RESIDENTS SAYS STING JUST MOVED DRUG DEALERS

Six months ago, heavily armed law enforcement officers swept through
Charleston's East Side neighborhood in a dramatic sting operation
designed to crush the area's rampant heroin trade.

The precisely plotted sweep, dubbed Operation Mayday, thrilled many
East Side residents. They saw it as a chance to reclaim their
neighborhood from the swarms of dealers who regularly operated on
street corners.

But six months later, many of the same residents say that the bust
hasn't brought about the kind of thorough and lasting changes they
had hoped to see. In fact, some say that Operation Mayday did little
more than shift much of the area's drug activity to a new location,
as dealers have simply reopened shop a few blocks away from what used
to be the heart of the city's drug trade.

Specifically, the action has moved from the area between Amherst and
South streets a few blocks north to Sheppard Street, several East
Side residents say.

"Whenever they clean up the street, it just moves to another street.
It's just like spraying for roaches," said the Rev. Warren Murdock,
pastor at Mount Carmel United Methodist Church on Cooper Street.
"Truly, something needs to be done."

Murdock and other church members say dealers have been lurking near
the church, leaving trash in the streets and even hassling
parishioners on Sundays.

Several brought up the issue at a recent Charleston City Council
meeting, asking for help from the city and the police department.

Charleston City Councilman Kwadjo Campbell said the neighborhood
needs regular police foot patrols and, perhaps, more stings.

No one is calling Operation Mayday a failure.

But as it stands now, it can't be considered a complete success
either, he said.

"It's just in a different area, and it's just as bad if not worse.
You see a lot of people just hanging _out," Campbell said. "They need
to concentrate on the whole area."

It's a situation that attests to the difficulty of eradicating the
drug trade - particularly when the demand still exists, law
enforcement officials say.

Operation Mayday combined the efforts of federal, state and local
police agencies in an 18-month investigation of a heroin distribution
network in Charleston and led to 44 arrests of alleged dealers and
suppliers. The investigation targeted people involved in the heroin
trade in the area of America, Hanover and Reid streets.

So far, 21 of those arrested have pleaded guilty to federal charges.
Another 13 suspects still await trial and seven more are fugitives on
the run, according to Mary Gordon Baker, first assistant U.S.
attorney for South Carolina.

Authorities still consider the operation an unqualified success that
put a noticeable dent in the city's heroin trade.

But they also acknowledge that heroin sales remain a nagging problem
on Charleston's streets.

Acting U.S. Attorney Scott Schools said as long as a demand for the
drug exists, dealers will move from one location to the next in
search of a suitable market to move their product.

"Our job is to stay ahead of it," he said. "But it's sort of a
never-ending task."

Lt. Richard Vance, head of the Charleston police narcotics unit, said
drug sales have dropped significantly in the area targeted by Mayday,
but dealers seem to have staked out new territory in the area of
Sheppard and Hanover streets. He said police are well aware of the
problem and attempting to attack it with increased patrols and other
tactics.

"It's kind of naive to think we are going to stop drugs completely if
the federal government can't do it with 50,000 FBI and DEA agents,"
he said. "But, we can't give up. We're not going to slow down our
efforts one bit."

East Side resident Joseph Watson, who played a major role in
encouraging Operation Mayday, said the high-profile sweep has had
positive effects. It did clean up much of the neighborhood, and some
changes appear to be permanent. But some might have been fleeting.

At first, drug activity in the entire area seemed to grind to a halt,
he said. But as time went on, it seemed to pick back up again, just
in a new location.

"Since Operation Mayday, which was a great operation, it has left a
stigma around America Street, South Street and Reid Street. And quite
naturally, the drug activity there is going to go down," he said.
"But right now, these drug dealers feel comfortable around Sheppard
Street and Aiken Street."

In a way, the new spot is even more convenient for dealers - and
their customers, Murdock said.

"People can scoot in off the bridge, make their buys and scoot out,"
he said. "White and black folks both. You say, 'My God.'"

The resurgent drug trade has Murdock worried for several reasons, not
the least of which is the effect it's having on his church.

It's at the point where some find it intimidating to show up on
Sundays, he said.

"When people see a bunch of thugs looking tough, and you have to park
your car and come near to where they're at, you say, well, I'll find
another church to go to," Murdock said. A no-loitering law, if
aggressively enforced, might make a difference, he said.

In fact, the area's sidewalks are, at times, lined with people
selling or using drugs. Users slouch in doorways or on porches or
front steps of the area's deteriorating housing stock.

Vance suspects the dealers in the Sheppard street area are a new crop
of heroin slingers who saw opportunity in the Mayday arrests.

"They probably saw a void in the market," he said. "Charleston has a
lot of heroin addicts."

Other anecdotal evidence also supports claims that a vibrant heroin
trade persists. At two of the area's main drug treatment centers,
officials say they have seen little change in the number of addicts
seeking help after Operation Mayday, a sign that heroin is still
available.

"We haven't seen anything from that," said Rich Oliver, inpatient
services director at Charleston Center, a county-run substance abuse
program, "Zilch."

The Center for Behavioral Health in North Charleston, the region's
only private methadone clinic, hasn't "really seen any change at all"
in the number of heroin addicts seeking help, said Rebecca Hassell,
the agency's director.

Charleston Center closely monitored the number of addicts seeking
treatment so the facility would be prepared for a large of influx of
heroin users. It never came, Oliver said.

"The word on the street is that it's because other people have taken
over the supply," he said.

Some users have also claimed that heroin has become cheaper in recent
weeks because large suppliers in Afghanistan are unloading their
product in mass quantities as a result of the war under way there,
Oliver said. Local authorities say they have seen no evidence of that
being the case.

Vance said it actually appears that heroin is somewhat harder to find
in the days since Mayday, though the price has remained fairly
constant.

J. Mitchell Miller, a professor at the University of South Carolina's
College of Criminal Justice, said a steady price for drugs generally
means a steady supply. He said he is not surprised, given the
popularity of the drug across the social gamut. Initiatives such as
Operation Mayday help, but it will be difficult to eradicate the
heroin trade while a ready market for the drug exists, he said.

"On the positive side, at least you are disrupting and directly
addressing a certain amount of heroin activity," said Miller, editor
of the quarterly Journal of Crime and Justice. "But that is not a
long-term solution. As long as the supply and the demand remain, the
market will correlate."

Vance said police need the public's help if they hope to rid the
community of drugs. A few people have come forward to help police,
but the majority of residents have remained silent, either afraid of
reprisals from the dealers or apathetic to the problem, he said.

"It's a whole mentality, and it's not just a few people," he said.
"People tolerate it. And until they get to the point where they have
a 'we're mad as hell and won't take it anymore' attitude, we're just
spinning our wheels."

Watson said the resurgent drug trade has been a major topic at recent
meetings of the East Side Neighborhood Council.

While police patrols, particularly foot patrols, are part of the
solution, the group also agrees with Vance that citizens have to help.

"Operation Mayday can never be a complete success unless you have
full and ongoing participation by the citizens," Watson said. "It
won't just go away. It's on ongoing challenge."