NOT JUST A CITY PROBLEM

Sulky Lane in Glastonbury, a quintessential cul-de-sac of American
flags and driveway basketball hoops, got a startling dose of reality
when demonstrators arrived to protest the suburbs' role in Hartford's
drug violence.

"We feel the people from suburban communities are responsible for a
lot of what is going on," the Rev. Cornell Lewis called through a
bullhorn as 30 demonstrators marched last week.

A Courant analysis of the more than 17,000 narcotics charges filed by
Hartford police over the past five years confirms that accusation: A
bit less than half - 43.8 percent - of drug charges in the city were
filed against people who lived outside of Hartford.

Hartford police filed about 3,300 drug charges against people living
in towns that border Hartford, with East Hartford and Bloomfield
residents making up nearly two-thirds of those charges. In fact, East
Hartford or Bloomfield residents accounted for nearly one-eighth of
all drug charges filed by Hartford police from 1996 through 2000.

Windsor and West Hartford residents combined for more than 800 drug
charges in Hartford. In hundreds of other cases, people traveled from
farther away to buy or sell drugs in Hartford, including the more
affluent and verdant suburbs such as Glastonbury, South Windsor and
Colchester.

"I do think the people who live in the suburbs need to wake up and
realize that this isn't solely a Hartford problem," Hartford police
Lt. Neil Dryfe said. "I think that what Rev. Lewis and others have
been showing is, `Hey, look, your friends, neighbors, relatives who
live out here in Sunnyvale or whatever, are contributing to this
problem, coming into the city to purchase narcotics.'"

"Ask any retail operation - `You lose 43.8 percent of your customers,
is that going to affect your business?'" Dryfe said. "Absolutely, it
is. That's a significant number of people. That is a significant
market."

The computer-assisted inspection of Hartford's narcotic arrests over
the five years shows that the reality of the drug industry is more
complex than the stereotype of the rich suburban kid borrowing
daddy's SUV to score drugs in the North End.

Hartford police also filed hundreds of drug charges each year against
people from more hardscrabble cities and towns, such as New Britain,
Manchester, Bristol and Vernon.

The vast majority of the charges against out-of-towners involved
simple narcotics possession, such as possession of less than 4 ounces
of a controlled substance or possession of drug paraphernalia.

But the records also provide evidence that out-of-towners were
involved in selling drugs in Hartford, not just buying them.
Residents of South Windsor, Wethersfield, West Hartford and Wolcott
were charged with operating a drug factory in Hartford during those
five years.

Police in the city and in the suburbs say there are drug dealers who
commute, just like insurance workers, from bedroom suburbs to ply
their trade in the city.

"Maybe it's just that our awareness is increasing, but it definitely
is something that is real and that we keep our eye on," said Windsor
police Capt. Kelvan Kearse. "That speaks to the fact that [city and
suburban police] really need to work together more, because [drug]
customers are very mobile, so [dealers] also go everywhere."

Hartford police filed more than 100 narcotics charges against
residents of New York City, the suspected supply point for much of
the narcotics sold in Hartford. City police logged drug arrests
against people from Massachusetts and Vermont, and as far away as
Buffalo, Los Angeles and Miami.

The economics of Hartford's drug industry are similar to those found
in other U.S. metropolitan areas, say experts who study crime and the
drug trade.

Still, there is a lack of detailed research on the relationship of
drug activity in the city with that in the suburbs. Even the research
arm for the U.S. Department of Justice says it has little hard data
on the economic and social relationship between drug use and sales in
urban centers and wealthy suburbs.

The number of drug charges filed annually in Hartford against
out-of-towners fluctuated significantly from 1996 to 2000 - peaking
at 1,643 in 1998 before dropping to 1,390 in 2000.

Dryfe said he could not account for the falloff in arrests, other
than to note that crime in general declined in Hartford during that
period.

There are limitations to The Courant's analysis, which was based on
records of narcotics charges provided by Hartford police. For one
thing, drug arrests and charges don't necessarily reveal much about
drug activity; they merely show where police are making arrests. And
criminologist Bruce Jacobs, who has studied the crack trade in St.
Louis, said suburbanites may be more likely to be arrested on drug
charges because they typically drive into the city in a car, making
them an easier mark for police.

That more than 40 percent of drug charges in Hartford are filed
against out-of-towners may indicate that suburbanites are an
important, but still secondary, source of revenue for drug dealers in
Hartford, Jacobs said.

"On national-level data, the bulk of the customers come from in and
around the neighborhood" where drugs are sold, Jacobs said.
Suburbanites are "an additional source of revenue, probably a
significant one, but not the main one."

Lewis began leading protest marches in Hartford two days after the
July 4 shooting of Takira Gaston, the 8-year-old girl whose jaw was
shattered on Garden Street by a stray bullet fired during a battle
over drug turf.

But last week, in this summer marking the 40th anniversary of the
"Freedom Rides" that attempted to integrate public transportation in
the South, Lewis and other organizers changed course.

Using arrest records from a recent police drug operation in which
about two-thirds of those arrested were from outside Hartford, Lewis
began picketing the suburban streets of people charged.

They call the marches "Freedom Ride 2001." Lewis plans additional
marches in Bloomfield tonight and in Glastonbury Monday.

In an echo of the 1961 Freedom Rides, Lewis on Thursday packed a
predominantly white and Latino group of protesters, many of whom came
from the suburbs, into a van from a North End church and drove over
the Putnam Bridge to the woodsy streets of Glastonbury.

In a region where suburbanites commonly blame Hartford for its
problems but rarely think of themselves as contributing to those
problems, the marches have attracted a good deal of media attention,
and hostility as well as support on the targeted streets.

One family at the end of Sulky Lane quickly vanished under cover as
the marchers headed down the street, their chants of "Freedom
Ride/Freedom Ride/You Can't Hide/From the Freedom Ride" recorded by a
reporter from National Public Radio.

Other neighbors, however, said they applauded the marchers' message.

"We're going to keep doing it until we make a point," Lewis said. "It
is evolving into something else - I hate to say `movement' - but
people are starting to associate themes of injustice and what
violence does to the thinking of children with what we're doing, and
also the responsibility that must be shared among the suburbs with
what's going on. I think that theme is what's resonating more than
anything else."