A BIG DRUG PROBLEM IN A SMALL TOWN

CHARLESTON, Mo. - Down on Elm Street, by the faded asphalt basketball
courts and soybean fields that stretch out as far as you can see, a drug
trade took root and flourished.

People swarmed to this small town in deep southeastern Missouri. They came
from just over the river in Illinois and other communities to buy crack
rocks and bags of weed. And amid dim prospects and few jobs, dozens of town
residents eagerly met the surging demand. Dealers multiplied.

"It was crazy out here, you know what I'm saying?" said resident Lewis
Fitzpatrick, 22, as he walked down a street that once hummed with action.
"It was crazy out here."

But quiet now fills these open spaces.

Forty-five residents were charged Monday with dealing drugs. That was after
a summertime sting netted drug distribution charges for 103 residents.

It is an astounding number of arrests for a town as small as Charleston,
population 4,700. Almost all the arrests were from the black population,
which makes up nearly half the town.

As a result, a generation of the community's young black men appears to
have been swept away.

"It's like a ghost town," said resident Doris Williams, who had a sister,
two nephews and two cousins nabbed in Monday's raids.

Etched out of southeastern Missouri's rich farmland, Charleston quietly
harbored a drug problem for years. It grew from users and low-level dealers
slinging $20 worth of crack, to players selling an eighth-to a
quarter-ounce of the drug, officials say.

And then, in just months, city police and a regional drug task force tried
to undo it all. The results were dramatic and, to some, devastating. And in
the process, old wounds and worries about race bubbled to the surface.

Caught in the middle was a black police chief determined to clean up the
town. Many black residents tottered between feelings of hurt and hope. But
everyone in town seems to agree on the underlying problem: an acute lack of
opportunity for young people. It's a story being played out in small towns
across the country.

In Charleston, the story has an uneasy urgency.

The town sits not far from the confluence of the Mississippi and Ohio
rivers. It also straddles the intersection of two far more relevant streams
of transit - Interstates 55 and 57. That prime location has failed to draw
retail or industry. But law enforcement officials believe it made the city
attractive to drug dealers.

"This is a little city sitting here between St. Louis and Memphis, just
down from Chicago going south, and crime likes to totally take over small
cities," said Charleston police Sgt. Anthony Moody.

Most residents did not realize how deep crack cocaine had burrowed into
their town. Like many cities large and small, Charleston is divided. Most
of the blacks live in the West End, home to many of the town's 280
federally funded housing units. The North End, home to Victorian houses, is
almost entirely white and insulated from the drug dealings.

"Most of Charleston is in denial about what's going on," said county
prosecutor Jennifer Raffety.

The last time race achieved substantial notice here was in 1994, when 150
black residents marched to the old county jail. They demanded to know why a
black man had died in police custody. It was ruled a suicide. The crowd
broke shop windows and stoned cars. Police fired warning shots into the air.

No matter where they live, residents have suffered in a local economy that
refuses to improve. Most people work on farms. The No. 2 employer is Gates
Rubber Co., which has been scaling back in recent years. The Wal-Mart store
closed in 2000. A new maximum-security prison on the edge of town hasn't
been the boon civic leaders had hoped.

Charleston is the seat of Mississippi County, one of the poorest in the
state. Sheriff Larry Turley calls such depressed areas "welfare counties."
The drugs - whether it's methamphetamine or crack - are a sign of desperation.

"If you have employment that pays good wages, then you don't have the
temptations," Turley said.

But Charleston is holding on. It comes alive in mid-April for the annual
Dogwood-Azalea Festival. The town swells with visitors who want to tour the
old homes and see the blooming flowers. The Charleston High School Blue
Jays have won nine state 3A basketball championships since 1975. Main
Street's storefronts are filled with small businesses.

"It's as Southern as any little town you'll find," said Claudia Arington,
executive director of the chamber of commerce.

Hollywood once came to Charleston. The 1962 movie "Shame" was shot here.
Roger Corman directed a young William Shatner in the tale of a racist man
who incites riots against court-ordered school integration.

