CRACK'S LEGACY: SECOND OF TWO ARTICLES

Soldiers of the Drug War Remain on Duty

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. -- Late on a chilly October night three years ago, Larry
Harper told his family that he felt life was no longer worth living, and
headed out the door with a handgun. He had slipped back to using crack
cocaine after being in drug treatment, and was ashamed to face his wife and
brother.

The family called the Albuquerque police for help. In response, a
paramilitary unit -- nine men clad in camouflage and armed with automatic
rifles and stun grenades -- stormed into the park where Harper had gone in
despair.

"Let's go get the bad guy" were the last words Hope Harper heard as the
Special Weapons and Tactics squad brushed by her on a hunt for her husband,
leaving the family in the dark at the edge of the park.

Police marksmen chased Harper through the woods, found him cowering behind a
juniper tree, and shot and killed him from 43 feet away. He had committed no
crime and had threatened only himself. The police said the fact that he was
holding a gun made him a target.

Harper, a 33-year-old plumber, was one of 32 people killed by Albuquerque
officers in the last 10 years, 11 of them by the SWAT team. The police here
have killed more people than any other department of its size in the United
States.

The Harper case proved to be the one that broke the Albuquerque SWAT team.
The family sued. And last fall, the city dismantled the squad as a full-time
unit and paid the family $200,000 in an out-of-court settlement.

Why a city of 400,000 would need a full-time paramilitary unit is a question
that should have been asked years ago, said the new police chief, Jerry
Galvin. The answer, a decade ago, would have been crack cocaine and the
heavily armed gangs fighting over the crack trade. But what started as a
response to the violent front of the war on drugs has evolved, here and in
cities across the nation, into a new world of policing.

Special Weapons and Tactics squads, once used exclusively for the rare urban
terrorist incident or shootout, transformed themselves through the crack
years into everyday parts of city life. In large urban areas, paramilitary
units now do everything from routine street patrols to nightly raids of
houses. Even small towns have formed paramilitary police units. The Cape Cod
town of Harwich, Mass., for example, population 11,000, has trained a 10-man
SWAT team.

Encouraged by federal grants, surplus equipment handed out by the military
and seizure laws that allow police departments to keep much of what their
special units take in raids, the Kevlar-helmeted brigades have grown
dramatically, even in the face of plummeting crime figures.

"It is the militarization of Mayberry," said Dr. Peter Kraska, a professor
of criminal justice at Eastern Kentucky University, who surveyed police
departments nationwide and found that their deployment of paramilitary units
had grown tenfold since the early 1980s. "This is unprecedented in American
policing and you have to ask yourself: What are the unintended
consequences?"

It was the escalation of the drug war that brought military-style policing
into most American cities. The police felt outgunned and underarmored
against gangs. But now that the worst violence associated with the gang and
crack wars of the '80s has faded, the police presence has remained and, in
many cases, escalated.

Some police officers say the expansion of SWAT into a role as the fist of
the drug war and beyond is good police work. With proper training, these
units should reduce loss of life, not add to it, they say. And some
communities plagued by violence and turf battles over drugs say they welcome
a paramilitary presence in their neighborhoods.

During a routine SWAT patrol in a poor neighborhood in Fresno, Calif., Sgt.
Randy Dobbins said: "You look at the way we're dressed and all these weapons
and this helicopter overhead -- we could not do this if people in the
community didn't support us. Some people are afraid to be seen with us, but
a lot of others come out and cheer us when we show up."

Kraska found that nearly 90 percent of the police departments he surveyed in
cities of more than 50,000 people had paramilitary units, as did about 75
percent of the departments of communities under 50,000.

In South Bend, Ind., the police have used SWAT teams to serve warrants on
small-time marijuana dealers. In St. Petersburg, Fla., the teams were
deployed, to considerable criticism, to ensure order during a civic parade.

Dressed in black or olive camouflage known as battle dress uniforms, the
paramilitary squads use armored personnel carriers, stun grenades and
Heckler & Koch MP5s, which are submachine guns advertised to police
departments with the line "From the Gulf War to the Drug War -- battle
proven."

When earlier this month New York police officers fatally shot a West African
immigrant named Amadou Diallo, firing 41 bullets at the unarmed man, it was
considered by some critics as a logical consequence of a police department
that views patrolling certain neighborhoods as war duty.

