NORTH CAROLINA PROGRAM IS MODEL FOR LI

HIGH POINT, N.C. - The West End neighborhood here still shows the
scars of blight. Menacing "POSTED, No Trespassing" signs are tacked
on front doors and porches. The windows of the local convenience
store are barred and the cashier works behind a plastic partition.
Some houses are abandoned and boarded up; others have "rooms for
rent" signs out front.

But things have gotten better in this poverty-stricken end of town,
some residents say, since High Point police launched a program nearly
four years ago that gave drug dealers a second chance.

"It was awful," said Shirley Quick, who said she was trying to raise
her four children and a grandchild living between two crack houses.
"I couldn't decide if we could walk down the street or not."

Her daughter Latasha, 14, said, "There was fighting every day,
arguments. It was tough to get to sleep. Our mama put us in the
bedroom with her because we were scared."

The High Point project is the model for the program Nassau District
Attorney Kathleen Rice undertook in Hempstead village earlier this
month to attack open-air drug dealing along Terrace Avenue. The High
Point operation marked the first time a law-enforcement agency had
used the approach, which involves identifying suspected drug dealers
who don't have records of violence to come to a meeting with the
community and with law enforcement where point they are given a
choice: Get help from community organizations and get a second
chance, or face arrest and risk stiff punishments.

In High Point's West End, it has markedly decreased drug-related
crime and violence since May 17, 2004, the day that drug dealers were
called to a community meeting. Violent crime has decreased by 38
percent from what it was during the 31/2 years before that date. And
since then, the parade of prostitutes that made it difficult for a
woman to walk down the street alone without being propositioned has
been virtually eliminated.

The crime decrease was felt citywide, police say, with a 15-percent
drop in violent crime the first year and an additional 5 percent the
second year.

Some residents who didn't give their names pointed to addresses where
they said occupants still were dealing crack.

But High Point Police Maj. Marty Sumner said that in the neighborhood
that was once home to 14 crack houses, today it's virtually
impossible for anyone other than a known customer to buy drugs. That,
he said, eliminates much of the violence that comes when open-air
drug dealers compete for territory.

In High Point, police first focused on an 11-block area that had
become the scene of several drug-related murders along with the crack
houses and prostitution. In May 2004, police and community leaders,
including a group of ministers from local churches, invited 12
dealers to a meeting; nine showed up.

"We said, 'Stop what you are doing. Just stop it. We are telling you
we are sick and tired of the way you've been acting,'" said the Rev.
Jim Summey, pastor of English Road Baptist Church in the heart of the West End.

Since then, the program has spread to three other areas, with similar
success. Some law enforcement officials have said the approach is too
lenient on offenders. But High Point Police Chief Jim Fealy counters,
"If your goal is to put people in jail -- and some of these people
belong in jail, that's great, then put them in jail -- but if your
only goal is to put people in jail, you've got the wrong goal. If the
goal is to protect the community, then what's the squawk about?"

High Point, a small city of some 97,000, was once a hub of
manufacturing. Factories turned out furniture for major brands;
hosiery mills also provided an abundance of blue-collar jobs.

"The West End was once a solid blue-collar neighborhood," said Don
Stevenson, pastor of Christ's Community Church and executive director
of West End Ministries.

When the mills, factories and jobs left, the homes in the West End,
once occupied by their owners, became rentals. A number became
boarding houses. The area became known for its crack houses.
Prostitutes were on every street corner.

Summey, Stevenson and the pastor of a Methodist church nearby began
attacking some of the problems as early as 2001, the pastors from
white mainline churches holding meetings with the mostly black
community. They learned that the main problems were the appearance of
the neighborhood, the lack of activities for young people, and the
drug dealing and prostitution. They organized cleanup days, and began
a Boys and Girls Club. Eventually they formed the nonprofit West End
Ministries to help the community. But it wasn't until the drug
initiative that they felt they could help make a real dent in the crime.

Police continue to track the original nine who were brought in to the
West End meeting in May 2004. Of them, four were arrested again on
drug charges. The city made six parks jobs available to the nine, but
most of them couldn't keep themselves clean long enough to pass the
city's drug test, Stevenson said. One was able to get a job, but only
kept it a few months.

"Those original nine didn't do so well," said Sumner. "But it's not
about the offender, it's about the community."

In three subsequent call-in operations that yielded better results,
he said, community groups have been able to provide better resources,
in some cases assigning mentors to the dealers. Overall, of all the
dealers called to the meetings in the four operations, only 26
percent have committed another drug crime.

Fealy said he had little hesitation about trying the initiative,
developed at Harvard University by David Kennedy, now a professor at
John Jay College of Criminal Justice in Manhattan.

And the idea of being a test case didn't bother him. "The only thing
you risk is a little embarrassment if it doesn't work," he said. "If
it doesn't work, you move on."