As a young girl, Arington was an extra in a courtroom scene. But residents
are not proud of their brush with fame. "They made us out to be such a
racist town," Arington said.

Ava Nell Smith, 68, remembers the Charleston of her youth as a boom town.
Three cotton gins were going. Brown Shoe Co. had a factory. There were two
hotels and two theaters. Trains - a sure sign of commerce - regularly
rumbled through town.

Today, the cotton gins are gone. The shoe factory is shut down. The one
theater left is closed, with "For Sale" posted on its marquee. The train
tracks were pulled out years ago.

"I miss hearing the trains," Smith said.

Smith, a librarian, does not see the same opportunities for the current
crop of young people.

"They have to get out of here and find something in their lives," she said.
"Because there's not a lot going on here."

New chief, new mission

The night after last week's raid, an unusually heavy fog fell on
Charleston. A police officer patrolling the West End could barely make out
the homes lining the street. There was nothing to see, in any case. The
police radio barely crackled, just as Sgt. Moody, back at the station,
expected. Two years ago, Moody pushed for the city to crack down on its
drug dealers.

"After a while it gets so blatant you have to do something," Moody explained.

But, he said, none of it would have happened without the Chief.

Everyone calls him Chief. Chief Paul Johnson. He is the first black police
chief in Charleston's history. His actual title is director of public
safety, head of a 15-officer department that both makes arrests and fights
fires. Like some other small towns, Charleston was forced long ago to
consolidate police and fire services to save money.

Johnson appears solidly built in his crisp white uniform shirt. He has a
small mustache. When he smiles, he keeps his lips tight over his teeth. His
voice is soft, barely above a whisper.

His father was a farmer and Baptist minister in Mississippi County. His
mother took care of a doctor's home. Although Johnson grew up in nearby
Scott County, he passed his summers in Charleston with an older sister. Her
husband was a city police officer.

Johnson spent many hot summer days playing basketball with another child,
LaMont Frazier. They gathered each day on the courts next to an old school
building.

"Me and LaMont Frazier would start early in the morning, and when it got
too dark, we'd go inside and play in the gym until 9, 10 o'clock at night,"
he recalled with a gentle smile.

Frazier went on to play basketball at the University of Missouri at
Columbia. Johnson pursued a career in law enforcement. In May 2002, Johnson
was appointed to lead Charleston's public safety department. He noticed
drug dealers congregating around the basketball courts where he played as a
child. He took it personally. He launched "Operation No Tolerance."

"I made a promise, a promise to clean up the streets of Charleston,"
Johnson said.

Running an undercover operation in a small town is nearly impossible -
everyone knows everyone else. But early last year, Sgt. Moody saw an
opportunity. The department had a job opening. Moody decided the new hire
would immediately go undercover to make drug deals. Last June, everything
fell into place.

Johnson said his goal is to rid the town of a rampant crack problem. It
appears to be working. Drug-related car break-ins and burglaries have
dropped from 10 or 15 a month to just one or two.

"I have some who say I'm targeting the black community. But I believe that
in order to get rid of the problem, you have to get to the root of the
problem," Johnson said. "Right now, the drug problem is - was - in the
black community. Heavy."

It's a different story in the predominantly white county. Meth is a serious
problem out there, Sheriff Turley said. Deputies have been busy cracking
down. Three weeks ago, eight people were arrested in the small town of
Dorena for allegedly cooking meth.

"If you make crack, it's black. If you make meth, it's white. It's that
simple," Turley said, holding his trademark pipe in his hand. Deputies and
police officers are fighting a drug war, Turley said. "Race ain't got
nothing to do with it."

Facing the divide

Two nights after the raid, the Charleston City Council held its regular
meeting. Nothing important was on the agenda, but there was plenty on
people's minds.

Two dozen people packed into a tiny hearing room in city hall. "I've never
seen this many people here," a woman whispered.

The Rev. Steve Betts was the first to speak. He was upset by an article in
the local Mississippi County Times. The story carried a quote by a
councilman that Betts interpreted to mean that people living outside the
West End should not worry about that area's problems.

