CITY DRUG TRADE LINKED TO RISE IN HOMICIDES

String of yearly decreases may end

A resurgent drug trade on the city's North Side is fueling what could be the
city's first increase in homicides since 1993, officials said.

Milwaukee recorded its 91st homicide Saturday, compared with 76 at the same
point last year, a 20% increase. Last year, homicide No. 91 didn't occur
until Oct. 22. Milwaukee's total in 1998 was 117. If the trend continues, it
will end a string of five years of declining homicide numbers in the city.

Some other large cities are seeing even more dramatic spikes.

During the recent National Conference of Mayors convention in Washington,
U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno called on Detroit officials and federal
authorities to discuss that city's criminal death toll of 315 as of Sept.
10. Detroit officials say that city will likely reach 500 murders by year's
end, compared with 429 last year.

In San Diego, homicides had reached 42 by Sept. 5, an increase of 56% from
27 on that date last year.

Though the increase in Milwaukee is not as dramatic, homicides nonetheless
are on the rise, and Milwaukee County District Attorney E. Michael McCann
thinks he knows why.

"It's basically an increase in drug slayings, particularly on the north
side," McCann said last week.

"If you think you and I notice the homicides going up, people in inner-city
neighborhoods certainly know," McCann said.

"There are people I know of who literally can't sleep in their bedrooms at
night because gunfire so many times has ripped through their walls. For a
citizen living in a suburb, it's implausible - this situation. People in
Milwaukee shouldn't have to accept it, either."

While drugs are being dealt in both the inner city and suburbs, the city's
high murder rate can be directly attributed to the dramatically different
fashions in which drug dealers in cities and suburban or rural areas deal
with bad business decisions, he said.

"The method of merchandising in Milwaukee is different," McCann said.
"Selling marijuana or even powdered cocaine in Rothschild, you don't have to
worry about armed competitors."

Dealing and buying drugs in the inner city is much more dangerous because
those armed competitors, posing as potential buyers, are often quick to rob
and kill other drug dealers, McCann said. And if an inner-city buyer stiffs
his dealer for the cost of a drug buy, that dealer is likely to kill or
seriously injure that person as a warning to others.

"If you try to buy cocaine in the suburbs and you don't pay, your dealer is
not likely to kill you," McCann said. "He'll just stop your supply.

"We have a lot of dealing in the suburbs, but it's done by cell phones, in
taverns, etc. It's done quietly. It's not that easy in the inner city. You
only make profit (there) by dealing in high volume, high volume by selling
to strangers on street corners or to drivers-by or in crack houses.
Basically, by dealing to someone you don't know, you're putting your life in
their hands."

So the simple but troubling reason for Milwaukee's homicide increase appears
to be that more young men may be entering the drug trade, according to
Warren Hill, a veteran investigator with the Milwaukee County medical
examiner's office.

With the federal indictment of 33 allegedmembers of the Latin Kings gang in
1998, it appears that, for now at least, slightly fewer people on the south
side are being killed in drug-related incidents. On the North Side, where
there was no such concentrated purge of dealers, more people are dying in
such incidents, McCann and Hill said.

Innocent Victims

What worries both men most, though, is the innocent victims of the drug
trade.

"What about that woman who was doing the crossword puzzle?" McCann asked,
referring to the death in May of Alicia Nash, 22, who was accidentally shot
by apparent drug traffickers while she sat in her north side living room
working on a puzzle.

"She had nothing to do with drugs personally, but it appears she died as a
result of some sort of drug dispute," McCann said.

Gretchen Michael, a spokeswoman for Attorney General Reno, said the U.S.
Justice Department is testing a simple new approach in its efforts to help
local agencies curb homicide and other violent crime - cracking down hard on
felons with guns.

Michael pointed to recent success in Richmond, Va., in reducing homicides by
prosecuting violent felons with guns through the federally sponsored Project
Exile program.

"You can't cookie-cutter a program like Project Exile from Richmond to
Milwaukee," Michael said, "but the program is constantly touted as a perfect
example of how we can help - again, by collaborating."

Wisconsin's version of Project Exile, Operation Ceasefire, is being held up
by the state budget battle. About $784,000 to fund the program is included
in the proposed state budget.

Under Operation Ceasefire, the number of gun offenders in the Milwaukee area
referred to federal court to be prosecuted for being felons in possession of
firearms is expected to increase from about a dozen a year to about 80.

"One of the things we're doing and that President Clinton and the attorney
general asked each of the 93 U.S. attorney's offices throughout the country
to do is to provide reports on firearms, related crimes and causes for those
crimes," Michael said. "We realized that if we were going to curb violent
crime, the first thing we needed was a collaborative effort between local,
state and federal authorities, including police departments and district
attorneys, to figure out why the crimes were happening."

McCann said he would look closely at all federal options.

"I support any and all of those programs," McCann said. "To me, you try
everything to solve a problem."

Milwaukee Police Chief Arthur Jones was unavailable for comment last week.