DRUG WAR SHIFTS TO SMALL DEALERS BUT SHERIFF REICHERT'S PLAN RUNS
INTO CRITICS IN AND OUT OF DEPARTMENT

The plan is simple: Target street-level pushers instead of major
distributors to appease citizens frustrated by brazen neighborhood
drug deals.

It's a shift in philosophy in how King County narcotics detectives
will fight the drug war, starting next year.

"It's pretty obvious that the war on drugs doesn't work, and it won't
the way it has been fought," said Sgt. John Urquhart, Sheriff's
Office spokesman. "We feel we can make a bigger dent on the drug
problem in neighborhoods by refocusing our efforts there rather than
at the big-time drug dealer."

But Sheriff Dave Reichert's plan to decentralize his agency's Drug
Enforcement Unit - shifting narcotics detectives to local precincts -
doesn't come without its detractors, both inside and out.

Some narcotics officers don't like the idea, saying it will have
little impact on what's already being done to thwart local drug
sales. It will add only one or two officers per precinct to help
patrol deputies make drug busts, they said.

"I'm not sure what one more body is going to do to stop the local
dealer," said one detective, who asked not to be named. "Right now,
we target the mid- and upper-level drug dealers that supply these
little local dealers."

Outside skeptics include a King County councilman and a member of the
Seattle Human Rights Commission. They contend the new
drug-enforcement strategy will unfairly target the urban poor, who
tend to be people of color, filling up jails and building resentment
in minority communities.

"It's an extremely biased public policy that will have very little
impact on the supply-and-demand side of drugs," warned Councilman
Larry Gossett.

Small-time drug peddlers are typically the ones who get caught,
Gossett said, because they're easiest to catch. They tend to sell
drugs out in public in low-income neighborhoods, becoming easy
targets for police, he said.

"If you look at who's in jail in this country for possessing and
selling drugs, it's the small-time sellers who are African Americans
and Latinos," Gossett said. "This policy will only further that."

"That's simply not true," countered Urquhart. "We're targeting drug
dealers, not minorities."

There's little doubt that the war on drugs has taken a
disproportionate toll on blacks and other minorities in the Puget
Sound region and across the nation. A six-month Harvard University
study released in May found that more than half of those arrested in
1999 for drug crimes in Seattle were black, although African
Americans make up about 8 percent of the city's population.

Researchers suggested the disparity exists because Seattle police
emphasize curbing low-level drug sales in open-air markets downtown
rather than in outlying neighborhoods. They also concluded that
police focus more on catching small-time sellers who are
predominately minorities, rather than on predominantly white buyers.

Seattle police statistics don't translate to the King County
Sheriff's Office, Urquhart said.

One reason is that the largely unincorporated area the Sheriff's
Office patrols has a much smaller minority population, he said. Also,
the county's local-level drug problems mainly involve dealers selling
out of apartments and houses, not in open-air markets or on the
street.

"What people complain about are the guys in their apartment building
selling 'rock' (cocaine), not the guy selling a kilo or more," said
Urquhart, a former narcotics detective. "We have a responsibility to
the people who are paying our salaries, and they're telling us to go
after the neighborhood drug problem."

That may be true, but Gossett said weeding out small-time dealers
"doesn't make a dent in the overall problem, because they'll easily
be replaced by the guy a block over."

Tony Granillo, a member of the Seattle Human Rights Commission,
agreed. "The result will be more arrests of low-level suppliers,
predominately minority and lower income, with little net reduction in
the supply of drugs on the street."

Concentrating on small-scale drug busts is "ineffective," said David
Leven, deputy director of The Lindesmith Center-Drug Policy
Foundation, a New York-based drug-policy research group.

Local law enforcement should focus instead on getting dealers and
users into treatment programs "that reduce demand, and therefore
reduce street sales," he said.

"From a practical standpoint, it doesn't make any sense," Leven said.

"So are we just supposed to ignore the guy selling rock in the
neighborhood?" asked Urquhart. "I don't think so."

Judy Duff, a longtime resident of North Highline and president of the
North Highline Unincorporated Area Council, said her neighborhood
south of Seattle has been devastated by drugs and needs help.

"It's a very unpleasant place to be when you've got children living
next door to a doggone meth house," she said.

Duff had only heard bits and pieces of the sheriff's plan.

"I don't know if this will be the answer or not," she said. "But my
concern has always been the same. We need help and we need it now. We
can't afford to fool around anymore."

For years, the Drug Enforcement Unit has targeted major drug
suppliers. Nine detectives and two sergeants now operate in one
centralized team based out of the Regional Justice Center in Kent. In
precincts, patrol deputies respond to reports of neighborhood drug
crimes and arrest street pushers.

Under Reichert's plan, set to take effect in January, one or two
members of the unit will stay in Kent, two will be shifted to
regional drug task forces and the remaining detectives will be
divided between three precincts, Urquhart said.

The Sheriff's Office will leave the task of catching big-time dealers
to a host of other agencies, such as the federal Drug Enforcement
Administration, the Washington State Patrol and several task forces.

Drug Enforcement Unit members will continue to do many of the same
duties, including responding to meth lab discoveries, which occur
about three times a week.

The bulk of King County's neighborhood drug trade centers in Precinct
Four - a largely urban area south of Seattle that includes the cities
of Burien and SeaTac, and unincorporated neighborhoods, such as Top
Hat and Boulevard Park.

Methamphetamine has eclipsed cocaine and heroin as the most prolific
illicit drug sold in the county in recent years, although all three
continue to be sold frequently from homes and apartments at
neighborhood levels, Urquhart said.

It's the constant traffic to and from these drug houses, along with
peripheral crimes that crop up near them, such as prostitution, that
define King County's localized drug problems. That has led to
"neighborhood devastation," more citizen complaints and, ultimately,
the change in the sheriff's approach, Urquhart said.

King County Executive Ron Sims supports Reichert's plan and is
"confident" it will be successful, spokeswoman Elaine Kraft said.

The plan was formed after a six-month internal review of how to
better fight the drug trade and serve citizens, Urquhart said.
Although the Sheriff's Office faces more budget cuts this year, the
change in philosophy is not a budget issue, he insisted.

"Of course, not everybody wants to make the change," Urquhart said.
"Some of these guys have been in that unit 15 years or more. But this
is what the sheriff decided, so that's what we're going to do." P-I
reporter Mike Lewis contributed to this report.