Pubdate: Fri, 29 Sep 2006
Source: Asheville Citizen-Times (NC)
Copyright: 2006 Asheville Citizen-Times
Contact:  http://www.citizen-times.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/863

NEW DRUG INITIATIVE HOLDS GREAT PROMISE

Despite tough laws, untold tax dollars and law enforcement's best 
efforts, drug use in Western North Carolina continues to increase. 
Drugs take a toll on all of society, soaking up resources that might 
otherwise be used to advance any number of causes. But nowhere do 
they do more harm than to the neighborhoods drug dealers turn into 
marketplaces. Poor communities are especially vulnerable to the 
scourge that drives out business, makes people afraid to be in their 
own yards and causes many to become the victims of robbery and worse crimes.

Cookie Mills told the Citizen-Times that drugs were destroying his 
childhood neighborhood on Drucker Road. Although he no longer lives 
there, Mills helped start a neighborhood council two years ago. 
Community members are now reaching out to drug addicts, and Mills 
said he's seen a marked improvement in the neighborhood with regard to dealers.

Such citizen efforts deserve the highest praise and, as the Drucker 
Road neighborhood council demonstrates, they can be extremely 
successful. Wanted: Effective tools While citizen involvement plays 
an important role, law enforcement also needs more effective tools. A 
program first tried in High Point deserves consideration as a way to 
tackle the drug problem in our neighborhoods. Police in High Point 
spent more than three months investigating about 20 dealers operating 
in the city's West End neighborhood where crack cocaine was openly 
sold on the street and in houses, according to a story published 
Wednesday in the Wall Street Journal.

Meanwhile, they cultivated relationships with the "influentials" in 
the dealers' lives: their grandmothers, mothers and mentors. Once 
they felt they had ironclad cases, police chief James Fealy invited 
12 suspected dealers to a meeting at the police station, with a 
promise they wouldn't be arrested that night.

Using 'influentials' With encouragement from their "influentials," 
nine showed up, according to the Journal story.

First, the suspected dealers met with about 30 clergy, social workers 
and other community members who confronted them with the harm they 
were doing, asked them to stop doing it and offered to help them. The 
suspects slouched in their seats and seemed indifferent, but they 
were then moved to another room where a gaggle of law-enforcement 
officials awaited them.

On the walls of the room were photos of crack houses that had been 
the suspects' headquarters and each one was presented with a binder 
laying out the evidence against him or her.

The law enforcement officials gave them an ultimatum: Stop dealing or 
go to jail. They were threatened with maximum sentences and federal 
charges, which don't allow for parole. They were warned not to 
relocate because their names were flagged on statewide 
law-enforcement computers. An overnight success The West End street 
drug market closed "overnight" and hasn't reopened in more than two 
years, Chief Fealy told the Journal. He said he was "shocked" at the 
success. Using the same strategy, police in the city of about 90,000 
say they have since shut down its two other major street drug 
markets. Police in Winston-Salem, where many officers initially 
called the program "hug-a-thug," and in Newburgh, N.Y., have used the 
strategy with success. The National Urban League wants to see the 
approach replicated nationwide and police departments elsewhere, 
including Tucson, Ariz., and Providence, R.I., are gearing up to try it.

"It's the hottest thing in drug enforcement," said Mark A.R. Kleiman, 
a University of California, Los Angeles, professor who specializes in 
illicit drug issues, in the Wall Street Journal story.

The program works, in part, because it obtains community cooperation 
and because it targets suspects who haven't become hardened, violent 
offenders. Those who have are arrested.

The goal of the program isn't to eradicate illicit drug use but to 
shut down overt drug markets, which drive a significant amount of 
crime. It's not a magic bullet, but its success suggests that it's a 
tool worth adding to the drug-fighting arsenal.
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MAP posted-by: Beth Wehrman