ACTION SOUGHT TO DERAIL PUSHERS

Council Member, HURA Official Seeking Solutions Despite Cutbacks

HUNTINGTON -- A member of Huntington City Council says officials must act
now to solve a longtime drug problem in Huntington's Fairfield West
neighborhood.

Reports of students on their way home from school passing drug dealers on
street corners injected a new measure of urgency for a solution to an
ongoing problem in the neighborhood.

Councilman Larry Patterson and John Queen, a member of the Huntington Urban
Renewal Authority, spoke about the problem during City Council's meeting
Jan. 28. Patterson also pointed out the problem to the mayor and council
this past August, but has noticed no improvement, he said.

Huntington Police Chief Gordon Ramey II said the police department is doing
all it can with limited resources to monitor the area. Huntington has
suffered budget cutbacks the past two years, and the police force is down
to 94 officers from 107 in 1999.

But Patterson and Queen said the city must find a long-term answer for
better addressing the problem, regardless of cutbacks.

Drugs are not new to Fairfield West, an area identified by city leaders and
law enforcement officials for years as a hot spot. The pockets of activity
vary, but frequent areas include portions of Charleston and Artisan
avenues; 17th and 18th streets and 8th, 9th and 12th avenues, Patterson said.

Queen is particularly concerned about activity he said he noticed last
month along 12th Avenue between 17th and 18th streets as children from
Spring Hill Elementary walked home from school.

"At 2:45 p.m., there were 15 drug dealers on a corner, and prostitutes on
the others," Queen said, during City Council's meeting. "I counted 27 kids
who had to walk past this."

After Queen told Mayor David Felinton about what he saw, the mayor
instructed the Huntington Police Department to patrol the area when school
is dismissed, Felinton said.

"This is what we did immediately when it came to our attention about the
children," Felinton said. "I plan to get in touch with the principal, and I
think we can brainstorm with the principal and the police chief."

Pam Bailey, principal of Spring Hill Elementary, refused to comment Monday.

Although Felinton gave instructions for extra patrol, there might have been
several days last week when it didn't occur, Ramey said. The area had not
been monitored because of a miscommunication within the police department,
Ramey said. As of Monday, the problem should have been corrected, he said.

"The lieutenant didn't realize we wanted (an extra patrol) there every day
as long as the mayor saw fit," Ramey said. "He just thought that was
supposed to occur if he had an extra person."

The Walk Home

No patrol car was visible Thursday along Hall Avenue, where the school is
located, or at the intersections of 12th Avenue and 17th and 18th streets.
As children left the school that day, they walked in groups to their homes.

"A lot of the parents around here emphasize to the kids that they walk in
groups," said Donna Gilkerson, a grandmother of a fifth-grader at Spring
Hill and a seventh-grader at Cammack Middle School.

Parents and grandparents in the neighborhood try to walk with their
children, drive them to and from school, or arrange for them to ride with
friends, Gilkerson said.

Areas of the neighborhood with narrow streets and dogleg curves are ideal
for street-level pushers, Ramey said.

"It makes for an easy escape route," he said. "Once we pull up, they dart
between a couple houses, down an alley, and they're out of there."

As children walked along 12th Avenue Thursday, several men stood at a pay
phone at 18th Street. Closer to 17th Street, a white Ford pulled up and
another man leaned into the car's window.

"People are always out on the street, stopping cars and hopping in and
out," said Monica Hill, a parent of a third-grader at Spring Hill.

When a group of four girls walked along 18th Street Thursday, one of them
noticed a 40-ounce bottle of King Cobra malt liquor sitting on a concrete
block beside the sidewalk. The open bottle was 2/3 full.

"Ah, they're drinking some Cobras, smoking some weed," one of the girls said.

Although parents are aware of the problem, because they live in the
neighborhood, they're careful about what they say. Many of the pushers
residents see are "neighborhood people," Ramey said.

"That doesn't mean it's any less of a threat or any less poisoning to the
minds of children," Ramey said. "But it's a known threat."

Other residents have adapted to the problem and become callous because it
has been there so long, Patterson said.

"It's the same thing as when you drive by a pothole every day," he said.
"Sooner or later, you learn to line up your car so you don't hit the
pothole. And then, pretty soon, you don't even know it's there. You drive
on by.

"It doesn't matter to me how long the problem has been there, we have to
deal with it now."

Searching For Solutions

One statement Patterson said he has heard enough is that the police force
is limited in what it can do because of cutbacks. Ramey said the force is
doing the best it can.

Because the number of officers has been cut, many officers spend their
shifts going from call to call, he said. The time officers have for patrol
and for making their presence known has been reduced, he said.

"We're doing the best we can with the resources we have," Ramey said.

"Maybe we need to re-evaluate our priorities and adjust our budget to that."

The city probably won't hire more officers in the foreseeable future,
Patterson said.

"It's up to us, including City Council, to figure out how to do this
right," Patterson said. "We can't rely on the thought that we don't have
any money. We need innovative ways to get the job done."

One solution Felinton said the city is researching is changing the number
of patrol zones. During the day, Huntington is divided into five zones, with a

patrol car in each zone, a cover car that responds to all the zones and
three to four cars for traffic patrol.

During the nightshift, the zones increase to seven, with one officer in
each zone and two cover cars -- one for the East End and another for the
West End, Ramey said. The problem now is that the Fairfield West zone is
too large, he said.

"I'd like to see more of a nine-zone plan," Ramey said. "Fairfield West
would be divided into two different zones. Now, it's one large zone, so
it's one officer and one cover car that also covers the whole east side of
town."

But creating additional zones would require more officers, Ramey said.

One thing that should help the drug problem in Fairfield West is that the
Huntington Violent Crime and Drug Task Force is back to full strength,
Ramey said. The task force is comprised of officers from Huntington and
Barboursville police departments, the Cabell County Sheriff's Department,
the West Virginia State Police and the FBI.

"We were probably a year without three full-time people, and people were
transitioning in and out," said Joe Ciccarelli, FBI supervisory senior
resident agent. In October, the task force returned to full strength, he said.

The task force works undercover to build cases against large groups of
dealers, Ramey said. But people are now complaining about the street-level
dealers they see near their homes, he said.

"When you cut eight officers from one year's force to the next, sometimes
this is the effect of that," Ramey said.

Patterson will continue to push the mayor, police department and City
Council for a solution to the problem, he said. Queen encourages the
community to do the same, he said.

"It's easy to say this is (the police chief's) problem or that it's a
police problem," Queen said. "It's a city problem. . I challenge everybody
to come together and try to solve this."