COUNSELOR AT YOUTH HOME IS ACCUSED OF RUNNING A $3 MILLION-A-YEAR DRUG RING

A counselor at a Manhattan group home for teen-age boys was accused
Wednesday of running a $3 million-a-year drug ring at a public housing
project in Queens with another man.

Officials in the Queens District Attorney's office said that Jeffrey
Copeland, 33, a youth counselor at the Bridge Group Home in Washington
Heights, and Andre White, 32, led a drug gang that sold more than
$8,000 worth of crack cocaine and heroin a day at the South Jamaica
Houses. Officials said they started an investigation of the drug ring
using undercover police officers last summer and had arrested 26
people, including Copeland and White. The authorities said other
suspects were being sought.

Officials in the prosecutor's office charged that Copeland and White
bought the drugs from a supplier in the Bronx and then resold them
through four mid-level dealers. Those four, the authorities said, then
parceled out the drugs to about 20 dealers who sold the drugs in the
hallways and vestibules of the housing project, a 27-building complex
bounded by 157th and 160th Streets, South Road, and 110th Avenue.

The Rev. Stephen J. Chinlund, executive director of Episcopal Social
Services, which runs the Bridge Group Home, said he was stunned by the
arrest of Copeland, who was suspended from his job. "I simply can't
believe it," Father Chinlund said. "He was an exemplary worker."

Father Chinlund said that Copeland had been directed to the group home
through a prison reform program. He said Copeland had spent time in
prison on drug charges but had been doing "a superb job" supervising
the children at the group home for the last year.

The home has about 10 boys, ages 13 to 19, who have been sent there by
the city's Administration for Children's Services. Father Chinlund
said that some of the boys have been orphaned, and others have parents
who are drug addicts or who otherwise cannot care for them. He said
that Copeland worked five days a week as one of two staff counselors
who made sure the boys were fed, went to school and participated in
other organized activities.

"There's a lot of time for talking and incidental opportunities to
counsel" the residents, Father Chinlund said, adding Copeland
"would've done everything he could to steer them away from trouble."
There was no indication that Copeland gave or sold drugs to any of the
residents of the group home, or that he recruited any of them as dealers.

Wednesday's arrests served as a reminder of the longstanding drug
problems that have plagued South Jamaica. Police officials said that
the drug gang had been operating at the housing project for more than
eight years. They also said that some of the gang members had ties to
the former drug gang that was responsible for the fatal shooting of
Edward Byrne, a 22-year-old rookie police officer who was killed in
1988 while guarding the home of a drug-case witness in Jamaica.

"Pervasive drug trafficking has been a problem in the housing
development for many years," said Richard A. Brown, the Queens
District Attorney. "One of the reasons there was so much difficulty in
taking this group down was their dealing were all indoors and they
were deeply entrenched and highly organized."

Undercover police officers made about 60 purchases of crack cocaine
from the drug gang, many of them near Public School 40, which is down
the street from the housing project, Brown said. The accused higher-up
dealers were identified using wiretaps and other surveillance
techniques, the prosecutor said.

Officers said they seized about $20,000 worth of drugs and four
semi-automatic handguns from the residences of gang members, including
some apartments in the complex. They said they also found $50,000 in
cash in a safety deposit box maintained by the gang.

Peter A. Crusco, the chief of the Queens District Attorney's narcotics
division, estimated that White and Copeland made more than $100,000 a
year each from the drug trade and that the street dealers averaged
about $25,000 a year. Both men were charged with conspiracy and sale
of a controlled substance.

"The bosses were very savvy," Crusco said. "They apparently told their
people to go find jobs so they wouldn't draw suspicion that they were
drug dealers." Francisco Perez, of the Bronx, described as the
supplier to Copeland and White, is wanted on drug charges by Federal
officials, Crusco said.