RECORD NUMBER OF DRUG ARRESTS CLOGGING KING COUNTY COURT SYSTEM

Attorneys and judges at the King County Courthouse say they've read about
the decline in murder and other violent crimes but haven't had much time to
celebrate. The criminal calendar has never been so busy, choked by record
numbers of felony drug cases.

More people faced drug charges in the first six months of this year than in
any comparable period in King County history. In March alone, a record 463
cases clogged the courts.

An examination of those cases reveals a system of mass-produced justice - a
legal assembly line where progress is measured by how fast most defendants
plead guilty, receive sentences and shuttle through the county's jails.

Despite the number of arrests, no one in the criminal-justice system
pretends King County is even close to declaring victory in the war on
drugs. There is little money for treatment and little belief that the
treadmill of cases will slow.

Indeed, police, prosecutors and judges on the front lines say the drug war
can't be won, no matter how many resources are devoted to the battle.

They also say it's a war they can't afford to stop fighting.

"Are we doing any good? All of us wonder that," said Judge Jeffrey
Ramsdell. "But you have some hope that you can turn a person's life around.
If you never filed those (drug charges), you would never have that
possibility."

Holding out for that possibility is expensive. Five judges, 17 deputy
prosecutors and about a dozen public defenders work full time handling drug
cases in King County. There is no precise accounting of the cost of drug
prosecutions, but court officials estimate it to be tens of millions of
dollars annually. That doesn't include police expenses.

Law-enforcement officials say the investment is necessary to keep pace with
a crime that destroys lives and ravages families. But perhaps the most
powerful support for the war comes from the users themselves: "This cocaine
is an epidemic," said longtime crack addict Patrick Ray Smith. "It becomes
your mom and girl and your kids. It's that bad."

Smith is serving a 12-month sentence in the King County Jail for his sixth
drug offense in as many years. This time, he says he is ready to break old
habits. For starters, he's stopped cussing.

The revolving door may seem futile, say law-enforcement officials, but
addicts and dealers might think twice if they are under constant risk of
arrest. That recognition alone may be the most cops and prosecutors can
hope for.

"People say we've lost the war on drugs. I disagree with that," said Joe
Solseng, head of the drug unit in the King County Prosecutor's Office. "If
you look at keeping a lid on everything, I don't think it's a lost cause."

Of the 463 cases that came through King County courts in March, The Seattle
Times tracked 451 - all those for which records were available - from
arrest to sentencing. An analysis of those cases challenges three key myths
about the drug war:

MYTH: Drug-treatment programs are the most effective way to battle
drug-related crimes and keep drug-users from filling jails and prisons.

FACT: Most users, given the choice between treatment and jail, choose jail.
They prefer a quick and easy return to the streets rather than submitting
to intensive counseling and weekly urinalysis.

MYTH: Crack - cheap, smokable cocaine sold in small rocks - has lost its
grip on inner cities. The New York Times last year wrote crack's epitaph,
citing drug-use surveys and arrest statistics in New York and other Eastern
cities.

FACT: While county officials say there is no sure way to tally whether
crack use is up or down, overall arrest numbers indicate crack remains king
of the street drugs. Fifty-two percent of the felonies filed in King County
involved crack. Heroin accounted for 13 percent of the cases;
methamphetamine for 11 percent.

MYTH: Under tough drug-war policies, people arrested with even a minimal
amount of crack are sentenced to long prison terms.

FACT: Most drug defendants skip their court appearances, delaying or
avoiding prosecution. Of the 463 cases in March, as many as 224 had yet to
be resolved by early September; in most of those, the judge had issued a
bench warrant for the arrest of a no-show defendant.

And once convicted, most drug felons don't spend much time behind bars. For
example, an 18-year-old with two prior drug convictions was arrested in
March near Garfield High School with 5 grams of rock cocaine. He pleaded
guilty and spent 60 days in jail.

In all of the resolved March cases, 26 drug defendants were sentenced to
more than a year in prison.

Full complement of police

Prosecutors and public defenders say they don't know why drug cases spiked
this year, but the explanation may be found in the Police Department's
payroll. After years of thin ranks, Seattle police reached a full
complement of 1,277 sworn officers in February. More police on the streets
means more drug arrests.

Although the backlog has eased a bit since midsummer, more than 4,300 cases
involving controlled substances will be filed in King County this year if
current trends continue, a 14 percent increase from last year and a county
record.

Police in March found illegal drugs after stopping people for everything
from jaywalking to littering. Some of the arrests almost seemed invited.

Anthony Tait, 43, reported a robbery but later told police he had been
swindled into buying a chunk of soap instead of crack. Police searched Tait
and found a crack pipe and 0.4 grams of heroin.

He was sentenced to 43 months in prison.

Two officers were on routine foot patrol on the 200 block of Fourth Avenue
South when they stopped to chat with Arthur Walker, 35. In court papers,
the officers said they knew Walker from a previous drug arrest. They
noticed something under his tongue and ordered him to spit it out. It was a
cellophane baggie containing two rocks of cocaine.

