COP FIGHTS DRUG WAR ON A QUIET STREET

Bernard Butler remembers his early days as a gung-ho New Orleans street
cop, pumping informants for tips, chasing drug slingers through
graffiti-filled breezeways, racking up so many arrests his fingers would
cramp from the paperwork.

He was one of those officers always scaling fences or whipping out his
nightstick, but he also took time to chat up the old-timers and
stoop-sitters, the people who could tell which of the neighborhood hoodlums
were ringleaders and which were followers. When a citizen on Butler's beat
had a problem, he addressed it, even if it meant knocking a few heads.

But about six years ago, Butler was confronted with a problem that
stretched his skills -- and patience -- to the limit.

Crack cocaine had infiltrated a quiet, working-class corner of Lower
Algiers known as "the Cutoff." The scene brought a parade of unfamiliar
cars at all hours, rap music played at ear-splitting volume and drug
paraphernalia was scattered in the narrow alleys between the houses. But
this was different: The activity was sprouting in his own neighborhood, and
the complaint came from his mother.

"It's a nightmare," Visie Butler told her son. "I feel like a prisoner in
my own home."

It was Bernard's house, too, so he moved out of his apartment and in with
his mom to help restore the peace. After doing some surveillance, he
concluded that the hassles could be traced to the young man living in the
modest brick house directly across the street.

James Corey Williams, nicknamed "Bouncer," lived there with his parents and
younger brother and, sometimes, his girlfriend. In 1997, when he was 19, he
was convicted of possession of marijuana. Butler's 18 years of police
experience, however, told him that the disruption on his street wasn't
being caused by a guy simply smoking weed. Heavier drugs had to be involved.

That's when the drug war on the 3600 block of Kent Drive began, a war which
would come to demonstrate that having a cop on the block guarantees nothing.

In the beginning, it was Visie Butler yelling across the street to
Williams, and Williams yelling back. Soon, the fight embroiled most of the
block. Neighbors begged Officer Butler to do something. Butler urged his
fellow officers to investigate. For more than two years, nothing happened,
the drug traffic continued, and Butler found himself in a battle of wills
he never could have foreseen.

"Here I am, a cop, and I'm calling the law because my mom's fighting with
the guy in the street," Butler said. "For a while there I was really
disgusted. It didn't seem like I could get anyone's attention. The word on
the street was that some of the best rocks in Algiers were being sold
across the street from a cop's house."

Eventually, Williams, now 24, was arrested for allegedly selling crack out
of his home. He has pleaded innocent and awaits trial. But that was not the
end of the story. The Butlers and their neighbors soon found out that
restoring their formerly tranquil neighborhood was a marathon, not a
sprint. Their struggle involved an overtaxed police department, an
unpredictable criminal justice system and a youth culture that, to them,
seemed hell-bent on havoc.

For Bernard Butler, being a police officer only complicated matters.

Golden boy to whipping boy

Long before he was a cop, Butler was a West Bank boy, born and bred, a star
track athlete at O. Perry Walker who later became well-known in the
neighborhood for his crawfish boils. When he joined the New Orleans Police
Department, he was the pride of his family. Among his fellow officers, he
was known as a "cowboy," an aggressive street cop who thrived on the
adrenaline of making arrests. Lots of them.

In 1992, he was named the Police Officer of the Year, by the local chapter
of Veterans of Foreign Wars. When he worked in the drug-infested 6th
District, he patrolled the worst areas, specializing in rounding up
street-corner drug dealers. Butler has a scrapbook of his exploits,
including awards, press clippings and letters of praise from citizens. In a
1988 letter to the police chief, one resident credited Butler and his
partner, Michael Petty, with cleaning up a drug hangout in the Magnolia
public housing complex.

The pair, she wrote, has been patrolling that area regularly and made
several arrests, "making the hallway safer for my parents and the other
older people who live in that building."

