A DRUG DEALER WALKS, AND JUSTICE MISCARRIES

If you're looking for a case study in the root causes of public cynicism,
then look no further than into the case of one Raymond Gadbois, 25.

Gadbois, who was arrested not once but twice for drug dealing in the Bullard
Street neighborhood in New Bedford's North End, walked out of Third District
Court with a two-year suspended sentence Thursday.

He could have gotten 15 years behind bars; the district attorney's office
wanted him to get at least two. He got no time at all. Nada. Zilch. Zero. He
is a free man.

Judge Bernadette Sabra, in allowing Gadbois to walk, sent a loud message of
discouragement to the men and women fighting the good fight for safe
neighborhoods and sound communities in this city.

The message is why bother. It doesn't matter if neighbors alert the police
and the police do their job and catch a dealer red-handed. The dealer will
just go to court and get his wrist slapped.

So why fear outraged neighbors? Why fear the cops? And why fear the courts?

Judge Sabra may know things about the case that would justify her leniency.
But she has withheld all comment.

So, we are left with the facts themselves, a dealer grabbed in a police raid
in November 1997 with 20 pounds of marijuana, Percocets, steroids, magic
mushrooms, a handgun, ammunition, over $1,600 in cash and drug
paraphernalia.

Little more than two months after he's freed in $2,500 bail, he is arrested
again, this time with 37 bags of heroin, marijuana, Percocets, $2,000 in
cash and more drug paraphernalia.

When he finally goes before a judge 18 months later, he pleads guilty to a
raft of charges that include possession with intent to distribute a class A
substance, a Class D substance and a Class C substance, and possession of a
firearm without a license.

We are told that on the street Judge Sabra's courtroom is known as "the gift
shop."

If that's so, she is not giving any gifts to the people who have to live
with the destruction wrought by operations like the one on Tinkham Street
where Gadbois twice got busted.

We have reservations about the need for mandatory minimum sentences.

But mandatory sentences came about because too many judges demonstrated time
and again that they were out of touch with crime's corrosive effects.

If drug dealers are going to be allowed to set up shop in our neighborhoods
and operate with impunity, we need mandatory minimums. We also need laws
that close loopholes that allow dealers to avoid Walpole because they
constantly watch the weight of the heroin they sell to keep it under legally
stipulated amounts.

Drugs kill people; they kill cities. They can't be tolerated, certainly not
in the courtroom.