KILLINGS BLAMED ON DRUG CULTURE

Blacks Often The Victims

GREENSBORO - Christopher Harmon died in January when he was shot in the
head outside a nightclub.

While some of the city's most hardened detectives described the shooting as
cold-blooded and senseless, the death of the 20-year-old North Carolina A&T
junior was the latest in a familiar pattern in Greensboro.

Since 1993, 60 percent of the city's homicide victims and more than 70
percent of the offenders were black men. Those numbers are higher than
across the state and nationwide, where 40 percent of all homicide victims
and about half their killers were black males during that same period.

Five of the city's 17 homicide victims this year and a majority of the 281
slayings since 1993 were shootings of black males ages 18 to 34, the News &
Record of Greensboro reported Sunday. Killings have become so common that,
in some neighborhoods, they are something of the mundane. Residents seemed
indifferent when Bozi Baare, a 31-year-old immigrant from Niger, was gunned
down last month in his Lexus in northeast Greensboro.

"Nobody cried, nobody screamed, everyone just stood around talking about
it," Greensboro homicide Detective David Spagnola said.

Nearly a third of Greensboro's killings in the past decade have been
drug-related. Police statistics show that number has jumped to almost 40
percent in the past five years.

Drugs are a big reason why the city has bucked a statewide trend of
decreasing homicides, authorities said.

Across the state, homicides are down 30 percent from 1993. In Winston-Salem
they dropped 60 percent in that time; in Raleigh homicides decreased 25
percent.

Greensboro had 31 homicide victims last year, 10 of which were killed
during drug disputes, police said. In 2000, more than half of the city's
homicides were drug-related.

Most drug-related homicides have more to do with money, said Norman Rankin,
a Greensboro homicide detective.

"I haven't seen a murder where they went in and killed that person because
they wanted their drugs," Mr. Rankin said. "They want the money. They know
the drug dealers have the money."

Police also attribute a proliferation of guns - especially in poor, urban
areas where blacks make up the majority of the population - as adding to
the number of violent crimes.

"Nobody gets beat up anymore. It's too easy to get a gun," Mr. Spagnola
said. "It's gotten to the point where I'm afraid to make a stop if I'm
unarmed."

Sociologists cite a lack of role models and structured activities to keep
children away from drug-infested streets as a reason why more young black
men choose to pick up guns.

"They don't have the Boy Scouts, Girl Scouts, trip to Spain during the
summer. They don't have ways in which to escape these situations that lead
to homicide," said Saundra Westervelt, an associate professor of sociology
at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. "If you let the kids in
the Boy Scouts loose in the world without anything to do, they will find
situations that lend themselves to homicide."

When left to roam, men are more likely to be lured to dangerous
environments, Dr. Westervelt said, which may explain why women comprise
only 17 percent of the city's homicide victims.