Butler's aggressive approach, however, was not always a boost to his
career. In 1995, Butler participated in a theft investigation in which he
was the victim, a serious departmental violation. He was fired over the
matter in early 1996, about the same time things were heating up on Kent
Drive. Stripped of his paycheck and worried about his mom, he moved back
home while he appealed his dismissal.

What he found tore his heart out.

Visie Butler had grand plans for the house her son helped her buy.
Envisioning the perfect sanctuary for family get-togethers, she put in a
patio, a fancy white railing and backyard playground equipment for the
grandchildren. She even painted the house fuschia to make it more festive.

When Butler returned home, he found that the nearest his mother got to her
patio was when she stared at it -- fuming -- from inside the house. The
playground equipment was rarely used. A porch swing she wanted to install
for herself remained packed in its box.

"My mother would tell me how bad it was and I thought she was
exaggerating," Butler said. "But when I moved back, I saw that things were
getting out of hand."

Like his mother, Butler first tried the diplomatic approach, talking to
Williams, talking to his parents, talking to the youths who loitered in the
area. Nothing changed. In fact, it got worse. At one point, somebody broke
the streetlights on the block, presumably to make it easier to buy and sell
drugs, under cover of darkness. Butler got the city to fix the lights, but
a few weeks later, somebody cut the wires and the street went dark again.
Butler responded by installing 500-watt floodlights on his house and
pointing them toward the street.

Still, the drug activity continued. So Butler called the police. When he
didn't get a response, he wrote to the commander of the 4th District, which
covers Algiers. When he didn't get a response, he urged neighbors to call
and write. Every now and then, a patrol car would respond to an individual
complaint about noise or some other nuisance, but allegations of drug
dealing went unaddressed.

One woman, who requested anonymity, said she couldn't understand why her
police officer neighbor was so powerless.

"We have a policeman on the block, but that hasn't slowed things down one
bit," she said. "I called the police all time and I went to Bernard
numerous times. It's ridiculous. We shouldn't have to take this."

Butler began to wonder whether he was being ignored because of his status
as a fired police officer. He said he reached a low point when he told a
4th District officer about his predicament and the officer responded, "You
should move."

"Whenever I got a complaint like that, I handled it," Butler said. "It made
me kind of bitter to think back on all the people I helped, but here I
couldn't get help for myself."

Complaints, arrest, raid

Assistant Superintendent Marlon Defillo said the Police Department gets
complaints about neighborhood drug dealers every day. Some are fresh
complaints. Some are from citizens who call again and again. None are
ignored, Defillo said, but the department simply doesn't have the officers
to address each case as it arises.

"Some districts are inundated with complaints and a lot of citizens want
quick solutions," he said. "But it doesn't always work out that way. You
have to evaluate each case and prioritize based on the resources you have
available."

While Defillo didn't have specific information about the 3600 block of Kent
Drive, he said all calls are taken seriously and Butler's dismissal did not
have a bearing on the situation. Butler was inclined to agree after he got
his job back in 1998 but there was still no action on his street.

Butler's return to the force meant he had to step lightly. In reinstating
Butler, the Civil Service Commission ruled that while his punishment was
excessive, his actions were clearly wrong.

"I got fired once already for getting involved in my own case, so I had to
be careful. All I could do was keep calling the police," Butler said. Back
in the fold, Butler made direct appeals to commanders in the 4th District.
He was optimistic when he found out that a federal gang task force had
spent months investigating crack dealers in Algiers, but was disappointed
all over again when a subsequent roundup in September 1999 netted about 30
suspects, but not Williams.

But in July 2000, Butler and his neighbors got the response they were
waiting for. Williams was arrested and booked with possession with intent
to distribute cocaine.

According to a police report, a narcotics detective placed Williams under
surveillance and "observed a moderate amount of traffic in and around the
residence, including what appeared to be several hand-to-hand
transactions." Then the detective used a confidential informant to make two
crack purchases from Williams, the report states.

Finally, on July 21, a narcotics task force staged the 4:30 a.m. raid that
ended with Williams being shot in the back of the thigh and buttocks when
he confronted officers with a .357-caliber pistol. Police said they shot
Williams when he ignored their commands to drop the weapon. After a search,
officers confiscated seven rocks of cocaine and $277 hidden in a sock,
according to the report.

