APPROACH IS CONTROVERSIAL

Unusual Combination Helps Police Shut Down Neighborhood Dealers

HIGH POINT - For three months, police investigated more than 20
dealers operating in this city's West End neighborhood, where crack
cocaine was openly sold on the street and in houses. They made dozens
of undercover buys and videotaped many other drug purchases.

They also did something unusual: They determined the "influentials"
in the dealers' lives -- mothers, grandmothers, mentors -- and
cultivated relationships with them.

Then, when police felt they had ironclad legal cases, they did
something even more striking: They refrained from arresting most of
the suspected dealers. In a counterintuitive approach, police here
are trying to shut down entire drug markets, in part by giving
nonviolent suspected drug dealers a second chance. Their strategy
combines the "soft" pressure from families and community with the
"hard" threat of aggressive, ready-to-go criminal cases. While
critics say the strategy is too lenient, it has met with early
success and is being tried by other communities afflicted with overt
drug markets and the violence they breed.

Police in neighboring Winston-Salem as well as Newburgh, N.Y., have
deployed the strategy with success, and word is spreading.

Encouraged by the National Urban League, which wants to see the
approach replicated nationwide, police departments in Tucson, Ariz.,
Providence, R.I., Kansas City, Mo., and elsewhere are gearing up to
try it. "It's the hottest thing in drug enforcement," says Mark
Kleiman, a University of California, Los Angeles professor who
specializes in illicit drug issues and isn't involved in the project.

Some police and prosecutors object to the approach. "Why not slam 'em
from the beginning and forget this foolishness?" says Karen Richards,
county prosecutor in the Fort Wayne, Ind., area. She draws a
distinction between addicts, who she believes should get social
support, and dealers, who she believes deserve incarceration. "Drug
dealers are drug dealers," she says. "They won't have an epiphany and
end up as model citizens."

In High Point, the West End neighborhood had been a major drug market
for almost 15 years, with 16 known crack houses operating at the
start of the initiative. A traffic jam began almost every afternoon
as buyers, many destined for homes in the suburbs, converged on the
area seeking crack, according to residents and police.

In May 2004, after accumulating evidence, police chief James Fealy
invited 12 suspected dealers to a meeting, with a promise that they
wouldn't be arrested that night. Encouraged by their "influentials,"
nine showed up. In one room, they met with about 30 clergy, social
workers and other community members who confronted them with the harm
they were doing, implored them to stop dealing, and offered help.

Then the alleged dealers moved to a second room where they
encountered law-enforcement officials. Around the room hung
poster-size photos of crack houses that had been the dealers'
headquarters. In front of each alleged dealer was a binder laying out
the evidence against him or her. There were even arrest warrants,
lacking only the signature of a judge. The law-enforcement officials
made an ultimatum: Stop dealing or go to jail. The West End street
drug market closed "overnight" and hasn't reopened in more than two
years, says Fealy. High Point police say they have since shut down
the city's two other major street drug markets, using the same
strategy. More than two years later, violent crime remains more than
25 percent lower in the area, according to police statistics. Since
the initiative, there hasn't been a single murder or rape reported in
the West End. "I don't know exactly how to phrase it," said Lucille
Dennis, 89, who has lived in the West End for half a century, "but
you just don't see as many people riding around doing nothing."

Other Cities

Other cities replicating High Point's unusual tactic to shut down drug markets:

Winston-Salem.
Newburgh, N.Y.
Tucson, Ariz.
Providence, R.I.
Kansas City, Mo.