Walker agreed to drug treatment rather than jail but failed to appear for a
routine hearing in July. A warrant has been issued for his arrest.

More than 18 percent of the drug cases filed in March began with a traffic
stop, for everything from speeding to misaligned headlights.

Ronald Smith, 39, was a passenger in a car pulled over on Aurora Avenue for
a broken taillight. Because Smith wasn't wearing a seat belt, the officer
was legally allowed to question him. During a pat-down search, the officer
discovered a crack pipe encrusted with cocaine residue in Smith's pocket.

Smith agreed to treatment but was a no-show at his hearing. There is also a
warrant for his arrest.

Under the law, police can pat down people suspected of carrying a weapon.
They can't reach into a person's pocket if they feel a baggie, but they can
if they feel a cylindrical object.

Often those objects are crack pipes encrusted with cocaine residue, an
amount so small it can't be measured.

King County prosecutors routinely charge such crack-pipe-residue cases as
felony drug possession, according to policies set by King County Prosecutor
Norm Maleng. Most of those cases are then pleaded down to misdemeanors in
deals with defense attorneys, said Solseng, head of the office's drug unit.
It's a strategy designed to compel defendants to plead guilty and get out
of the overburdened court system.

But if someone is arrested more than once in five years on a residue case
and doesn't plead guilty, prosecutors take the case to trial. That adds to
the already overburdened court calendar.

Last fall, King County Superior Court administrators created a separate
minicircuit of four judges, called ``Fast Track," to handle nothing but
drug cases.

The goal was to provide attorneys with more predictable trial schedules,
and transfer the guilty to state prisons faster.

Most defendants in drug cases are too poor to retain private counsel, so
are assigned public defenders.

But in June, three public-defender associations under contract with the
county threatened to stop accepting all felony cases unless they received
funds to hire more attorneys. And they warned that drug prosecutions would
continue to gobble the budget unless the county found alternatives to
incarceration.

The King County Council is considering a $1.6 million supplemental budget
request to hire more public defenders.

Prosecutors are also reeling from the increased caseload.

Two deputy prosecutors are assigned to read police reports and file eight
felony drug charges apiece each day. In December, the incoming cases began
to eclipse the attorneys' ability to file them.

"Now, we don't keep up," Solseng said.

Without adding more lawyers, judges and courtrooms, plea bargains are the
only way to quickly process hundreds of new cases each month.

For example, if a defendant who is caught dealing drugs near a school - a
crime that carries a mandatory two years in prison - pleads guilty to
delivery, prosecutors routinely drop the school-zone charge.

Possession with intent to deliver - which carries a standard sentence of 1
1/2 to two years in state prison - often is plea bargained to simple
possession, with a standard sentence of zero to 90 days in the county jail.

To keep cases moving, defense attorneys sometimes agree to deals based on
paperwork alone - without even meeting their clients.

"For most people, the system works well," said public defender Janet
Thomas. But "for the people who are innocent, the system is problematic."

Some of those problems are caught early.

Solseng said his office routinely dismisses cases in which officers
violated a defendant's constitutional rights by confiscating drugs without
a proper search warrant or justifiable suspicion.

Even when cases go to trial, jury convictions aren't a foregone conclusion.
For example, on May 23, jurors convicted 44-year-old McClyde Clifton of
possessing crack but were unable to agree whether he helped a dealer sell a
$40 rock to an undercover officer. He was sentenced to 10 months in jail.

Police operations

The police combat street drugs in two ways:

Either undercover officers pose as buyers and conduct stings, known as
"buy-bust' operations, or confidential informants purchase drugs on the
direction of narcotics detectives, who then move in for an arrest.

The Times' analysis of the March cases showed that confidential informants
are most often employed in South King County, where many drug dealers sell
out of their homes and the drug of choice is not crack, but methamphetamine.

Methamphetamine cases are under-represented in the King County numbers from
March because of a backlog at the Washington State Patrol crime lab.

Police field tests of methamphetamine are inaccurate, so samples are sent
to the state lab before charges are filed. Prosecutors say they have no
idea how many methamphetamine cases are pending.

While the state lab processes the samples, the suspects are released. If
the state lab identifies an illegal substance, charges are filed and the
suspect is summoned to court.

Much like a supermarket has aisles for produce and canned goods and snacks,
downtown neighborhoods are known for different drugs.

Ask for heroin at Third Avenue and Yesler Way, just east of Pioneer Square,
and dealers will blow you off, said Victor Maes, a veteran Seattle police
officer who has made thousands of arrests.

Crack reigns in the blocks around the King County Courthouse and outside
the Third Avenue McDonald's and Belltown, he said.

Undercover police say they can purchase pretty much anything just above the
Pike Place Market at First Avenue and Pike Street.

The study of March arrests confirms those reports.

The March arrests also suggest racial disparities - a volatile issue with
critics who believe the war on drugs is tantamount to a war on African
Americans.

Most suspects in heroin and methamphetamine cases are white men. The
majority of crack users who come into court are African-American males.
(Police note the suspect's race on an arrest form, but officers often don't
distinguish between Caucasians and Hispanics.)

