PICKELL DESERVES CHANCE TO BAG BIG DRUG DEALERS

Genesee County Sheriff Robert J. Pickell is persuasive and ambitious as he
sets up a new narcotics unit and withdraws some of his manpower from a
countywide one.

The sheriff accuses the Flint Area Narcotics Group of inflated and unwieldy
bureaucracy, which renders it ineffectual against large-scale dealers.
Whether or not that assessment is fair, Pickell now must see that the
dramatic shift he has argued for and won will strengthen drug enforcement
here, not weaken what there is.

Pickell has been brandishing figures that suggest FANG, a state-run
consortium of local police departments, has been specializing in small
street buys from people probably just supporting a habit. It helps explain
why young African-American males from Flint so disproportionately make up
the jail population. Pickell said he will shift focus to the suburbs.

But Pickell takes a major risk by undercutting FANG, and even setting up a
unit to compete with it. He has said he is willing to be held accountable
for the outcome, and if after a year he has not produced results, he would
own up to the error. So that must be the standard.

Pickell has promised apprehensions at the high end of the drug trade, the
big boys who put up the money and arrange transport. Many of these
untouchables live lavishly and above suspicion in their communities, even
while police and a few others with insight might know better.

FANG perhaps does not have an impressive record of arrests in that realm,
but many think Pickell should have worked within its framework for
improvement, rather than weaken it.

The sheriff counters that the large number of powers involved in FANG's
oversight makes improvement impossible. He said the county supports FANG to
the tune of $1 million a year, yet he has no more say in its operation than
a village official. He pleads for the chance to show he can deliver.

In theory he has made a good case, a winning argument; now he must put
flesh on it with arrests of the people he has promised to target.