ASHEVILLE'S NEW POLICE CHIEF CONTINUES BATTLE VS. DRUGS

Hogan's Plan Combines Police Action, Community Support, Social
Programs

ASHEVILLE - It was a typical afternoon at Deaverview Apartments in
West Asheville. Children stepped off the bus after school as police
patrolled the neighborhood, looking for the day's catch of drug dealers.

As police set up for a sting operation where they posed as drug
dealers, residents sat on their front porches watching with little
interest.

The drug dealing in Deaverview is much like a fast food drive-through,
with buyer after buyer driving into the neighborhood in search of a
good deal. The drivers slowed when their eyes finally met those of the
undercover officers, and cautiously, they approached them.

The deals took less than 10 seconds. After the cash was exchanged for
the fake rocks of crack cocaine, the buyers turned to head out. Police
then stopped them in their tracks, trapping the buyers on all sides.

In one part of new Police Chief Bill Hogan's plan for cutting drug
crime, a SWAT team occasionally chased a resisting buyer. But for the
most part, police walked them up, one by one, to an empty apartment
where they processed them before taking them to jail.

During this August sting operation, 12 arrests were made within three
to four hours.

Children continued to play outside, regarding the police, the guns and
people in handcuffs with no special interest. To them, it was nothing
out of the ordinary.

With his plan to weed out drug dealers and seed neighborhoods with
efforts to improve quality of life, Hogan eventually wants to make
these everyday occurrences disappear.

The city last year took 625 calls for service related to drug dealing,
with most in the 16 public housing developments where about 3,000
people live.

Hogan took office June 14 and started his drug-suppression plan Aug.
1. During the first month, the effort yielded 48 drug-related arrests.
Police seized 185 rocks of crack cocaine and 65.6 grams of marijuana
with a combined street value of more than $4,000. Police also
confiscated $3,349 and took four handguns off the street.

The effort has been met with skepticism among some public housing
residents. Public Housing Residents Council member Trina Gardner
warned that curbing drug sales must be a community effort.

"It's not us against any neighborhoods," she said. "It's us against
drugs."

The new plan comes after a long City Council battle on how to cut
drugs in public housing areas. Vice Mayor Carl Mumpower unsuccessfully
pushed for adding 12 officers to the city's 181-officer Police Department.

Hogan plans on adding five additional officers to a community
enforcement team, bringing the number of members to 16. Police already
have hired three new officers. Hogan plans to hire two more.

Members of the enforcement team are coming from patrol and the
emergency response team. The new officers will take their place on
patrol.

"We really have needed this for a long time," said Asheville Police
Lt. Rae Ferguson, who is part of the drug enforcement team. "Normally,
we can't get this many officers together. This will really have an
impact."

The move followed City Council passage earlier this year of the Safe
Neighborhoods Initiative, which sent money to cut crime while adding
social programs such as tutoring for children.

The initiative includes: $250,000 for five police officers and
equipment, $50,000 to expand community policing efforts, $50,000 for a
summer youth program, $50,000 for an educational tutoring program and
$200,000 to improve infrastructure in areas that could support
affordable housing.

"I think we need more officers if we're going to provide serious hard
drug interdiction in all our neighborhoods," said Mumpower, who had
proposed a $750,000 plan in May that focused on adding more police.

The majority of council deemed his plan too heavy-handed and lacking
in community input and social remedies.

"It's not just about police," Mumpower said. "It's never been just
about police. But that's what you build on. That's the
foundation."

Rick Curtis, a professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in
New York, said the addition of more police to fight crime works to
some degree. "Their mere presence reduces crime because people know
they can't do things right in front of police."

But what these neighborhoods really need are things to bring them out
of poverty, Curtis said.

"Pretty much anything can work in the short-term," Curtis said. "But
for the long term, each situation calls for custom-design strategy."

Hogan's plan calls for collaboration among police, the Asheville
Housing Authority and residents to suppress the drug activity.

Hogan's main goal is to suppress all street-level drugs, not just the
drugs in public housing. Once they get the drug dealers out of one
area, the dealers usually find a new place to sell, Hogan said.

Too many people spotlight only the public housing complexes as drug
havens, said Gardner, the Public Housing Residents Council president.

"But dealers are everywhere," Gardner said. "If you move them out of
one place, they'll go somewhere else."

On top of adding five more officers, Hogan wants to adhere to strict
rules that are already enforced in the public housing complexes, such
as the threat to evict residents who open their homes and
neighborhoods for drug sales.

Reaction from public housing residents has been mixed and some say
they feel like prisoners in their own homes with all the rules.

"They tell you how many guests you can have at one time in your own
home," Deaverview resident Carolyn Webber said. "If you don't have a
sticker on your car, it will get towed."

Webber said she approves of the plan, "as long as police are fair."
Police are sometimes viewed as racist and unfair, she said.

"They love to fingerpoint," said Otis Edgerton, who has family in
Hillcrest Apartments. "But they need to be finding something for these
young folks to do."

As part of an initiative to build stronger relationships between
citizens and police, Hogan has asked officers to be assigned directed
patrol activities where they will go into various neighborhoods, get
out of their vehicles, and informally meet and talk with residents.

Hogan said he would not tolerate mistreatment. "Our hope is that
through interaction we can build trust."

Hogan also is suggesting a citizens police academy be placed in one of
the public housing complexes where residents can learn more about
police and what they do.

City Council has put money aside for social programs such as tutoring
and mentoring programs in the public housing complexes. Hogan plans to
work in collaboration with other agencies to establish these programs.

Officers also will be posing as drug dealers to arrest buyers and
develop multiple cases leading to the arrest of numerous drug dealers
at one time.

"We try to do it a different way everyday," said Lt. Tim Splain, who
is heading up the new drug suppression team and led the August
operation in Deaverview.

Once dealers are arrested, they often quickly return to the public
housing complexes after posting bail.

But with help from District Attorney Ron Moore and U.S. Attorney for
the Western District of North Carolina Gretchen Shappert, Hogan plans
to strengthen punishments for drug-related crimes.

"Laws are laws," Hogan said. "But we are going to prosecute with the
harshest sentence possible."

Webber said some dealers sell drugs not because they want to, but
because they have to.

"They have to feed themselves and their families," Webber said. "There
is no job for them, nothing for them to do."

"I have an 18-year-old son. And I will not lose him to the streets,"
Webber said.

There are still people dealing drugs without feeling any threat by
police, Hogan said. With the enforcement of his new plan, Hogan hopes
to see that changed.

"I can't say we will cure the drug problem," Hogan said. "But we will
significantly suppress drug activity so that a good quality of life
will return to the neighborhoods."