Police undercover stings seem to focus on crack, and therefore involve more
African Americans.

In March, Seattle police conducted 43 buy-bust stings that involved crack,
compared with 13 involving heroin.

Of the crack cases, 37 involved African-American dealers, and seven
involved white dealers. Heroin buy-busts involved 10 white dealers and four
black dealers.

The standard sentence for someone caught selling drugs to an undercover
officer is almost two years in prison, even with no prior convictions. With
a prior record, selling a single $10 rock of cocaine to an undercover
officer can bring a five-year prison sentence.

Maes, 41, said he can't explain why there are more police stings involving
crack than heroin. But he said police target neither a certain drug nor a
certain race.

"We don't go out and say we're going for crack or heroin. We target an
area," he said.

People can be charged with delivering narcotics simply for directing an
undercover officer to a dealer.

Such unwitting informants are called "clucks" - drug addicts who lead
buyers to sellers. They are so named because they walk the streets with
bobbing heads, eyes sweeping the sidewalks for spare change or crumbs of
rock, like chickens cruising for feed.

Case history of a plea bargain

Patrick Ray Smith was a cluck, police say.

He picked up a telephone on the other side of the Plexiglas at the jail
interview room and talked about drugs, addiction and regret.

He was expelled from Evergreen High School in Seattle for smoking
marijuana. He transferred to Highline High School in Burien but was a year
behind and never caught up.

He dropped out in 1991 and began to deal drugs a few years later.

The economics were simple. Sell 15 rocks of crack cocaine for $300, buy
more. Sell a half ounce for $1,900, buy more. Sell an ounce for $3,000, and
you're talking real money.

Smith said he could make $10,000 a month and live like the rappers on MTV.

"I had everything I was supposed to have - the cars, the girls, big
jewelry, seven cell phones," he said. "It was an enjoyable life. I can't
say I didn't like it."

Established dealers gave Smith a piece of advice he ignored: Don't get too
curious about the drug you're selling.

By 1995, the cell phones and cars were gone. The arrests and convictions
soon followed, five of them in six years, for selling and possessing drugs.
He agreed to drug-ordered treatment in 1998 but failed and went back to
prison for 14 months.

When he was released, he seldom saw his two sons, now 10 and 5. He lived in
a tent in a wooded area near Dearborn Street. He made money by selling
crack or ripping off people who wanted to buy it.

When he needed a good meal, he went to his mother's Rainier Valley home. He
never stayed long, because he didn't want to be high around her. And he
almost always wanted to be high.

Late the evening of March 16, he was arrested for setting up a deal with an
undercover officer for $40 worth of crack.

Smith faced nine to 12 years in prison for dealing, but his attorney
secured a bargain in which Smith pleaded guilty to a lesser charge,
conspiracy to deliver. He was sentenced to 12 months in the King County Jail.

With time off for good behavior, Smith could be out in November. He said he
will try to get into treatment. He spends his days writing rap lyrics about
his love for his mother and praying for the strength to conquer his addiction.

"You do something wrong, there's going to be a penalty," he says. "For me,
going back to the old life is like jumping off the highest building. When
I'm 35 years old I want to say I've accumulated something."

County's Drug Court

King County prosecutors and public defenders are negotiating whether
"clucks" should be eligible for Drug Court, a 6-year-old program that
substitutes treatment for jail.

Although Drug Court has garnered national attention for providing addicts a
structured way to change their lives and get out of the criminal-justice
system, funding has been a struggle since its inception.

Last year, Drug Court officials lobbied state lawmakers for $500,000. They
received $132,000. The court gets $200,000 a year from King County, but the
City of Seattle opted to cease funding Drug Court this year.

Only defendants arrested with less than 2 grams of an illegal drug and no
sign of dealing or prior convictions involving violence are eligible for
Drug Court. If a defendant completes treatment, prosecutors drop pending
charges.

But more than 60 percent of those eligible for Drug Court plead guilty and
take jail time instead. Of those who enroll in treatment, only about 22
percent complete it.

Yet those few success stories are so powerful that Drug Court has won the
ardent support of prosecutors, defense attorneys and judges.

Billy Ray Hill is one of those stories.

When Hill, 47, was told to choose between treatment and 15 months in
prison, he determined to start a new life.

For five years before his arrest last January, Hill lived on the streets
near the King County Courthouse, sleeping in the doorway of a sandwich shop
and slipping into alleys to smoke crack. For five years, he never saw a
movie or rode a ferry or went to a ballgame. He rarely left Third Avenue.

"I never went anywhere," he said. "I didn't want to miss getting high."

After his arrest, he spent six months at an inpatient treatment center at
Cedar Hills. He graduated in June, and his drug charge was dropped.

Hill goes to group therapy every Friday and Saturday night, and most
weekdays. He lives in a home in Shoreline that forbids drugs and alcohol
and works at a pizza stand at Safeco Field, where he has been shown smiling
on the park's giant video screen.

"I've been on the Jumbo-tron three times," he said. "Me, a person who used
to smoke crack in the Metro elevator, on the Jumbo-tron. It's unbelievable."