"I'm not a West End resident," Betts said, "I'm a Charlestonian."

Arthur Cassell stood up next. Cassell is a letter carrier and president of
the local NAACP chapter. He wore a gray-blue fedora and tie to the council
meeting, one of the few people dressed so formally in this rural area. The
comment concerned him, too.

"Charleston is one city, not a divided city," he said.

Tommy Baker applauded the recent raids.

"I think everybody in town is well-pleased to see some action," he said.

The meeting returned to regular business.

After the meeting, Cassell and the NAACP vice president searched out a
visitor to talk about the recent raids. They described the gutting of a
neighborhood. Men over 40 are still around. But those from 15 to 30 have
gone to jail or are in danger of it. The problem is rooted in a sickly
local economy, they said. There is nothing for young men to do - no jobs,
no recreation, scant opportunities.

Fred Jennings, the chapter's vice president, is a self-employed
construction worker. But two of his sons were unable to find jobs. They
were among those arrested Monday. Now the two men, ages 20 and 21, face the
possibility of lengthy federal drug sentences.

"The only real business we have here is drugs," Jennings said.

Cassell added: "We're losing a lot of young black men into the system."

Orange suits, worried faces

The next morning, 19 people arrested in Monday's raids made their first
appearance at the Mississippi County Courthouse. The sudden influx of
prisoners led to a shortage of shackles.

One by one, the prisoners in orange jumpsuits walked into the second-floor
courtroom to learn their bail and hear the charges.

The county courthouse is a modern facility, built in 1998. Seven years ago
last week, the old courthouse was torched. The case remains unsolved.

At least 60 people sat in the gallery pews and stood along the back wall. A
public defender said he'd never seen it so crowded. Prosecutors said they
felt an unusual tension in the room.

Most of the visitors were there to support the men and women in orange
jumpsuits. Girlfriends, mothers, children and distant relatives tried to
catch a glimpse of their loved ones, and hear if the bail would be reduced.
The crowd heckled at times.

"We were clearly not the home team," prosecutor Raffety said later.

When the hearings ended, people poured into the hallway. "Don't cry, baby,
don't cry," an elderly woman pleaded with a woman as she hugged her. Most
looked numb.

"It's not the same," said Williams, who lost so many of her family members
in the raids. "They took the people who were taking care of the children,
paying the bills."

Kathy Washington, a nurse's aide, came to see her boyfriend, DeCarlos Clemons.

She blamed the trouble on a lack of jobs.

"They just did the best way they could to survive," Washington said.

With so many alleged dealers in jail, Raffety said her office can expect
that the next wave of cases will be for failure to pay child support.

Adjusting to the quiet

Fitzpatrick came to Charleston hoping to get away.

He arrived four years ago to live with extended family and escape the big
city lures of Chicago. Most of his problems followed him. He smoked pot
every day. He dealt drugs. Last year, he pleaded guilty to a felony drug
distribution charge after being caught with six wrapped bags of marijuana.
He spent 120 days in jail.

"You live the same life no matter where you live," Fitzpatrick says.

Out of jail, Fitzpatrick is again trying to go straight.

He's given up the drugs. But he doesn't have a job. It's tough for a felon
to find work here, he says. Even fast food joints won't hire him. He can't
leave - he's on probation through 2008. It all wears on him, the constant
hunt for opportunities he's not sure exist. But he hasn't given up yet.

"You get tired. You get so tired. Because you call back and back . . ."
Fitzpatrick says.

He walks down Elm Street, his hands shoved deep in the pockets of his black
jeans. He doesn't have any place to go right now. He's just out with some
friends. Many of the familiar faces from the neighborhood are gone, locked
up. He misses them. But Fitzpatrick is glad for the change brought by the
raids. He also realizes the town needs much more.

Residents know the arrests tackled only part of the problem. It might be
the easy part. Instilling hope in a place that has gone for so long without
- - that is the real challenge.

For now, it's quiet out on the streets of Charleston. Fitzpatrick likes the
quiet.