In other cities, Kraska found in his study, police paramilitary units got
into trouble when they were used beyond their original mission.

Some police chiefs and academics acknowledge the enormous growth of
paramilitary police but dispute the criticism of how they are used. Most
SWAT teams rarely shoot anyone, and 96 percent of all raids end with no
shots fired, according to the National Tactical Officers Association.

"You want people who are highly trained and highly disciplined," said David
Klinger, a professor of sociology at the University of Houston, who is
studying SWAT teams.

"It makes sense to me for Bubba Bob the sheriff to have on his staff a
couple of guys or girls who have been through extensive tactical training,"
Klinger, a former Los Angeles police officer, added. "But if what you have
is some cowboy idiot who wants to be the tough guy, that doesn't help
anybody."

Most of the squads stay in existence because there is too much incentive not
to, police officers say. Forfeiture laws passed by Congress at the height of
the crack scare were designed to take the profit out of drug dealing; assets
like cars, boats, guns and cash can be seized, regardless of whether the
person who owns them is later convicted.

But the laws have given the police a profit motive for fighting drugs,
because their departments can use what they seize to subsidize their budgets
or buy extra equipment.

And since the end of the Cold War, the military's giveaway of surplus
hardware has proved irresistible to many SWAT teams. An amphibious armored
personnel carrier has just been picked up by the Boone County sheriff's
office in Indiana, and bayonets were recently accepted, then rejected, by
the police in Los Angeles.

"I was offered tanks, bazookas, anything I wanted," said Nick Pastore,
former police chief of New Haven, Conn. "I turned it all down, because it
feeds a mind-set that you're not a police officer serving a community,
you're a soldier at war."

The Patrol: Police in Armor, Residents on Bikes

"War" is the word most often used in Fresno, a depressed city of about
400,000 people in the San Joaquin Valley. In Fresno, more than in any other
city, paramilitary police have become a part of everyday life.

On a night when the moon was full and night temperatures so low that the
oranges held a wisp of frost, the Fresno SWAT squad, called the Violent
Crime Suppression Unit, was back in familiar territory: the poor and largely
black section of town known as the Dog Pound, where drug dealing is
concentrated.

"You wouldn't believe what this place used to be like," said Dobbins,
leading a group of camouflaged officers on their nightly patrol. "People
were prisoners of their homes. Police officers were shot at routinely. The
bad guys had no fear."

An 11-year veteran, Dobbins is proud of the fact that crime has fallen in
Fresno, as elsewhere. Like other members of the unit, he has a semiautomatic
Beretta pistol, a Heckler & Koch MP5 submachine gun and a 12-round shotgun
called the Street Sweeper at his disposal.

Since its start, the Fresno unit has tried to recruit ethnic minorities,
though it remains overwhelmingly white. The 34-member unit has access to two
helicopters equipped with night-vision goggles and people-detecting heat
sensors, an armored personnel carrier with a turret, and an armored van that
serves as a portable headquarters.

The armored personnel carrier, a gift from the military with the words
"FRESNO SWAT" brightly painted on it, is used mainly to serve drug warrants
in potentially dangerous situations.

"A lot of people don't like the perception," Dobbins said. "They wonder why
the heck does the Police Department need this kind of equipment. But you
can't understand what it's like to be shot at, and what a difference it
makes when you're in one of these."

The neighborhood was relatively quiet. Two pedestrians were stopped and
searched for drugs. A car with a missing headlight was stopped; its driver
was handcuffed and told to sit on the sidewalk while the trunk was searched.
Nothing was found.

Several cars from the unit went on a high-speed chase of a stolen car. The
occupants, tracked by dogs, dashed from the car and were chased through
several yards but escaped.

Pointing to a small house behind a high fence, said to be a drug haven,
Dobbins said, "We've raided this house five times." Drugs, mostly crack
cocaine, are what keep the Violent Crime Suppression Unit in business.
People are stopped for minor offenses, and can then be arrested for
possessing drugs or having outstanding warrants.

"I'd say anyone we're going to find milling around here is usually involved
with crack or high on crack," said Günter Miss, a former Los Angeles police
officer now with Fresno's SWAT squad. He described his work as "a lot of
fun.".

