POLICE TAKE MORE NOTICE OF EXPIRED TAGS THAN HEROIN

I DIDN'T KNOW Kelly Gibbons. Not many people did. He was only 20 when he
died last week, and he'd spent the past couple of years leading what's
often called a life of crime. He had two assault arrests in 1997, theft and
narcotics arrests last year and a theft arrest in January. In fact, a week
before a heroin overdose killed him in a pad near downtown Santa Cruz, he
had been busted again for dope.

"And now he's dead," a cop told me. The cop wasn't being cold. He was
merely commenting on the way life ends for many heroin addicts: at a young
age.

That's all I know about Gibbons, and that's all I want to know. I think the
new fascination with heroin these days is tiresome. Heroin users are about
as hip as glue-sniffers, Hare Krishnas or panhandlers. "Heroin chic" is
already old hat, as it should be. There are few things as pathetic as kids
defying Mommy and Daddy by becoming hopelessly addicted to an illegal drug.

I don't know whether Kelly Gibbons was one of the young people who hang out
along lower Pacific Avenue just a few blocks from where the cops found his
lifeless body. But I do know that others of those junior junkies are going
to end up the same way, dead with way too much heroin in their wasted systems.

BEFORE I get to the real point of this column, which is to discuss the
apparent lack of interest in the heroin problem on the part of the Santa
Cruz Police Department, let me reiterate my beliefs about illegal drugs,
most of which I tried in my youth and some of which I enjoyed:

I believe most drugs should be legalized or decriminalized. I believe
narcotics such as heroin should be available to addicts, and I believe that
making them available would cut the price and reduce the number of
drug-related robberies and burglaries that victimize all of us as junkies
seek money to support their habits.

But I also believe cocaine, crack and methamphetamine dealers should be
shot and that PCP dealers, if there are any left, should be turned over to
the mothers of kids who use that horrible stuff.

Now let's talk about drugs in Santa Cruz. Sadly, the southern portion of
downtown, specifically the stretch of Pacific Avenue between the transit
center and Laurel Street, is where the illegal drug action is.

The other week a television station wanted to find out about heroin. The
reporter went downtown, and there were young heroin addicts in front of the
metro center unafraid to talk openly about their habits.

Don't the police watch television? Or do they look the other way? Friends
and acquaintances who have businesses or who need to walk through that part
of town tell me they see drug deals going down regularly.

So where are the cops? Are they blind or are they turning a blind eye to
the dope dealing? Does the police chief give dope dealing a low priority?

ONE PAL who works down there in what might as well be called Heroin Alley
found a ticket on his truck the other day for an expired license plate.
This means one cop was keeping his eyes peeled for DMV violators instead of
looking up to see the dope dealers. This is foolishness and laziness on the
part of Santa Cruz police.

The cops who regularly patrol Pacific Avenue should quit worrying about
skateboarders and people walking their dogs. The "downtown hosts" and
community service officers who patrol the Avenue should stop giving
friendly nods to local crooks. Instead of asking them, "Hey, what's
happening?" as they stroll down the Avenue, they should act like beat cops
are expected to act and arrest the drug dealers or, heaven forbid, hassle
them until they understand we're finished tolerating them with a wink and a
nod.

Until that happens, or heroin is legalized and stripped of its mystique, I
suspect that here in Santa Cruz we'll have many more young folks end up
like Kelly Gibbons: DOA, another dead junkie.

Write Lee Quarnstrom C/O the San Jose Mercury News, 1205 Pacific Ave., No.
201, Santa Cruz, Calif. 95060. Oh yeah, and at leeqqqqq@cruzio.com by
e-mail.