DRUGS, CRIMES OFTEN LINKED

As convicted burglar Arthur Garfield pleaded guilty in court last
month to five break-ins at villas and condominiums on Hilton Head
Island, he told the judge he stole because his crack cocaine addiction
was out of control. If local law enforcement officials are correct,
Garfield is not alone.

Like the numbers from other parts of the country, a high percentage of
crime in Beaufort County is drug-or alcohol-related, said Beaufort
County Sheriff P.J. Tanner. About 85 percent of both local and
national crime -- everything from theft and robberies to domestic
violence and murder -- can be tied to drugs or alcohol, Tanner said.
The statistic includes crimes committed under the influence of drugs
and alcohol, and disputes over drugs where those involved are not
necessarily under the influence, as well as actual arrests for drugs.

In Beaufort County, the drug of choice most often associated with
burglaries and robberies, Tanner said, is crack -- a relatively cheap,
smokable form of cocaine. The Beaufort County Sheriff's Office made
arrests for 130 crack-related incidents last year in southern Beaufort
County, ranging from simple possession to manufacturing.

But that doesn't even begin to explain the extent of the problem,
since addicts will rob or steal support a habit, Tanner said.

Of all convicted jail inmates, 13.3 percent committed their crimes to
buy drugs, according to a 1999 study by the U.S. government's Bureau
of Justice Statistics. The number was 24.4 percent of those convicted
of property crimes, the study said.

Garfield, 39, confessed to 15 burglaries and said he shoplifted
constantly from supermarkets to fuel his addiction, according to a
police report made after his arrest in January. In court, he told the
judge that he took some of the TVs, VCRs and other goods he had stolen
and exchanged them with a dealer for drugs.

"It's not uncommon for somebody to be in a predicament and want to
lean on a drug addiction for involvement in criminal activity," Tanner
said.

Crack is bought and sold in units called "rocks," similar in size and
appearance to hard-rock candy. Rocks sell for about $50 and last for
up to five smokes, Tanner said, meaning that users can have a habit
from $50 to $500 a day, depending on how addicted they are.

"I don't know a lot of people who are abusers of crack who earn $500 a
day or can even afford to spend $50 a day," he said.

Although serious abuse problems exist with other drugs, like the
prescription narcotic OxyContin, the patterns for associated criminal
behavior differs, Tanner said. Abusers of prescription drugs are more
likely to forge prescriptions or commit some other form of
white-collar crime, he said.

The sheriff -- who said he made the county's first ever crack bust in
Beaufort when he was a deputy in September 1986 -- said the drug has
since "leveled out to be a serious problem." That was several years
after the drug hit urban centers like Los Angeles, New York and Miami,
which began to see grave problems in the early 1980s.

"Once we knew what we were dealing with, it spread like wildfire
through the north part of the county," Tanner said.

The trend, with periodic dips and rises, has since evened out, with
use high on both sides of the of the Broad River, he said. By
contrast, heroin use, common here in the late '70s and early '80s,
declined rapidly after the AIDS epidemic hit, Tanner said, with users
apparently afraid to share needles for intravenous use. Meth, or
methamphetamine, which has plagued other parts of the country and even
the state, has, thus far, not hit hard in Beaufort County.

But crack has been a different story.

"It's one thing to be experimenting with something that doesn't have
the same addiction potential as crack cocaine," said Dick
Vallandingham, director of preventative services for the Beaufort
County Alcohol and Drug Abuse Department.

Notorious for getting people hooked -- even after first-time use --
crack's hold over an addict is extremely difficult, though not
impossible, to break.

"The problem with treating people for any drug, particularly crack, is
that there are a lot of things going on around them," he said.

This can include criminal or abusive behaviors, which become clustered
and treated as a whole.

"Eventually, you have to confront them. Give them professional help or
end the support," he said. "It's a terribly hard decision to make, and
it goes against reason."

The Rev. Ben Williams of Mount Calvary Baptist Church has witnessed
the ravages of the drug on some members of his congregation over the
past 15 years. Some of them, he said, won the battle, though his
approach differs from Vallandingham's.

"Hostility toward the user doesn't help," he said, calling instead for
"unconditional love and patience."

"Until they make the spiritual success, there is no success as far as
I'm concerned," he said.

For Williams, this means "coming to grips with the spiritual change
along with the counseling they receive."