REQUIEM FOR IDEA

An ambitious Drug Enforcement Administration program that authorities hoped
would transform some of Mobile and Prichard's worst neighborhoods has
essentially come and gone, lacking the staying power it was supposed to have.

With federal agents withdrawn as scheduled from the initiative -- dubbed
Integrated Drug Enforcement Assistance, or IDEA -- local officials have
been left to thank them for their efforts and contemplate why the plan
didn't stick as solidly here as it has elsewhere.

"We didn't get the community involvement that we would like to have had,"
said Micah Miller, the DEA agent who administered the program locally. "But
we did have involvement back when we were there and the door was open. Now,
when we walked away, the door closed back up."

Authorities credit IDEA with locking up some of the area's biggest drug
dealers and with establishing better interaction between police in the two
cities. But they also admit that poor communication and budget constraints
have hobbled the project, and that it could be years before they pursue
some of the strategies it generated.

The comprehensive drug-reduction program was to incorporate beefed-up
enforce ment efforts, an increased emphasis on rehabilitation and
counseling and a broad effort to address the reasons people turn to drugs,
factors such as poverty, unemployment, illiteracy and family problems.

"This is a historical event in Mobile County," Prichard Police Chief Sammie
Brown said in December 2002 when federal officials announced the program
for Mobile and Prichard. "My heart is just jumping with joy."

Local politicians and police chiefs stood alongside then-DEA director Asa
Hutchinson that day as he told a "drug summit" of some 300 area
professionals and community activists at the Arthur R. Outlaw Mobile
Convention Center that Mobile and Prichard would be IDEA's fifth site in
the nation.

One of the program's defining traits, proponents said, was that instead of
simply infusing federal money, it was designed to incorporate existing
assets within the community, to help groups learn to cooperate more
efficiently.

"We're in a support role," Hutchinson told the convention center crowd.
"Any drug problems in this community are not gonna be solved by us, they're
gonna be solved by you."

The DEA was to launch the program at the seminar, shepherd it for a year
and then step back, leaving local authorities to maintain the momentum, as
had happened to a large degree in some of the previous IDEA sites.

North Charleston, S.C., for instance, saw 330 drug arrests attributed to
IDEA, and building inspectors there got together with National Guardsmen to
demolish derelict structures, Hutchinson said.

"There was a school newspaper in the community who noticed that the
students were complaining that drugs were not as easy to get," said
Hutchinson, who introduced and championed IDEA during his brief tenure
before moving to a top post with the Department of Homeland Security.

In contrast to cities like North Charleston, the IDEA steering committee
for Mobile and Prichard has stopped meeting altogether.

Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Mobile, told those at the December 2002 conference
that it was a "tribute" to Mobile and Prichard that they were chosen for
the project, but it was a somewhat dubious distinction. To qualify, the
cities had to show existing efforts to fight a drug infestation that could
potentially overwhelm them if they didn't receive outside help.

That aid came early last year when a roving DEA enforce ment team from New
Orleans made more than three dozen arrests of mid-level drug dealers here.
Agents followed that sweep by breaking up the so-called Gorilla Records
gang, which authorities said had been south Alabama's largest cocaine
distribution ring for several years. Mobile Police Chief Sam Cochran has
attributed the city's sharp drop in homicides last year to IDEA and a
separate federal firearms initiative.

"Those were some significant crooks that were targeted and convicted
because of (the program). IDEA gave us the extra resources to identify and
tackle some of these groups," said Sam Houston, resident agent in charge of
the DEA's Mobile office.

"The undercover portion of this project was huge," said Mobile Public
Safety Director Dick Cashdollar, the man most responsible for bringing IDEA
here. "It broke up several violent and well-established drug trafficking
rings working back and forth between Mobile and Prichard."

Cashdollar said drug-related violence in the area should remain quiet for a
while thanks to the IDEA arrests, adding that investigators expect to
charge more people soon in connection with the earlier cases.

"The demand is still there," he conceded. "And I'm certain that others will
move in to eventually fill the gap. But it will take them a long time to
gear up to the levels of distribution that were disrupted by that operation."

