BALTIMORE FACES NEW BEACHHEADS IN WAR ON DRUGS

In Park Heights, Dealing Flourishes Despite Police Focus;
'It Has Just Shifted'

George Johnson and his friends like to talk about the futility of the
drug war, about how the street pushers and the addicts are at the
bottom of a flourishing business for which they go to jail and other
people make the money.

But the 54-year-old briefly stopped his discussion outside the Pimlico
library branch on Park Heights Avenue to direct the driver of a silver
car to the street where crack cocaine and heroin were being sold
yesterday morning.

Go down Garrison Avenue and turn left on Denmore Avenue, behind Park
Heights Elementary School, five blocks from the Pimlico Race Course.

"I don't mind telling people where to get drugs," Johnson said,
returning to his small group watching traffic on the busy
thoroughfare, in the heart of one of the city's oldest narcotics markets.

"You ain't going to stop the drugs."

This is life one block from the open-air drug area targeted by Mayor
Martin O'Malley as part of his campaign pledge to clear 10 such zones
across the city within six months of taking office.

The mayor proclaimed his promise largely fulfilled Wednesday. While
O'Malley admitted that the 10 drug corners represent a small fraction
of the city's vast problems, he said, "We have to start somewhere."

Officials said they have reduced crime on streets around the drug zone
and limited the displacement. Even in areas such as Park Heights,
where drugs have been a part of everyday life for years, police said
their aggressive attack is paying off.

"Crime numbers are down in double digits across the board," said
Northwestern District's Lt. Thomas J. Cassella.

Victory, he said, is coming "slowly but surely."

But if Park Heights is an example of a victory in the making, it also
is an example of how far the city has to go before ending its 300-plus
yearly homicide tally fueled by the desires of 55,000 addicts.

Many residents complain that the police action has simply forced the
addicts and dealers to move from one corner to another.

The Park Heights drug zone designated by police is the smallest of the
10, a square block bordered by Garrison, Queensberry, Oakley and
Palmer avenues.

Jean Yarborough, president of the Park Heights Community Association,
said the area police picked is too small "and is not where the drugs
are concentrated."

Yarborough said she believes police "are trying to do a good
job."

"They just don't have enough police to do it," she said. "We have to
get police into the neighborhoods that are being destroyed."

The city admitted as much.

In their own assessment summary, city officials concluded that "police
could have found a much 'hotter' area as it relates to drug dealing."

The result, Yarborough and other residents said, is not so much that
police displaced the dealers, but that they missed the biggest targets.

Police said they chose a small area because the saturation of drugs in
the area created an overwhelming challenge. They noted that they
received 670 drug complaints from residents in the block they chose.

Cindy Taylor, 45, said the drug trade is centered along Park Heights
Avenue. She describes Pimlico Road as the "demarcation line," with
stable blocks with majority homeownership to the east and blighted
drug-infested neighborhoods to the west.

"It is like two different countries," she said. "It is like crossing
an armed border.

Jason Smith, a 65-year-old retired city police officer, moved from his
cramped trailer in Edgewood to a $31,000, three-story rowhouse on
Woodland Avenue in 1994 at a time when city officials were encouraging
officers to move back to Baltimore.

He arrived with hope and promise that his generation - which fled the
city in droves to raise their families - could reinstate the pride of
homeownership, community, work and family in the next generation of
struggling communities.

Yesterday, the 33-year police veteran described his faltering
dream.

He lives next door to a vacant house that he fears will catch fire
that will spread to his home. When he moved in, Smith said, on some
days he could not leave his house because so many people were standing
in front of his steps.

But he said he noticed changes immediately after O'Malley named Edward
T. Norris police commissioner and promised a return to aggressive
patrols to eradicate violence.

"The big change was when Norris got into the seat," Smith said. "It
seems like some of the corners immediately evaporated."

Nathaniel Hill, 59, remembers moving to Park Heights 24 years ago when
the community held picnics and children's bike races. Then drug
dealers took over in the late 1980s, when crack cocaine hit Baltimore.

Hill said life has improved since late last year after several police
sweeps. But while the open-air drug market on his block of Woodland
Avenue has been closed, the drug trade has moved one block to Park
Heights Avenue.

"They have it cleared," he said, "but it has just shifted."

Johnson and his friends outside the Pimlico library said the
neighborhood's corner crowds might be gone, but the drugs remain.

"They need to get the people who are bringing it to us," said
Johnson's friend, Calvin Barrett, 44, who said he has a felony
conviction for armed robbery that keeps him from getting steady work.

"The establishment gives drugs to us, and then arrests us for selling
it."

A few minutes later, a stream of police cars raced to Garrison and
Denmore, where Johnson had directed people looking for heroin. A man
had beaten his girlfriend with a bat.

As officers handcuffed their suspect, Sgt. Scott M. Mezan noted that
dealers had been selling drugs "as we were pulling up to the call."

But, he noted, "usually, it's a lot worse."

Two former drug market participants are pessimistic.

Charles Douglas, 52, who lives on Park Heights Avenue, said he sold
drugs in the community in the 1970s and 1980s, but stopped when
violence escalated.

"They don't respect life anymore, so I could not see myself getting
killed over $10, so the time came to get out," he said.

Members of his crew are still on the streets, he said, and he warned
they will not stop until they face stricter jail sentences or get killed.

"They have got to be caught and prosecuted," Douglas said. "It seems I
can get more time for stealing a candy bar than for killing somebody."

Robert Boyd, 37, said he moved to Baltimore from rural Virginia in
1975 and immediately became involved in the drug trade.

At the age of 12, he says, he started transporting drugs from location
to location for neighborhood dealers.

At 15, he began selling drugs for the dealers, including deals worth
$37,000 for 1 kilo of cocaine. And at 20 he began using drugs. First
he tried marijuana, then cocaine, then crack and heroin.

"I could have been a professional football player or a basketball
player or a boxer," Boyd said as he stiffened his shoulders and pushed
out his chest. "But with drugs I got lazy, and it all went downhill."

Yesterday, he stood on a friend's porch in Park Heights and proclaimed
himself four days clean.

When asked how long it takes to find drugs, Boyd snapped his fingers.
"Drugs are everywhere. I can go anywhere and get drugs."

When pressed, Boyd stopped, put his hand to his head and
paused.

"They don't sell drugs on Pimlico Road," he said, "but they damn sure
sell them on Park Heights."