Most of the young men seen on the neighborhood streets were riding bikes.
"That's what has happened to a lot of the drug dealers," Dobbins said.
"We've impounded their cars."

People in the community seemed to accept all the action, the police lights,
the constant presence of screeching tires and barking dogs that sound like
firecrackers, as the price of a certain kind of peace. City officials say
they have received very few complaints from citizens, and random interviews
confirmed that.

"There used to be drug addicts everywhere," said Lydia Covarrubio, who has
lived in Fresno for 30 years, speaking as officers with dogs chased two
people through back yards in her neighborhood.

In 1994, Fresno had a record 85 homicides and 2,810 robberies, and officers
were fired at a dozen times. The crime spike was blamed on gangs selling
drugs.

"There was a real sense that the bad guys had control of the streets," said
the Fresno police chief, Ed Winchester. "We were desperate. But we certainly
could not have deployed heavily armed SWAT-like units without the support of
the community."

The unit became a permanent part of the department the following year, in
1995. In four years, crime has fallen dramatically, matching the plunge
across the nation. Winchester said the paramilitary units deserved part of
the credit, though he acknowledged other factors.

The drop in crime raises a question about how long the city needs to keep
paramilitary patrols on the streets.

"If we pulled out, the drug dealers would come back with a vengeance," said
Lt. Greg Coleman, the unit commander. "Drug dealers are replaced right away.
If you arrest one, there's another to take his place."

So they are left with each other, the officers with submachine guns and
helicopters, and the drug dealers on bicycles, in what the police say is a
ceaseless struggle.

The Message: Small Arrests Show Who Is in Control

With a population of 57,000, Meriden, Conn., does not fit the image of an
urban crime nightmare. But in Meriden, as in Fresno, crack and other drugs
prompted a desperate move to create a special paramilitary unit.

Meriden formed its SWAT team in 1986, when crack cocaine was starting to
appear all over the United States. The unit now has 29 members who are used
nearly full time. Other small cities and towns have SWAT-trained officers
but use them only occasionally.

"Street-level drug dealing just took off with crack," said Lt. Steve Lagere,
who heads the Meriden SWAT team. "We could pull up to the projects and have
five youths selling drugs at one time, right out in the open."

Now in Meriden, as in Fresno, the team arrests people for minor offenses,
attacking small crimes as a way to send a larger message about who is in
control. About 90 percent of the unit's deployments, Lagere said, involve
drug-related work, primarily in the city's housing projects and surrounding
neighborhoods, which tend to be black and Hispanic.

Kraska's survey found that paramilitary units in small and medium-sized
communities were most often used to knock down the doors of houses to search
for drugs.

The police acknowledge the change. Some shrug; others are alarmed. "I don't
think it was intended to be used this way," Lagere said. But a well-trained
tactical squad can better serve a drug warrant in a potentially dangerous
situation than a community police officer can, he added.

"The way I look at it is, my officers are not of the military, shoot-first
assault style," he said. "We have a different attitude. We're going to use
everything we can to ensure there is little violence. And we don't care if
we're dealing with the lowest vermin in the street, it's 'yes sir, no sir.'
We never dehumanize these people."

Overall crime is down about 30 percent in the past five years, Lagere said.
But when asked if the original purpose of establishing the paramilitary
unit -- to reduce heavy drug use and dealing, by maintaining a heavy show of
force -- had been achieved, he was less sure. Like most police officers
interviewed in the trenches of the drug war, he expressed a sense of
futility.

"We ought to be looking at some other option," he said. "It's politically
incorrect to say that as a cop. You really can't discuss it much here,
because people will think you're soft on drugs. But I don't see crack use
going up or down, no matter what we've tried to do."

Down the Quinnipiac River from Meriden, the city of New Haven has been
through a similar scourge of drugs and violence. And in the last five years,
it has also seen crime rates fall dramatically. But the city did not expand
the role of its rarely used SWAT team. Instead, the police say, they brought
the crime rate down by rejecting the militarized approach.

"I had some tough-guy cops in my department pushing for bigger and more
hardware," said Pastore, who was the police chief from 1990 to 1997. "They
used to say, 'It's a war out there.' They like SWAT because it's an
adventure."

