DRUG PROJECT AREA CHOSEN

Initiative Targets Street-Level Dealers

RALEIGH - The Rev. Jim Summey remembered what it used to be like in
front of English Road Baptist Church in High Point, where
parishioners had to get past the prostitutes to get inside.

"I'm a Christian, but I'm not real saintly," he told a packed room of
Raleigh residents to make a point of how ticked off he was. That was
before High Point police started an initiative that they say turned
over ownership of the neighborhood from its drug dealers back to its
residents. Now, Raleigh police are introducing their own Drug Market
Initiative Pilot Project, which begins with identifying "dangerous
street-level drug markets" in the city and picking one as the area
for the pilot project. Raleigh police would not specify the target area.

At the Chavis Park Community Center on Martin Luther King Boulevard,
Raleigh Police Chief Jane Perlov spoke Thursday about the need for
the project. "We're very good at arresting people," Perlov said. "But
it's not getting the neighborhood better, and it's not eliminating
the drug market." The project calls for three phases. The first
involves going after the suppliers in the chosen area. High-or
mid-level dealers, or those found to have criminal records, would be
arrested. Nonviolent offenders would get a chance to avoid arrest.

David Kennedy, director of the Center for Crime Prevention and
Control at New York's John Jay College of Criminal Justice, who
devised the plan, told residents it helps residents regain control of
their neighborhoods while helping to rehabilitate those who want to
get out of the drug game. During the second phase, community members,
service providers and police would provide support and one-on-one
case-management to nonviolent offenders and their families.

The third phase involves residents looking for further signs of
illegal activity, offenders being flagged for special prosecution,
and government agencies working with the community to improve the
physical environment. Geraldine Alshamy of Raleigh said the ideas
reminded her of what she has tried to do in her own family. All seven
of her brothers have been imprisoned on drug charges at some point,
she said, and three have died. She said she has tried to provide her
children, nieces and nephews with the resources to make smarter choices.

"I wanted to break the vicious cycle," she said. "If you live in a
vacuum, that's all you know. And I didn't want that for my children
and my nieces and nephews."