DRUGS IN THE OPEN

Open drug dealing and drug use along Tacoma Avenue South are driving
customers away from businesses, scaring patrons of the city's main library
and frightening workers as they walk to and from their jobs.

The problem of drug dealers hassling people at the Tacoma Public Library is
so severe, library director Susan Odencrantz wants a $100,000 security plan
to combat it.

She will ask the library board Wednesday to consider cutting hours, buying
fewer books or dipping into a trust fund to pay for more guards.

Some angry business owners say they've all but stopped calling police when
they see drug dealing in front of their stores because the lawbreakers are
gone by the time officers arrive.

"I walked up to the library the other day, and on the way, I witnessed three
drug deals," said attorney David N. Land, who has an office at 1326 Tacoma
Ave. S. "I don't know what the police are doing to solve the problem if it's
that bad."

Sonya Kellems and Ronica Brown, who soon plan to move their families into
neighborhood apartments, decided last Monday police needed their help "to
clean up the trash" - both human and material.

The pair showed up at the corner of South 13th Street and Tacoma Avenue
South waving hastily made posters with the hand-lettered messages, "No More
Drugs!!!" and "Mothers Against Drugs."

"I came down here (to the convenience store) with my children this morning,
and I saw four people in this doorway smoking crack," Kellems said. "My
children shouldn't have to know what cocaine is."

Kellems has three children, ages 3, 5 and 8, while Brown is the mother of
five kids ranging in age from 9 to 17. The two brought their cell phones
along on their poster-waving mission, frequently calling police to describe
drug deals going down.

"They came and arrested four of them," Brown said of the drug users.

The two also swept food wrappers, beer bottles, used needles, spent condoms
and other dangerous material off the sidewalk.

"We're as frustrated as the business owners are," admitted Lt. Fred Scruggs,
Tacoma police Sector 1 commander. The dealing sometimes goes on right in
front of the County-City Building, home to Tacoma police administration and
the Pierce County Sheriff's Department, some say.

Officers often can be seen cruising the area, working special emphasis
patrols and busting drug dealers. But Scruggs lamented, "The problem is a
little bit bigger than we are."

Police, prosecutors and other officials talked about action plans and
possible solutions with scores of concerned business owners and
representatives of the social and public service agencies that line Tacoma
Avenue South during a meeting last month.

Attorney John Spencer, Land's partner, wasn't impressed. Thieves recently
kicked in one of their windows, stole a computer and ransacked files.

Many of the people at the meeting "felt the police department didn't have an
answer for their inability to control the problem," Spencer said.

Calls for service along Tacoma Avenue South between South Seventh and South
23rd Streets rose 21.6 percent from 2000 to 2002, police statistics show.
Narcotics calls were up 40.6 percent.

Arrests for drug offenses were up 80.5 percent from 113 in 2000 to 204 in
2002.

The dealing and use of crack cocaine, methamphetamine and black tar heroin
picked up along Tacoma Avenue South over the last year and grew even more
frenetic during the last three or four months, business owners complain.

No one knows exactly why Tacoma Avenue South has become a stop-and-shop for
drugs, but police, business owners and social service workers speculate that
a growing population of homeless people in the area makes it easy for
dealers and users to blend into the loitering crowds.

In addition, several agencies that serve society's homeless, jobless and
mentally ill line that stretch of Tacoma Avenue South. Dealers are always
around when the food stamps come out, attorney Spencer said.

Police, meanwhile, complain that the overcrowded, overwhelmed jail and court
system, housed in the County-City Building, frequently spits out dealers and
users on bail before the cops who arrested them can finish their paperwork
and get back on the street.

Whatever the cause, business owners and others say, the drug dealing is a
needle-sharp lance rapidly puncturing the neighborhood's economy and
security:

* Dwindling customer numbers forced Nancy Hiller, owner of the Acme Tavern
at 1310 Tacoma Ave. S., to hang out the "closed" sign on Saturdays and
Sundays for the first time in 33 years. Hiller, who also cut back daily
hours, figures her business is down about 50 percent.

* Helen Myrick, executive director of the Greater Pierce County Community
Network, described scenes reminiscent of the Wild West after she tramped
around the area to do a homeless count in January. "I saw people selling
drugs, getting into their cars and shooting up and a lot of prostitution
without worry of law enforcement," she said.

* Maintenance crews pump library restroom plumbing every few weeks to clear
pipes clogged with hypodermic needles dumped by drug users who shoot up in
the stalls, said library director Odencrantz. Library security guards
routinely escort skittish patrons and employees the half-block from the
front doors to the parking lot entrance.

Many of the dealers are young, aggressive and fearless, Odencrantz told City
Council members during a recent study session. "The last time I confronted
somebody, the mirrors on my car were smashed," she said.