IDEA organizers pointed to a handful of other achievements, including:

A $60,000 grant that the Drug Education Council landed from the Robert Wood
Johnson Foundation, a medical philanthropy. The grant, which has already
concluded, paid for brochures advertising drug treatment options, and also
for training sessions to help local medical professionals spot substance
abusers and steer them toward treatment, according to Virginia Guy, the
Council's executive director.

"Can I say it was a direct result? Probably not," Guy said of IDEA's role
in obtaining the money. "But that coalition certainly strengthened our
application for the grant."

A proposal formed by Cashdollar's office, the Drug Education Council and
the Partnership for a Drug-Free Mobile to have athletes in the Mobile
County Public School System tested for illegal drugs. The U.S. Department
of Education announced last summer that it would award $2 million in grants
- -- averaging nearly $300,000 each -- to a handful of school districts for
drug testing. Local officials rushed to present a plan to the school board,
having lined up a company to do the testing.

The school board rejected the proposal 3-2 in August, citing concerns about
whether students should be tested before school employees are, among other
issues.

"They didn't have enough time to really study it, and I don't blame them,"
said George Krietemeyer, director of the Partnership.

Baldwin County Public Schools officials are "very interested" in drug
testing and could take preliminary steps to apply for federal money within
a few months, Krietemeyer said, adding that he hopes the Mobile board might
embrace a modified proposal later this year.

"It's expensive -- lot of kids, costs a lot of money," he acknowledged.
"But it's also very effective. It's a deterrent. Nobody wants to catch
kids. But we want to deter them."

Increased dialogue between city officials in Mobile and Prichard,
particularly the police departments.

"It really opened up a door for communication between Mobile and Prichard
to sort of mutually solve some of the problems that confront both
communities," said Houston, the DEA supervisor.

"I think Prichard PD and Mobile PD are talking together a little better
than they were before the project," Cashdollar offered.

Yet among the unfulfilled suggestions to rise out of the IDEA summit and
subsequent meetings was for Mobile police to train their Prichard
counterparts on community-oriented policing, a popular approach involving
officers interacting with neighborhood groups and business owners. Prichard
officials expressed interest in the training at some IDEA sessions, but
they have yet to accept it, Cashdollar acknowledged.

"That offer was placed on the table between Mobile and Prichard, and it is
still on the table," he said. "I know that the two PDs are anxious and
willing to work together on that. ... We're waiting to hear from Prichard."

Moreover, Cashdollar con ceded that Prichard officials have yet to take him
up on his offer to have Mobile's full-time grant writer assist them in
applying for funds.

Neither Prichard's Chief Brown nor Mobile's Chief Cochran returned phone
calls seeking comment.

In another IDEA notion left undone, both men publicly agreed to
Hutchinson's challenge at the drug summit to commit 15 percent of their
drug forfeiture funds to "demand reduction" efforts, namely treatment and
education programs.

Figures provided to the Mobile Register, however, show that while the
Mobile Police Department spent more than $20,000 on demand reduction --
almost all of it on its Police Explorers and other youth programs -- that
still amounted to less than 5 percent of its 2004 forfeiture fund expenditures.

Prichard's only expenditures from its meager forfeiture funds in fiscal
year 2004 were a little less than $400 to fix the air conditioning and a
tire on one of its patrol cars, along with about $100 in service charges to
the department's three accounts, according to Cindy Norwood, the city's
finance director. The department's forfeiture assets totaled about $1,100
as of September, Norwood said.

Mobile's Major David Wilhelm said Hutchinson's request came at a time when
police departments have been forced to do more with less, noting the 31.4
percent decline in his agency's funding from the city over the past three
years.

"We use those (drug) moneys to provide exactly what they were intended to,
which is equipment, training, that sort of thing," he said of the forfeited
drug proceeds.

Without the DEA's continued involvement, Cashdollar said, cash shortages
have stripped IDEA of much of its potential, at least for now.

"Money makes the world go round," he said, "and without some additional
resources above and beyond what can we provide locally, a lot of those
things we talked about are gonna have to wait until those days in the
future when the economy's a little better and we have more discretionary
dollars to put towards them."