Williams said he pulled the gun because he thought burglars were breaking
into his house. He admitted he had a few rocks of crack, but said it was a
small amount for his own use. He said the money came from the sale of pit
bull terriers that he raised in his back yard.

Cycle continues

Williams declined a request for an interview, but his attorney, Gary
Wainwright, described the bust as "an outrage."

"Mr. Williams may be a recreational user of cocaine, but he is not a
seller," Wainwright said. "The money seized from his house was $277. That's
supposed to be a large amount of cash? I'd say the policeman who lives
across the street is doing everything in his power to make life miserable
for Mr. James Corey Williams. Let's not forget, this guy was shot twice in
the back."

After Williams was released on bond, he went home to recover. Wainwright
filed a civil lawsuit on his behalf, arguing that the raid and the shooting
violated Williams' civil rights. He portrayed his client as the real victim
of the neighborhood battle.

"It's a feud, but it's a one-way feud," Wainwright said. "It's more like a
reign of terror, actually. Just because somebody's a policeman, it doesn't
give them a right to control the entire block."

After Williams' arrest, the street grew quiet for a spell, but only for a
spell, according to the Butlers and their neighbors. Gradually, they said,
the loud music, the caravan of cars and the drug activity revved up again.
And so did the calls to the police.

Capt. Steven Nicholas, commander of the 4th District, said he was surprised
when the complaints resumed.

"We'll often be called to same block if a particular neighborhood is
prolific for drug dealing," he said. "But this neighborhood is different.
It's middle class. There aren't a lot of ramshackle houses. That's what
makes the case so unusual."

With Williams' first cocaine case tied up in court and the civil lawsuit
pending, Nicholas said he forwarded the complaints to the Special
Operations Division. "I didn't want the same officers to be involved
again," he said. "I wanted to avoid any appearance of impropriety, like we
were harassing the guy or something."

About a year later, on Feb. 25, the Special Operations Division took
action. According to a police report, a detective watched as Williams sold
a piece of crack to a customer who knocked on his front door. Again,
Williams was arrested and booked with possession with intent to distribute
cocaine, but released on bond a short time later. He is awaiting trial in
both cases.

"It's amazing," Nicholas said, "that he gets busted, gets shot, and he's
back there getting arrested for the same thing. But what more can we do? We
dedicate our resources to making an arrest, but at that point we have to
turn him over to the system."

Peace seems restored

Wainwright, too, is amazed. With all the big-time dope dealers in the city,
he wonders, why is the Police Department so focused on his client?
Williams, who recently got a job at a fast-food chicken outlet, should be
the least of the NOPD's concerns, he said.

"It's totally bizarre," Wainwright said. "What are we going to do, win the
war on drugs a gram of coke at a time? I think this is clearly retaliatory.
This is about a cop who doesn't like teen-agers, plain and simple. His mom
lives there and he wants to turn the street into a park."

Wainwright said he plans to take both cases to trial if he can't get them
thrown out first.

Back on Kent Drive, residents said things have grown quiet, but they've
seen lulls before. There are still suspicious young people hanging out in
the neighborhood, but they seem to have relocated to adjacent streets.
Butler still spots out-of-place cars creeping up and down Kent. Sometimes
he'll bang on the hood and yell, "No drugs here. Go away."

He is, however, encouraged by the relative peace on his block, encouraged
that police responded to his calls, even though the delays seemed to last
forever. Butler wrote a letter last week to Police Superintendent Richard
Pennington, praising Capt. Nicholas and the Special Operations Division.

"In the past I had complained to department members but got little or no
assistance," he wrote. "For a time, my neighbors felt they were forgotten
and not cared about. Thanks to a job well done . . . my neighborhood has a
newfound respect for the New Orleans Police Department."

Visie Butler finally has put up her porch swing, but she wants to wait a
while, to see what happens with Williams in court, before she uses it.