Pubdate: Fri, 27 May 2005
Source: Charleston Daily Mail (WV)
Copyright: 2005 Charleston Daily Mail
Contact:  http://www.dailymail.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/76
Author: Dave Peyton
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/coke.htm (Cocaine)

CITY COUNCILS MUST DEAL WITH CRIME

Sunday suits and murder scenes Brandi Jacobs-Jones is the youngest and one 
of the newest members of Huntington City Council. She ran unopposed in her 
district last November.

She lives in the very heart of the city's drug-dealing district, only a few 
blocks from where four teenagers were gunned down Sunday morning.

Last week, she looked out her window and saw young men and women aimlessly 
walking her street. Some of them were prostitutes, she says. Some of them 
were dealing drugs. Some of them -- the ones who "look like zombies" -- 
were drug users.

Earlier this week, all that activity had come to a halt, at least for the 
time being. The death of the four young people at a house on Charleston 
Avenue brought extra patrols from Huntington City Police, State Police and 
the Cabell County Sheriff's Office to her neighborhood.

For the moment, she said, it is the kind of street she and most of her 
neighbors hoped it would always be -- quiet and free of drug deals.

"If it were like this for the next six months, really aggressive 
patrolling, I think it would make a difference. Of course I'm known in the 
community as a Pollyanna," she said.

As an outreach worker for the Ebenezer Medical Clinic in Huntington, a free 
medical clinic for the poor and medically underserved, she works in the 
area where she lives and where the shootings occurred.

She hears things on the street that lead her to believe what the Huntington 
police believe: The four cold-blooded murders were somehow drug-related.

Jacobs-Jones and the police believe three of the four were in the wrong 
place at the wrong time. The target was Donte Ward, who lived in the 
Charleston Avenue house. All four were shot in the front yard about 4:30 
a.m. Sunday.

"I arrived there about 7:30 a.m. (Sunday). While I was there, I noticed two 
young boys, nine or 10. Their mothers had dressed them in their Sunday 
suits. They were ready to go to church and they had come out to see what 
was happening. They were taking it all in.

"I thought to myself, 'How sad they had to see this.' I can't imagine what 
kind of impression it had on them," Jacobs-Jones said.

Like the police, Jacobs-Jones believes drug dealers from the Detroit area 
were the shooters. She believes they left town soon after the murders. But 
that still left more -- perhaps many more -- Detroit crack dealers in town.

Detroit is the source of most of the crack cocaine in Huntington, according 
to police. They supply an unknown number of crack addicts in Huntington and 
probably Charleston.

It's said that crack is sold at a premium in Huntington. It's much more 
expensive here than in Detroit. That's the reason for the insidious 
"Detroit connection."

That connection directly and indirectly caused the execution-style deaths 
of the four teenagers. Jacobs-Jones believes -- or at least she hopes -- it 
was a one-of-a-kind tragedy that will never happen again.

Jacobs-Jones is the daughter of Tom Jacobs, who used to work as a TV 
newsman for WSAZ in Huntington. She has lived a lot of places, but she came 
to Huntington to attend Marshall University, where she was the first female 
and the first African-American to become student body president.

After graduation, she settled in Huntington "to make a difference. I really 
love my neighbors and there's such a sense of community here, like no other 
place I have ever lived."

When she looked out her front window before the crackdown, she saw "young 
men and women so beaten down, they didn't believe they had any 
opportunities or any future.

"When young people achieve some success, they leave here. All that's left 
are these youngsters with no hope. They see the dealers making fast easy 
money and they fall into the trap. Somehow we have to give them hope."

Sometimes, she says, a few words can help enormously.

"I have a friend who recently got in trouble and went to jail. When I saw 
him I told him that he is special. 'That's the first time anyone ever told 
me that,' he said. Maybe if someone had told him that earlier and had 
believed in him, he wouldn't have gotten into trouble."

Jacobs-Jones believes the drug problem is the most serious problem in 
Huntington, but doesn't believe all members of council agree with her. "And 
I think it might be even more serious in Charleston,' she said.

What to do about it?

The solution, she said, must involve everyone -- the police, families, the 
men and women on the street who really want to bring drug-dealing to an 
end, and the people who work with kids to give them hope, a sense of 
belonging and "jobs that matter."

The member of council has taken it upon herself to study what other cities 
are doing to combat the crack cocaine epidemic. She says she will collect 
ideas and offer them to the community, which she hopes will develop an 
action plan.

It's better, she says, than sitting quietly in her council seat, casting 
"yea" and "nay" votes that may or may not matter and worrying about uncut 
weeds on vacant lots, a seemingly perennial topic at the meetings.

Winter will take care of the weeds, but not the city's horrendous drug problem.

People, not a simple change of seasons, must solve the problems that most 
likely caused Sunday morning's murders.
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom