VIOLENCE IS DOWN, BUT SOME AREAS STILL SUFFER

CHICAGO, Jan. 10 — They came for him in the middle of the day with baseball
bats and guns on the block where the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. used
to live.

More than half a dozen members of a rival gang known as the New Breeds
surrounded Elbert Mahone, who law enforcement officials here say was a
leader of the Conservative Vice Lords, a dominant force in the drug trade
on the West Side. There was nothing Mr. Mahone could do. He died in an
alley, shot execution style, a .380-caliber bullet to the back of the head.

Mr. Mahone, 39, was one of 43 people killed last year in the 10th Police
District of Chicago and one of 627 homicides citywide. The latter number
was down from 641 in 1999, making 2000 the sixth straight year of a decline
in killings, records show.

But while violent crime, including killings, has fallen steadily nationally
since the urban crack wars from the mid-1980's to the early 90's, what has
not declined, residents and community leaders say, is the flow of drugs in
many poor inner-city neighborhoods, where the fearful and the law-abiding
coexist with drug dealers and gangs.

Any drop in violent crime in recent years, they say, has had little impact
in quelling the fears of inner-city residents or the crack of gunfire or in
shoring up the feeling of safety in neighborhoods where open-air drug
markets and the violence they spin is ever present. Even the police admit
that they are at a loss for new answers on how to get rid of the drug
markets and continue the decrease in violent crimes.

Some experts say the steady decline in killings has now leveled off or is
inching higher, fueled in part by gangs and drug disputes involving a
younger generation and continued high rates of poverty in many inner-city
neighborhoods. In Chicago, killings last year fell by only 2 percent
compared with declines of 9 percent and 7.5 percent for the two previous years.

"The so-called experts and the criminologists say the homicide rate has
bottomed out," Superintendent Terry G. Hilliard of the Chicago police said
at a recent news conference. "They also expect homicide numbers to start
trending upwards. But I don't believe we should give in to those
predictions and merely accept that as the truth."

Criminologists have linked a declining rate in violent crime to several
factors, including community policing, a healthy economy and a larger
number of those responsible for a soaring rate of crime more than a decade
ago now being in prison or dead, a decline in the consumption of alcohol
and the decline in the crack wars. But, these experts add, homicide tends
to run in cycles.

"It's a never-ending battle." Superintendent Hilliard said. "We're trying
to stem the tide with what we can. But somebody larger than the Chicago
Police Department is going to have to step to the forefront. And that's the
federal government. This is like an all-out war."

Drugs and gangs remain the primary factors in most Chicago killings where
the motive is known, the police said.

For Michael Chandler, the alderman of the West Side ward where Mr. Mahone
was killed, "it's like we live in Al Capone's time."

"Instead of beer that Al Capone sold, now it's heroin" and cocaine, Mr.
Chandler said. "There's nothing really glamorous about it. They wind up
either dead or in jail."

One thing is certain: drug-related violence continues to send ripples
through inner-city neighborhoods that linger long after headlines have
disappeared.

The North Lawndale section, where Mr. Mahone was killed, is where Dr. King
took up residence in the top floor of a three-story apartment building in
1966 while organizing civil rights rallies here. It is a predominantly
African-American community, a neighborhood of aging, brick, single-family
houses and apartment buildings on a forlorn stretch of land just a
15-minute drive west of downtown. North Lawndale is a decaying isle where
liquor stores, fast-food restaurants and vacant lots have replaced the
other businesses that once thrived there.

It is still a community of mostly decent people, trying to rear families
amid the violence that ebbs and flows, but never dissipates. The police
made 2,503 drug arrests in the 10th District last year compared with 2,891
in 1999.

While the police say they need more help from residents if they are to
reduce the drug trade further, the residents say they need more help from
the police.

"How do you reach out to children in your own community to dissuade them
from drug dealing when it is so lucrative?" Cmdr. Dennis Prieto of the
police in the 10th District asked. "That's the problem. We have no real
impact on their behavior because you've got 10 people waiting to do the
same thing. It takes more than just us."

Ed Smith, a West Side alderman, said: " I don't think anybody is doing
enough. The community has got to start with their families. If your son is
a part of the drug scene, get him out of your house."

Mostly, people search for a way to reconcile life in the neighborhood.

They are people like Patricia Kent, principal of the William Penn
Elementary School, where pupils stayed down for several hours after the
slaying of Mr. Mahone and a followup shooting between the rival gangs.

The yellow sign on 16th Street outside the Penn school declares: "Safe
School Zone." Inside, colorful bulletin boards cover the hall walls. A
portrait of Dr. King hangs near the main entrance near a burly security
guard. Ms. Kent grew up in North Lawndale and graduated from the Penn
school. These are her children. She understands them and what they are up
against, although times were different when she was a child.

"Lawndale was always rich with families," said Ms. Kent, who fusses over
her students like an overprotective parent. "We've just got to bring back
that old Southern feeling that was the reason that we were all successful."

Since she became the Penn principal four and a half years ago, Ms. Kent
said, student math and reading scores have steadily risen and the school is
no longer on probation. Teachers helped make these strides, she said,
adding: "We can't just come to work. We have to give 200 percent. And we
have to give it from the heart."

The school needs resilient teachers, Ms. Kent said, teachers who understand
the neighborhood and the children.

So when interviewing each new applicant, Ms. Kent pulls out her books of
poetry that are published each year by Penn students, and reads aloud. A
favorite poem is by a former eighth grader, Kristen Lee:

I keep my paint brush with me

Wherever I go

In case I need to cover up

So the real me doesn't show

I'm afraid to show you me

Afraid of what you'll do — that

You might laugh or say mean things

I'm afraid I might lose you.

"It's not the school," Ms. Kent said, of the more than 20 families that she
said had moved out of the neighborhood after the gang clash. "It's walking
up and down the streets. They don't want their kids to get caught in the
crossfire."

Planted in the soil of a vacant lot in plain view of the school is another
sign in black bold letters. It reads: "Drugs: Have they cost you enough?"

The violence seems to have ebbed for now, although no one knows how long
the uneasy peace will last. On a recent afternoon, the only shots being
fired were inside the BBR Youth Center gymnasium in the block where Mr.
Mahone was killed.

Steven Space, James Brooks and other youth workers were anticipating a
basketball game at the gym later in the evening against the young men they
counsel through the WestSide Association for Community Action Foundation.
Many of the two dozen teenagers already have juvenile records. Some are on
electronic monitoring from court sentences.

The program in which Mr. Brooks, a former corrections officer, and Mr.
Space are counselors, tries to steer young men in North Lawndale away from
the lure of drug dealing with mentoring and a safe haven.

"We work with kids that are headed down that road, who admired Pierre," Mr.
Space said of Mr. Mahone, using his street name. "With the money, the
violence goes hand in hand. The way it happened, that he was just snatched,
shook them up."

Mr. Mahone drove a Rolls-Royce and was generous to neighborhood children,
donating school supplies and Christmas presents, even bringing in, some
residents said, go-carts and setting up a track on one occasion.

"The death of Pierre was our opportunity to shed some light on a dark
situation," Mr. Brooks said. "Can we stop the vicious cycle? No."

"But the front-line workers," the street soldiers who deal drugs, he said,
"we can affect them."