COCAINE TRADE FLOURISHES DESPITE DECADE-OLD DRUG COURTS

System Takes Criminals Off Street But Doesn'T Dent The Market,
Prosecutors Say

By his own word, Luis Michell-Retan needed just 18 months in Milwaukee
to establish himself as a midlevel cocaine dealer.

At 20, he has just a sixth-grade education. He came to the country
illegally from Mexico and can't speak English. But opportunities still
abound in the local cocaine trade, and customers don't ask for resumes.

As he sat between his lawyer and an interpreter in one of the county's
three felony drug courts last week, Michell-Retan was more than an
example of today's possibilities in drug trafficking. He illustrated
that a decade after the local criminal justice system set aside courts
to fast-track nothing but felony drug cases, the cocaine problem that
prompted the effort is as bad as ever.

Sometime this month, officials will close case No.8315,000 in the drug
courts, which opened in 1990, and the vast majority of those cases
have involved cocaine. Yet there was Michell-Retan last week, being
rebuked for taking advantage of the area's thriving cocaine market.

"It's very tempting to make easy money that way," Circuit Judge Clare
L. Fiorenza told him before sentencing him to seven years in prison
for possession with intent to deliver $8,000 worth of cocaine. "I
don't know if you ever thought about what those drugs you sold were
doing to the community."

Assistant District Attorney Jack Stoiber, who oversees 12 prosecutors
in the Metropolitan Drug Enforcement Unit, considers the topic every
day and is convinced that authorities are tackling the local cocaine
problem correctly.

"I think we have had thousands of successes because we know we take
people out of the business," he said.

Stoiber's predecessor in the unit, Deputy District Attorney Patrick J.
Kenney, said cocaine dealers - particularly crack cocaine dealers -
continue appearing because they recognize a good market when they see
it.

"One of the problems we have right now is that we have a hard-core
group of addicts," said Kenney, who led the unit from its inception
until January. "There is still demand and, unfortunately, there still
are people willing to accept the risks of trying to supply that demand."

Before she left intake court last week, 64-year-old Julia Mae Ward was
handed a slip of paper telling her to return to Circuit Judge M.
Joseph Donald's drug court April 28 for a crack-dealing charge that
leaves her facing up to 15 years in prison if convicted.

A criminal complaint says the charge was issued after undercover
police twice bought crack from her in an apartment building in the 700
block of N. 21st St. The complaint says that a boy ushered the
officers to Ward's apartment and that when she was arrested, Ward had
15 packaged rocks of crack in the left pocket of her dress.

Ward offered the following explanation, according to the complaint:
"She decided to try to sell cocaine base because it was an easy way to
make some money; that she receives SSI (Supplemental Security Income),
but that it does not cover her bills."

When the countywide Metropolitan Drug Enforcement Unit was established
in 1988, the joint effort by law enforcement agencies and the district
attorney's office resulted in a 54% increase in felony narcotics
prosecutions.

But the county's cocaine problem continued to grow, and along with it
came an increase in violent crime.

In 1989, 2,640 robberies were reported in Milwaukee County; in 1990,
the number reached 4,406, an increase of 67%. Homicides increased from
86 in 1988 to 158 in 1990.

Violent crime cases took higher priority in the court system than drug
trafficking cases in the late 1980s.

"All of the studies indicated that the primary reason for the increase
in violent crime was the drug problem, specifically cocaine," Kenney
said. "The district attorney's office felt that the court's crisis
management of its daily calendars was very counterproductive."

In 1990, the drug courts were established as a new approach. The goal
was to pump the cases through in an average of 90 days apiece.

"Drug cases had been taking up to a year and a half, and everybody
told us it was totally impossible to get them done in 90 days,"
recalled Chief Judge Michael J. Skwierawski, who was one of the
effort's early sponsors and one of the first two judges assigned to
the initial two drug courts.

"In the first full year, we handled over 1,100 cases," Kenney said,
adding that they were disposed of in an average of 67 days.

The number of cases has since climbed significantly, and in 1998, a
third felony drug court was established.

The main reason for the continuing climb was crack
cocaine.

"It became a huge problem in the early 1990s," Kenney said. "We had
our first substantial number of crack arrests in 1992, with 582. In
1993, there were 1,231 arrests for crack, a 112 percent increase."

Crack's affordability drove the market for it, Kenney
said.

"It used to be that when you wanted to try cocaine, you had to come up
with 25 bucks for powder; that was the smallest amount sold," Kenney
said. "Crack sometimes can be bought for as little as $5, although
it's more commonly $10.

"When the price drops like that, you make it available to a much
larger and more vulnerable group of people."

Stoiber said that crack remains narcotics officers' primary target
today and that the majority of cases his prosecutors send into the
drug courts concern crack.

After having served a 36-month prison term for a 1992 cocaine
trafficking conviction, 29-year-old Tiffany Odoms, a mother of six,
was back in court this month for dealing crack.

"From all accounts, she is a pretty good mom," said her attorney, John
Carlson.

"She has a substantial drug history, which goes hand in hand with
prostitution and which, I'm sure, is the reason for all her
prostitution arrests," said Assistant District Attorney Denis Stingl.

"I'd like to apologize to the community," Odoms told
Fiorenza.

"I hope you want to change your life and get your drug problem under
control," Fiorenza told Odoms before sending her out of the courtroom
with a 54-month prison term. "You have six kids!"

With the drug courts running on a 90-day-or-less timetable, defendants
who are fortunate enough to be free on bail don't have time to immerse
themselves deeply in treatment before sentencing day, if they can get
into a program, public defender Terese Dick said.

"They aren't able to establish much of a track record to show the
judge," Dick said.

Public defender Kim Heller Marotta sees a need for more treatment
programs in the County Jail.

"It would be a great idea while you have a captive audience," she
said.

Heller Marotta also called overdue a recent effort to send young men
convicted of drug trafficking for the first time to jail with
intensive treatment, followed by probation instead of prison.

"We're marking the 10th anniversary of the drug courts, and it's the
first program of its sort," she said. "We need to do more things like
this."

Defense attorney Martin E. Kohler said prosecutors, who achieve a 95%
conviction rate in drug court, are too quick to recommend prison for
drug trafficking, even if the dealer is an addict.

"Often you see people who are clearly addicted, and too many of those
people are sent to prison," Kohler said.

"Because cocaine has such a powerful hold over people, it dictates
having a serious (sentencing) policy," Stoiber countered.

Stoiber's boss, District Attorney E. Michael McCann, agreed that the
drug courts and tough sentences will not solve Milwaukee's crack
problem by themselves.

"You also need the education and treatment," McCann said. "I supported
establishing a treatment court."

McCann's office also has lobbied for a "youthful offender" drug law
that would provide the option of a charge being expunged from a
convicted person's record once the sentence is completed.

"We've been supporting that for years," Kenney said.

Skwierawski said the drug courts can only address the continuing flood
of cases, not eradicate the underlying problem.

"What causes people to get involved in drugs out in the community
involves social policy set by the legislative and executive branches
of government," Skwierawski said.

McCann said: "No one claimed this would be a cure. But who knows what
the situation would be if the problem was not attacked like this?"