Officers in marked cars and unmarked cars, on bicycles and on foot regularly
patrol the area, Scruggs and Tacoma police spokesman Jim Mattheis said. They
conducted several special missions over the last two weeks, Scruggs said.

Undercover narcotics cops wander along Tacoma Avenue South and through
adjacent alleys and vacant lots when schedules and staffing allow it.

But budget cuts and retirements sliced the Tacoma police ranks in recent
years, and the losses haven't been made up, Mayor Bill Baarsma said.

"We have 35 positions vacant in the police department," he said. "The good
news is, we now have money in the budget to fill those positions." But he
said police have had trouble recruiting officers.

Baarsma knows first-hand of the problem's severity. He said he saw a drug
deal while walking from the parking lot to the library for the meeting on
area security last month.

As soon as more officers can be hired and trained, "I think we'll have more
men and women on a thin blue line ... on Tacoma Avenue South," the mayor
said.

That's good news to police officer Marty Price, who says more undercover
officers and bicycle patrols, in particular, could sneak up on dealers and
users and arrest them in the act.

That combination, along with uniformed cops in marked cars, has "made well
over 25 arrests of dealers and buyers since the first of the year" during
special-emphasis patrols in the area, Price said.

But the dealers are shrewd.

Sometimes they use three people to complete a drug deal - one to hold the
drugs, a second to hold the money, a third to actually make the pass from
dealer to customer, Price said. Others conceal themselves with two-way
radios two or three blocks away so they can alert sellers on the street to
oncoming police.

When marked cars come out, dealers and users melt into the woodwork, making
the street at least temporarily safer, but they're never far away, Price and
others say.

"These guys are like cockroaches. A cop comes around, and phht, they just
scatter," said Acme Tavern bartender Sandy Wilhot.

Then about 4 p.m. "the cracks open up in the wooden walls" around the street
"and they really start coming out again," Acme owner Hiller said.

Police are asking for more community participation in the law enforcement
effort, including more and frequent calls to police with details of the
illegal activity and suspects.

"We can't be there 24 hours a day, seven days a week. They have to be our
eyes and ears," Lt. Scruggs said of business owners, customers and
employees.

Tacoma Avenue South workers need lessons in how to recognize and report drug
deals with the level of detail police can use in making arrests, officer
Price said. Staff members are planning such classes at the library.
Suggestions from police include an e-mail alert system and a phone tree
similar to those used by downtown merchants when they spot crime in their
neighborhoods.

Expanding the Business Improvement Area that provides extra police and other
security downtown up the hill to Tacoma Avenue South "would make a big
difference up here," officer Price observed.

That pretty much squashed what had been a blossoming crime problem downtown,
said Price, who normally works as a bicycle patrol officer there.

But property owners pay fees for that service, and some along Tacoma Avenue
South wonder whether enough would agree to the assessments. "I shouldn't
have to pay for basic services," said Sherry Bockwinkel, who owns Ex-Press
Printing, Inc., at 1524 Tacoma Ave. S.

"As a property owner and a business owner, I'm someone who already pays a
lot of taxes," she added. "I should be able to run my business without
crimes going on in front of it."

Myrick of the Greater Pierce County Community Network, police spokesman
Mattheis and Price believe the answers aren't that simple.

Just like the adage of needing a whole village to raise a child, it will
take the whole community - cops, prosecutors, politicians, business owners,
customers, workers, social service agencies, drug treatment centers and just
plain residents - to solve the problem, Myrick thinks.

That holistic approach will help cure the problem, not push it somewhere
else in the city, Mattheis says.

Price, a 15-year Tacoma police officer, knows that, too. "These drugs have a
powerful hold on people," he said. "As long as there is money to be made,
the dealers are going to be down here."

Sidebar: Crime on Tacoma Avenue South

Chart shows statistics on calls for police and arrests along Tacoma Avenue
South from South Seventh Street to South 23rd Street during 2000 and 2002.

Category 2000 2002 Percent increase/decrease

Calls for service 3,559 4,328 +21.6 percent

Narcotics calls for service 510 717 +40.6 percent

Prostitution calls for service 235 278 +18.3 percent

Incidents resulting in arrests 396 569 +43.7 percent

Offenses involved in arrests 672 855 +27.2 percent

Arrests for drug offenses 113 204 +80.5 percent

Arrests for prostitution offenses 76 11 -85.5 percent

Sources: Law Enforcement Support Agency, Tacoma Police Department

Compiled by: Kris Sherman, The News Tribune

* Security will be discussed during a Library Board meeting at 5 p.m.
Wednesday, 1102 Tacoma Ave. S.