OFFICIALS TAP PROVEN STRATEGY TO BATTLE HEROIN

Boston's Antigang Tactics Considered

With heroin use in Massachusetts running out of control, worried law
enforcement and public health officials are turning to the techniques and
strategies of the highly successful fight against youth violence in Boston
in a search for solutions.

The surge in heroin use was first recognized more than two years ago, but
US Attorney Donald K. Stern said yesterday that law enforcement officials
do not know what is causing the increase or how to curb it. What they do
know, Stern said in a news conference at the Federal Courthouse in Boston,
is that people are dying at an alarming rate.

Flanked by state and local officials, Stern said a study of drug overdoses
in Lynn found that 30 people died of heroin overdoses between Jan. 1, 1996,
and Aug. 16 of this year - a rate about double the homicide rate in the
North Shore city of 80,000. Also, there were at least 206 nonfatal heroin
overdoses during that period.

Stern, the chief federal law enforcement officer in the state, said that
"there is no reason to think Lynn is unique. Other cities in Massachusetts
- - and probably throughout the Northeast - are having the same experience,
and we just don't know about it. ... It is at alarming levels."

In an effort to curb the state's heroin problem, Stern and others want to
use the tactics that helped make Boston a national model for fighting youth
crime.

The battle against youth violence in Boston began with statistical research
and analysis to identify the characteristics of a target group. Members of
the group were given a choice between being heavily scrutinized by law
enforcement or receiving help from social service agencies.

Similarly, in Lynn, profiles of heroin users were created using data from
police reports of overdoses.

Federal, state, and local officials are now working on solutions such as
federal prosecution of pushers who sell heroin to people who overdose -
which would parallel the use of federal career criminal laws against youth
gang leaders in Boston - and establishing better monitoring and assistance
programs for users willing to accept help.

While the severity of the heroin problem varies statewide, Stern said there
are about a dozen other communities where officials believe the situation
will prove similar to that in Lynn. He cited Revere, Lowell, Lawrence, New
Bedford, Springfield, and Holyoke in this context.

"We will be using Lynn as a laboratory to determine what works, and then
taking that lesson statewide," he said.

Several officials commended Lynn officials for their willingness to seek
help with a problem that many communities are ignoring.

"If you have a problem, you can pretend it is not there and everybody
suffers, or you can do something about it," Lynn Mayor Patrick J. McManus
said.

Funding as well as strategies for attacking Lynn's heroin problem grew out
of the multiagency success dealing with youth crime in Boston.

Following the recognition of the city's accomplishments, the US Justice
Department funded similar efforts to combat problems in five other US
cities, with local officials determining their top problem.

Stern said he received additional funding from Attorney General Janet Reno
to undertake further crime-fighting efforts in Massachusetts. In Brockton
and Lynn, he said, "we basically got all the players together and said,
`What do you see as your main problem?"'

Brockton's answer was domestic violence. In Lynn, police said they were
noticing a phenomenal number of heroin overdoses.

So in early 1997 Lynn launched Operation Overdose, the biggest law
enforcement operation in its history. But despite the arrests of hundreds
of heroin dealers and users, the overdoses continued.

The study of Lynn overdoses contradicted a number of widely held
perceptions, including the belief - common in other drug-affected
communities - that users were mostly outsiders coming into the area to buy
drugs. The study found that 65 percent of those overdosing in Lynn were
city residents.

The findings also refute the notion that heroin addicts, while often
involved with the legal system, are generally not violent offenders - 62
percent of those overdosing had been charged previously with a violent
crime. And undermining the belief that most people who overdose are users,
rather than pushers - one in four of those overdosing had faced drug
distribution charges.

Employees of Community Resources for Justice, a nonprofit think tank that
conducted the study, said yesterday they do not yet know what is causing
what they termed the epidemic of overdoses in Lynn. They said a drug
enforcement task force that has been meeting regularly in the city for
several months has come up with a number of theories, including the higher
purity and low cost of heroin currently available and the combination of
heroin with other substances available on the black market for prescription
drugs.

John Gartland, special agent in charge of the US Drug Enforcement
Administration in New England, said he was most concerned about the
increased purity and plummeting price of heroin in the region. He said he
believes this is the result of a conscious effort by major dealers in
heroin to increase their market share, and cautioned that such people would
eventually raise their prices and spark a rise in crime.

"Everywhere I go, people ask what are we going to do about the heroin,"
Gartland said. "From Vermont all the way through New England ... it seems
to be the single most important concern."

Gartland said heroin ranging from 50 to 90 percent pure can now be
purchased for as little as $3 per single-dose bag. In contrast, during the
previous heroin epidemic in the 1970s, heroin that was 2 to 5 percent pure
cost up to $30 a bag.

Stern said Massachusetts Attorney General Thomas Reilly will support the
anti-heroin effort by training police to better preserve evidence at heroin
overdose scenes. As Essex District Attorney Kevin Burke noted, overdoses
have typically been regarded as accidental, so locations where they occur
usually are not considered crime scenes.

"These are effectively murders, and need to be treated as such," Stern said.