NARCOTICS OFFICER FOUGHT DRUG WAR ON 2 FRONTS

He realized tough love was the answer as crack enslaved
his sister.

At work, John Hartley saw the inside of Jacksonville's crack
houses.

The soiled mattresses, the crumpled condoms, the roaches crawling
where addicts crashed after sucking vapors from flaming crack pipes
into their lungs.

After work, he was on the inside of another drug war as the brother of
a woman who struggled with a crack addiction for two decades.

And for 10 years of that time - a run that ended Friday because of his
impending promotion as a division chief - Hartley was a supervisor in
the Sheriff's Office's narcotics unit.

With much of his squad out for training and boxes in his old office to
pack, Friday morning gave the 49-year-old assistant chief time to
reflect on his drug-fighting decade.

Among the memories on his list of when-the-good-guys-won, Hartley put
a 2001 drug bust that started with an informant and a wiretap. It
ended with police and state officials seizing more than $2 million in
drugs and $1 million in cash - so much money, the dopers had to stash
their cash in cardboard boxes.

But perhaps first on the list of trials was the tug of war between two
worlds of drugs. First there was the pain that came with seeing
addiction steal a one loved's soul. Then there was his sworn oath to
fight that same demon with handcuffs and cell bars.

"All of the officers knew her and they knew my feeling was 'Put her in
jail,' " Hartley said of his late younger sister, Kathleen Guinta.
"And they did."

Hartley said she got hooked on crack when she paired off with the
wrong kind of guy while working at a good job for the state. It didn't
take long before she was stealing their mother's jewelry, trading her
car for drugs and not coming home for days. Hartley's mother would
bail his sister out of jail, pay cabbies to take her home, accept
promises she'd broken before.

And that taught Hartley that tough love was the only answer. It was a
lesson he shared with brokenhearted strangers who called him at work.
They complained that their sons, their daughters, their brothers and
their sisters needed another chance and didn't deserve to go to jail
for the drug arrests his detectives made.

Here's what he told them:

"To know the only end is self-destruction, why wouldn't you take steps
to stop it? ... You can save a life just by being a little tough.
Don't save their skin. You're enabling them to continue ... out of the
color of love."

Besides his family - he is married with two grown children - Hartley
spoke Friday of his love for police work.

He joined the police force 30 years ago after working nine months as a
corrections officer. The only other job he's had was delivering
flowers for his family's San Marco floral business. It was something
he continued to do every Valentine's Day and Mother's Day up until the
shop closed in 2006 after his mother's death.

Hartley credits Neptune Beach Police Chief David Sembach, a retired
Jacksonville police supervisor, with training him to be a narcotics
unit boss. Sembach brought him into the unit in 1996 as a lieutenant.

"He knew the drug game inside and out and he taught it to me," Hartley
said Friday.

Sembach said he first met Hartley when he was 11 and kept an eye on
his career progress after Hartley followed his uncle into police work.
Sembach said Friday he wanted Hartley in narcotics "because he was one
of the best supervisors available." He said his friend was able to
separate his sister's problems from his professional duties.

Detective Bob Cook said the same thing Friday about his outgoing
boss.

"That's one of the things I admire about him. He doesn't let that
influence his job. Because addiction took a great toll on his family,"
he said.

In a decade, Hartley said a lot changed in Jacksonville's drug
culture. It broke out from isolated pockets of vice to so many
neighborhoods that he said anyone can buy crack within a mile of home.
Dealing drugs became such big business that a sub-specialty spun off:
dealers who gave up slinging in favor of robbing other dealers.

But some things haven't changed, according to Hartley, who will take
over as chief of the unit that maps crime patterns and tracks new trends.

He believes that as long as people become addicted to drugs, there
will be hope that they can recover.

Hartley said his sister broke her habit and lived a happy life - with
a husband, a house and even a family dog - before she died of a sudden
viral lung infection in 2005 at age 43.

"To be addicted to crack cocaine for as long as she was and have some
periods of normal life, that's hope," he said.

And for a decade, Hartley said, he was proud to do his part
penetrating the cycle of misery drugs can create.

"We're the hammer," he said of his narcotics crew, "that forced an
addict to seek help."