst was when he lied to me in church," she says. "He said: 'Oh,
I gotta do this for my mom,' and then he went down to Paterson."

Justin, who recently got a job power-washing decks, says he has not
touched heroin in eight months, but admits overcoming the drug
entirely is a daily struggle.

"I'm gonna be an addict till the day I die," he says. "I'll always
have an urge, but an urge is a thought, and a thought will pass."

Tough lessons

It is late at night, and Eric skulks down a Paterson alley with $100
in his pocket. He sees a dealer and slips him the cash, then waits for
his heroin.

Nothing.

"Where's my dope?" he asks.

The man flashes a knife and tells him to keep walking.

Eric's hard, sulky eyes show his scarring struggles with addiction.
The episode, which he recounted recently, is one of the reasons he
despises the Paterson drug commute.

"None of my friends ever like driving down there, but one of us ends
up going," says Eric, who admits to still shooting up. "It's not like
we want to go, but we have to go."

Paterson police are rarely notified of crimes against local or
suburban addicts, acting Chief James Wittig said. Many are probably
too embarrassed to report them or fear getting themselves in trouble.
But he said he's shocked by how brazen some buyers can be.

"I've seen young teenage girls with their convertible roofs down
wearing all this jewelry and driving up to 10 guys standing on a
corner," Wittig said. "And I'm thinking to myself: 'Are they nuts?'"

Most addicts learn quickly: Don't buy from strangers. Don't buy from
crack addicts. Don't enter houses if crackheads are milling about outside.

Users call them the rules of Paterson.

"You get to know certain dealers," Justin says. "Sometimes you get a
free bag or a discount $7 bag. If you see a guy four or five times a
day and bring them $400 to $500, you expect to get something in return."

Amanda, a petite woman with fiery red Shirley Temple curls, says she
would drive into Paterson every afternoon from her day-care job in
Elmwood Park. She remembers exactly what she was wearing: Chanel
sunglasses, a Coach hat, Diesel jeans, an Armani shirt and a diamond
chain.

She'd open the window of her Mazda Millenia just a crack, enough for
the dealer to slip her the drugs.

"I would go out to Paterson with my diamond-studded platinum chain
with a diamond heart. Inside the heart, it was filled with black
diamonds. It was worth $3,500. But I never got out of my car," Amanda
says. "I really didn't belong in the gutter of Paterson, but I wasn't
walking around."

She kept a crowbar next to her "just in case."

"Once the guys realized they weren't going to get with you, they'd
back off," she says. "You deal with them on a business level. Once
they start trying to hit on you, you just cut them off."

She and her boyfriend went through countless $8 bags of heroin a
day.

"I don't know my math, but with my eight times table, I'm really,
really good," Amanda says after a recent session at a Paramus
rehabilitation center. She's wearing high heels and clutching a bulky
Lord & Taylor shopping bag. She says she's been clean for five months.

As she saunters through the dimly lit hallway, her heels clicking on
the linoleum floor, she brushes off a fellow patient who whispers in
her ear that she's beautiful.

"The people in this program, they are so ... I'm not like them," she
says softly.

She hangs her head and thinks for a minute.

"Well, I guess I am."
========================
SIDEBAR

Street talk

Brick - 50 bags of heroin

Copping - Buying drugs on the street

Custies - Drug buyers

Five-0 - Police

Runners - People who fetch the drugs

Spotters - People who watch for police

Testers - Addicts who sample new batches of drugs to gauge
purity

Cocaine - Powerfully addictive powder that is snorted, injected or
smoked. Crack (base) is processed from cocaine hydrochloride and
smoked. Causes feelings of euphoria and increased energy. Can cause
heart attacks, respiratory failure, strokes, seizures and death.

Ecstasy - Acts as a stimulant and hallucinogen. Causes mental
stimulation, emotional warmth, enhanced sensory perception and
increased physical energy. Also may cause nausea, chills, sweating,
teeth clenching and muscle cramping. Taken orally.

Heroin (dope, diesel) - Processed from morphine. A white or brown
powder that can be injected, sniffed or smoked. Causes surge of
euphoria, followed by alternately wakeful and drowsy states and cloudy
thinking. Can be fatal.

LSD (acid) - One of the strongest mood-altering drugs. Sold as
tablets, capsules or liquid or on absorbent paper. Causes delusions
and hallucinations, increased body temperature, heart rate and blood
pressure, sleeplessness and loss of appetite.

Marijuana (pot, weed) - Most commonly used illegal drug in the U.S.
Causes memory and learning problems and distorts perception.

Methamphetamine (meth) - Addictive stimulant that increases
wakefulness and physical activity and decreases appetite. Can lead to
psychotic behavior, hallucinations and stroke. 
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MAP posted-by: SHeath(DPFFlorida)