CUTTING CRIME CARRIES COSTS AT AVENUE MARKET

Loiterers Targeted, But Some Residents Allege Harassment

After more than two months of police sweeps and hundreds of arrests,
the city's effort to eradicate open-air drug dealing in a 20-block
area near West Baltimore's Avenue Market has slashed crime there but
divided the community over police tactics.

In one of 10 city drug areas that Mayor Martin O'Malley hopes to clear
by June, police report serious crime down 23 percent and drug-related
calls down 32 percent this year, compared with the same period last
year.

But the scores of Druid Heights and Upton drug addicts who continue to
feed their habits and the dealers who pad their wallets with money say
the operation has had little effect on them.

The Central Police District campaign has unleashed and empowered
dozens of police officers to target and make arrests in crimes ranging
from illegal panhandling and loitering to felony drug dealing.

Some of the community's predominantly African-American residents
applaud the police presence, but others liken it to an occupying
force, which, they say, uses racial, age and sex profiling to
intimidate suspected criminals.

"You used to catch them harassing you sometime; now it is all the
time," said Corey Gillie, 16. "They stopped me twice [recently] with
the same thing: 'You look like someone we thought had a gun.'"

Most of the recent criticism has been directed at the Central District
plainclothes unit, called CENTAC, which was established in January to
fulfill the mayor's goal of ridding streets of drug dealing.

"They are raw, in your face, and that is never necessary," said a
patrol officer, who asked not to be named and is alarmed by CENTAC's
arrest methods. "That is not the way to convey a professional image.
You don't have to treat people bad to get results."

While one expert called the tactics unconstitutional, police maintain
the strategy is necessary to curb the scourge.

Acting Police Commissioner Edward T. Norris said he plans to review
the Open Air Drug Market Eradication Program, created by Col. Bert
Shirey and implemented under former Commissioner Ronald L. Daniel,
before expanding it beyond the 10 target zones.

But community activists and some residents credit police with stopping
lines of addicts waiting for free drug samples, known as tester lines,
and clearing sidewalks of drug syringes and clusters of intimidating
youths.

Liberated feeling

Last week, several middle-aged and elderly residents of the 500 block
of Robert St., three blocks from the market, gathered on their
rowhouse stoops to swap stories of liberation from what had become a
drug culture.

"I still cannot believe it looks like we will be able to sit out here
this summer," said Diane Taylor, 38, "And we won't get knocked over by
addicts running to the tester lines."

But as some older Druid Heights residents prepare for a summer where
they can walk the streets unchallenged, many of their children and
younger males say police tactics have them expecting a season where
officers trample civil rights and use intimidation to keep them inside.

"I think the mayor is doing an excellent job, too," said Corey's
brother, Donta, 19, who is on probation for a drug conviction. "But if
you can't sit on your own steps, if you cannot walk to the store
without something said or done to you by the police, I won't even be
able to enjoy the safer streets."

Donta and Corey Gillie and about 10 teen-age friends were playing
basketball last week at a makeshift wooden hoop on Robert Street, near
where their parents were talking.

As they played, the 13-to 19-year-olds exchanged stories of alleged
police harassment. With a Sun reporter looking on, an unmarked maroon
police cruiser approached and slowed. With a stare, one of four
officers in the car shouted, "This [expletive] is not going to last
all summer," referring to the youths playing basketball in the street.

The youths and some patrol officers said CENTAC units often turn the
popular "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?" television quiz show into a
veiled threat as they drive around. With a dozen plastic handcuffs
stacked on their forearms, they shout: "Who wants to go to jail today?"

The youths, most of whom have no criminal record, said that among
them, they have been stopped or searched more than a dozen times since
Christmas, including several times on their own steps.

Norris, pressured by African-Americans who fear his support of
zero-tolerance policing, said he was dismayed by the alleged verbal
intimidation and promised his administration will institute thorough
training and oversight procedures.

Maj. Steve McMahon, Central District commander, said the department
has received no complaints in the targeted area since the operation
began.

McMahon said he is more concerned about fighting crime: "Business
people, homeowners and others who are legitimately up [at the Avenue
Market and surrounding neighborhood] are extremely happy with the
police presence, and that is who I work for and who my officers work
for," McMahon said. "As for the criminal element, if they quit being
criminals and violating the law, they won't have a problem from us."

With more than 470 arrests in the targeted area between Jan. 31 and
March 14, McMahon called the operation a success.

To maintain progress, he is replacing his undercover sweep teams with
additional foot and patrol officers. "If someone is up there
committing an illegal activity, they are going to be arrested, nice
and simple," he said.

Loitering arrests

About 250 of those arrested in the enforcement area were charged with
loitering, an approach police use to keep foot traffic moving and
deter crime. There also were 84 felony narcotic charges, 76
misdemeanor narcotic charges and roughly 60 other charges.

Surrell Brady, a professor at the University of Maryland Law School
and supervisor of a community law clinic, said the Police Department's
recent reliance on loitering statutes is unconstitutional.

"The [Supreme] Court said you have a constitutional right to loiter
for innocent purposes as long as you are not committing a crime," Brady said.

Brady said she and her students, who defend poor inner-city suspects
at no charge, are seeing more clients complain about loitering and
disorderly conduct charges. "It seems there are more and more police
ordering a person to move, and when he doesn't, arresting him for
loitering," she said.

Brady said the charges -- dropped by the court about 70 percent of the
time --do little to solve a community's crime problem.

Drug dealers and addicts around the Avenue Market agree and insist
police efforts and follow-up social services in the community will not
cure a neighborhood drug epidemic that has been building for nearly 30
years in a city with an estimated 60,000 drug addicts.

"You don't have to go 200 feet to get drugs, but before you did not
have to walk out the [market] door," said David Bell, an admitted
heroin addict, as he sipped black coffee inside the Avenue Market.
"You might have to wait a little longer, but everyone is still going
to this alley or that alley, because you cannot stop heroin because
people have to have it."

Before the police initiative, dealers hawked drugs in the Avenue
Market parking lot and along the deteriorating business strip on
Pennsylvania Avenue.

Today, dealers hire addicts to walk along Pennsylvania Avenue and tout
the day's product with whispers and gestures, directing customers to
alleys and street corners outside the enforcement zone.

The addicts who tout the illegal goods are paid in drugs and money,
said admitted heroin user Melvin Lee, 39.

Some dealers have moved business two blocks from the Avenue Market,
across Fremont Avenue, which separates the Western and Central police
districts.

"There is Grease Lightning in the dead zone," one man whispers as he
walks past a Sun reporter, referring to a street name for a drug being
sold about two blocks southwest of the market near William
Pinderhughes Elementary School in the 1200 block of Fremont Ave.

Elementary school employees are enraged that drug deals are being
pushed near the school, which is located in the Western District and
outside the enforcement zone.

Not 'that many cops'

On Wednesday outside the school, a teen-ager touting a drug with the
street name Bill Gates Out forbade a Sun reporter and photographer
from entering the school parking lot, warning them, with his hands in
his bulging pockets, not to proceed.

"It has just got worse and worse recently. They run from the market
and come over this way," said a school volunteer, who asked not to be
named. "We find people laying on the school grounds from overdose, and
it is affecting the children."

McMahon acknowledges "some displacement" has trickled into the fringe
of the Western Police District, but said an informal task force of
city and housing authority police units and the Sheriff's Department
have stepped in to correct the problem. "It will be controllable," he
said.

A man who identified himself as a dealer selling $10 bags of marijuana
about one block from the school responded, "[The police] are doing
their job, if that is what it takes, but they come here, we move over
there. When they come over there, we are going to move there.
Baltimore City does not have that many cops."