SHERIFF'S NEW DRUG-WAR STRATEGY DRAWS CONTROVERSY

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.