POLICE MUST WAKE UP TO DRUGS ON THE STREET

The harrowing deaths of Dean Clarke, Shane O'Connor and Danielle
Gibbens have brought into sharp focus the tragedy that can strike
teenage addicts. Here, one former user recalls how his teenage life
was engulfed by drugs and the horrors that went with them

The recent drug-related deaths of two Ulster teenagers, Dean Clarke
and Shane O'Connor, have thrown into sharp relief the extent of the
drug problem in Northern Ireland. They have prompted soul-searching
and provoked anger and grief.

Sadly, for me, these cries are nothing new.

On Friday, October 5, 19-year-old Danielle Gibbens died after taking
what is believed to have been ecstasy. Danielle was from Ballykelly, a
village in Co Derry about five minutes drive from my home town of
Limavady, where she initially collapsed.

Drugs have long been a problem in Limavady. More than half of my
lifetime ago, at the age of 14, I became involved myself. For a few
weeks I watched my friends taking the powerful hallucinogen, LSD. At
first alarmed, after a time I became inured to the fear. They seemed
to be having a good time. I am an inquisitive person. I knew where I
could buy drugs and I did so.

At that time, drugs were less prevalent, and accordingly, knowledge of
drugs among concerned parties - parents, schools, perhaps even the
police - was limited. We were still in the "just-say-no" era. The
image portrayed was one of heroin addicts dying regularly,
associations with needles and Aids. The element of fear engendered by
such crude scare tactics was apt to be blown out of the water by the
actual experience.

As with most 14-year-olds, of course I knew best. My Friday pocket
money of UKP 5 began going to the dealer weekly and I was introduced
to a world which was exciting, forbidden, dangerous. I came from a
middle class family and was sheltered.

Exploring life's underbelly was fascinating to me, particularly when
it appeared I had been lied to - not by people who used drugs, but by
the aforementioned concerned parties.

Within a year I was using cannabis daily and ecstasy weekly, the
prevalence of LSD now on the wane. My circle of friends had changed. I
was now 'one of the boys'. The thing was that ecstasy at that time
cost UKP 20 per tablet. They were tremendously strong. I didn't
realise it at the time, but I was already well on my way to developing
a habit. My UKP 5-a-week rate of pocket money however remained the
same. What was I to do?

Being 'one of the boys', I had a customer base all set up. The market
dictated that if I bought in bulk I could sell the pills and make a
profit. I had no need of cash (I couldn't very well show up at home in
new clothes and bling without raising eyebrows), but two or three
pills and 'a bit of smoke' for myself as profit would do me. It felt
harmless.

"If you fly with the crows you can expect to be shot at," was my
father's favourite refrain if I got caught in a scrape at school.
Limavady is not a big town. The crows' youthful folly,
self-assuredness and bravado combined to ensure it was not long before
the police became aware of me. Just having turned 16, I was on a coach
headed for a nightclub in Portrush which was surrounded by the police
and brought to a halt. The police swarmed onto the bus and body
searched everyone who had been on board. Drugs were recovered from
near where I was sitting. A person was arrested and we were allowed to
carry on.

From friends I began to hear that the drug squad, who orchestrated
the raid on the bus, had been visiting their houses. I was expecting
the knock, which came a few days later. I was invited to the station
for an interview. My friends hadn't been, and I when I enquired why, I
was told that in my case the situation was more serious.

During the interview, accompanied by my father, I told the police the
bus had come from Derry, through Limavady on the way to Portrush. The
drugs could have belonged to anybody, they might well have been there
before I even boarded. Reluctantly they released me without charge.

They didn't believe me.

In another few days, while walking home, a car drew alongside me and
two drug squad officers ordered me to get in. They took me to a
secluded wood just outside the town, asking along the way what I was
doing at school and other small talk.

They were being friendly. When we pulled up, they insisted they knew
the drugs belonged to me and that if I didn't cooperate, I would be
charged. Now more 'frightened kid' than 'one of the boys', I hadn't
the cop-on to know this was bluff. I was instructed to keep my eyes
open and if I knew of something that would be in a house or a car, or
in someone's possession, I was to call them immediately. Otherwise we
were to meet "for a chat" once a week and I would be left alone.

I met the police twice more and told them nothing. They didn't seem
satisfied with my protestations that I wasn't as involved as they
thought, or as I had pretended to be. I couldn't tell them what I
didn't know.

I stopped meeting them and again awaited the knock at the door. It
didn't.

More time passed and I was again approached by them and ordered into
their car. Again I was taken to the wood outside the town. There was
no friendly chat this time. In typical good cop/bad cop routine, good
cop said nothing much, bad cop erupted, Vesuvius-like.

He dragged me from the car and demanded that I provide them with
information or I wouldn't be left alone. They drove off, leaving me to
walk home, well past the 11pm curfew that had now been set by my
parents, and covered in mud.

"There are stringent internal and external mechanisms in place to
ensure intelligence is handled and managed properly," said PSNI
Assistant Chief Constable Peter Sheridan in this paper.

Was my experience protocol?

"We have a set of policies and procedures in place which will
withstand any scrutiny," he wrote.

Tragedy struck in our family when my sister died the following year,
and my drug use escalated to the point where I had developed what was
now a proper habit, with all the problems attendant to that.

I was dealing again on a much bigger scale and with a partner who had
a house. My intake of drugs was massive. I was now involved with very
dangerous people who, I am fairly certain, were among the biggest in
the province. They were only one step down the ladder from importers.

They were notoriously violent, ruthless career criminals, and they
could have been very easily caught. It appeared to me, as someone on
the street, that there wasn't the will among the police.

Having become paranoid and weighing eight and a half stone at a height
of 6'2 ", I went to the family doctor and was referred to a
counsellor. I had temporarily stopped taking drugs, my parents were
informed by the GP, and I attended two counselling sessions before
temptation got the better of me and I scored some pills to take to a
club. While waiting for the bus with a group of friends, two car loads
of police surrounded me.

Expecting a body search, I put my arms out, which were placed behind
my back as I was told I would be strip-searched at the station. I was
caught.

"You know the routine. If you tell us what we want to hear, you could
walk out of here without even a charge," I was told. Now 17 ? a grey
area in the eyes of the law which means you can be tried as an adult
or a juvenile, I was told I couldn't have my father present at
interview. My solicitor said I could. I came clean and admitted I had
been dealing for some time, told them of my habit, and the counsellor,
and the death in the family, which they knew about anyway. My case was
to be heard in the Crown Court. I wasn't even afraid so much as
exhausted. My honesty won me six charges to answer.

Ten years later, the dealers I was involved with in Limavady are still
on the street, they are still dealing and Danielle Gibbons is dead. I
was incredibly lucky to come from a middle class family.

The death of my sister; character witnesses speaking in my favour; the
fact that I had sought help before I was caught; that I had an offer
of good work in London after college; the support I had, all added up
to my being given three years suspended for three years. If my
background had been less fortunate, as is often the case with teenage
drug abusers, I can only imagine the course of action the police took
would have served simply to immerse me further into that seedy world,
fraught with all kinds of danger.

Assistant Chief Constable Sheridan's method of intelligence gathering
may look good in theory, but in practice, as far as I have seen, it
does not. What I didn't tell my friendly "handler" was that on any
given Friday night I went to pick up my supply, my hundred pills were
counted out of a shopping bag containing at least a thousand, which
were stashed in an open outdoor shed at the back of the dealer's house.

Had some police initiative been taken, rather than spinning the tout
wheel in futility with all the variables that involves, the intentions
of the dealers, the arrest record of ambitious lower-ranking officers,
Danielle Gibbens might have lived to see her 20th birthday.