ECSTASY BREEDS VIOLENCE

Drug Gangs Muscling In

Gun-Toting Narcotics Dealers Are Embracing The Love Drug And Its Lucrative
Market

Ecstasy, the designer pill favored by trendwise twentysomethings in
Manhattan clubs, is fast becoming a staple of drug gangs.

Long considered a benign, feel-good drug limited to campuses and dance
clubs, Ecstasy's popularity has exploded throughout the city in the
last three months.

"It used to be the Manhattan South club drug, and in 1999, we had
three or four investigations involving it," said NYPD narcotics bureau
Chief Charles Kammerdener. "Now we have 30 to 40 active
investigations."

With an abundant supply and an enormous profit potential, Ecstasy has
increasingly been linked to the violence long associated with other
illegal drugs, authorities say.

"Now, with the phenomenon of Ecstasy, people are arming themselves,"
said Lt. Wilfredo Garcia of the firearms investigation unit.

Recent cases include:

A suspected firearms trafficker accused of selling Ecstasy as well as
guns. Ecstasy smugglers arrested at area airports with contacts in
Washington Heights, where heroin and cocaine distribution networks are
entrenched. An undercover sting involving 15,000 Ecstasy tablets that
ended in gunfire at a Bronx bodega.

"It's a drug. No matter where it's sold, it will be dangerous," said
Kammerdener. "If it continues to go to the street, you'll see the same
level of violence."

With an upscale reputation burnished in popular culture and on the
Internet, Ecstasy is said to give users a mood-mellowing sense of
euphoria that lessens inhibitions and increases energy. Now it is
widely available in any neighborhood. Pills that once sold for as much
as $35 can be bought for less than half that price.

"Our investigators are seeing it on the streets," said special
narcotics prosecutor Bridget Brennan. "We've made buys in Washington
Heights, and we recently raided an apartment in Bushwick where we
seized guns, heroin, cocaine and marijuana, and the dealer told us he
just ran out of Ecstasy."

The supply is "skyrocketing ... unabated," said John Varrone,
assistant commissioner of investigations for the Customs Service.

"In 1997, we seized 400,000 pills. We seized 9 million pills in 2000,
and in the last four months we have seized 3 million," he said. "We
are on pace to set a record year of 12 million tablets of Ecstasy this
year. It's just coming at us fast and furious."

Customs agents have intercepted shipments from Miami destined for the
Bronx and Brooklyn, Varrone said. Recent intelligence shows Colombian
dealers have been trading cocaine for Ecstasy, he said.

"We've seized Ecstasy and heroin, which shows the cartels are trying
to deliver Ecstasy in the same traditional heroin routes, with the
same consumer in mind," Varrone said.

"We know Washington Heights is coming into play," said Kammerdener.
"People caught at the airports live in the heights, or their
destination was the heights."

Brennan predicted: "They'll have guns there to protect their stash,
they'll resort to violence to settle disputes, the same as other drugs."

Her point was illustrated Dec. 27, during a buy-and-bust operation
along a gritty strip of E. 198th St. in the Bronx.

Police said 15,000 pills were stashed under the counter of the Ocoa
grocery, where undercover cops had arranged a purchase. They had
bought cocaine and Ecstasy twice in Corona, Queens, from the same gang.

When police raided the bodega, one of the dealers reached for a gun in
his waistband, and an officer shot and wounded him.

In Ridgewood, Queens, in December, undercover detectives met with
Richard Rodriguez, a suspected weapons dealer, to buy guns. They said
they bought a .25-caliber Saturday night special, as well as 500
Ecstasy tablets, and arrested Rodriguez.

"We paid $12 a pill," said Garcia. His cops have seized more than
2,000 Ecstasy tablets in the last six months while buying illegal guns.

"The more that is out there, the cheaper it's going to get," said
Assistant Bronx District Attorney Nestor Ferreiro. "We have just
started to see it in the Bronx in the last two or three months."

The trend has disturbing ramifications, said Brennan.

"Ecstasy has been celebrated, it's been on magazine covers, people
have written fond memories of it," she said. "Everybody wants to taste
a piece of paradise. But the concern is that people will want to do a
lot of it, and the focus of the debate over addiction has been on
privileged people who have a safety net. People in Washington Heights
or Brooklyn don't have that safety net."

Meanwhile, Ecstasy use shows no signs of waning in the
clubs.

"As of early January, the clubs were still going very strong," said
Lt. Ralph Ortino of Manhattan South narcotics. He said his cops seized
4,100 pills last year, mostly inside clubs. In 1998, they seized 120.

And this week comes a sure sign of the drug's rising criminal status:
Ecstasy joins heroin, cocaine, crack and marijuana on a Police
Department bar graph that tracks arrests and seizures.