New Haven, a city of 130,000, emphasized community policing, making officers
walk the beat on city streets or in housing projects. "The approach you take
creates a mind-set," Pastore said. "If you think everyone who uses drugs is
the enemy, then you're more likely to declare war on the people."

Lagere, in Meriden, said his town used both community policing and a heavy
SWAT presence. The SWAT team has never killed anyone, he said. But other
police officers argue that using paramilitary squads for assaults, sweeps
and raids increases the likelihood of accidents or shootings.

They point to two cases in New England. When the SWAT team in Fitchburg,
Mass., stormed an apartment looking for a drug dealer in December 1996, it
ended up gutting an entire apartment house. A stun grenade, designed as
distraction, flashed in a predictable burst but also ignited a sofa, which
grew into a fire that consumed the building. Six officers were injured, and
24 people were left without a home.

In another case, a SWAT team's drug raid on the wrong apartment in Boston
led to the death of a minister, the Rev. Accelyne Williams, from a heart
attack. A settlement with Williams' widow cost the city $1 million.

The Evolution: Less Militaristic and More Selective

As small and midsized cities expand the reach of their drug-fighting
paramilitary squads, the nation's original SWAT team, in Los Angeles, has
gone in the opposite direction.

The unit that introduced the term SWAT into the popular lexicon was formed
in 1966, largely in response to a fear of urban terrorism and riots. Over
the years, the Los Angeles squad became notorious for its battering rams
connected to armored carriers, its constant helicopter presence, its
assault-style raids.

"The idea back then was a lot more militaristic," said Officer Eduardo
Funes, a spokesman for the Los Angeles Police Department. Now the 67-member
team reacts to extremely violent situations, rather than carrying out
assaults. It is rare for it to be called out on suicide threats or drug
warrants, unless there is a strong likelihood of gunfire, Funes said.

"It's not like you see on those TV shows like 'Cops' or in the movies,"
Funes said. "The philosophy is to have a well-trained, well-armed group of
police officers who can respond and back up other officers in dangerous
situations."

What fed the expanding role of SWAT teams across the country were the
forfeiture laws that allow the police to keep much of what they take in
raids. There are no figures on the total amount of property seized by all
police departments nationwide, but the federal government seized more than
$4 billion in assets from 1986 to 1996.

Critics say that the more police departments conduct forfeiture raids, the
more they come to rely on them. "I call them forfeiture junkies," Pastore
said.

The Supreme Court has upheld the forfeiture laws, but a few states,
including California, have changed the statutes so that a conviction is
required before the police can keep the property.

Surplus military gear has also flooded into SWAT squads' lockers. Between
1995 and 1997 alone, the Department of Defense gave police departments 1.2
million pieces of military hardware, including 73 grenade launchers and 112
armored personnel carriers.

But Klinger, who patrolled the streets of South Central Los Angeles before
he became a scholar on police behavior, said he does not think the raids
ultimately do much to curb drug use.

"We should legalize drugs, and law enforcement should get out of the
business of treating drugs as a crime problem," Klinger said. "This is not
an unusual position in the tactical squad community."

The Alternatives: Measuring Success by Those Who Live

hen Sam Walker, a professor of criminal justice at the University of
Nebraska at Omaha, reviewed the cases of all the people killed by the
Albuquerque police, he was stunned.

"The rate of killings by police was just off the charts," said Walker, who
was hired by the city to study the department. "They had an organizational
culture within their SWAT team that led them to escalate situations upward,
rather than de-escalating."

That is precisely what happened to Larry Harper, his family believes. At the
time the police shot him, as he cowered behind a tree, he wanted to live and
was ready to go home, said his brother James Harper.

"I keep thinking of my brother crying out, 'Leave me alone, I haven't done
anything,' and their response, which was to kill him," said Harper, who
comes from a line of law-enforcement officers.

Galvin, the Albuquerque police chief, also saw a need for change after he
was hired last year. "I did away with the SWAT team," Galvin said in an
interview. "We have SWAT capability, because I think it is a necessary
function of any police department. But there is no longer a full-time unit
in place."

Most drug raids, suicide calls and other types of volatile police actions do
not need a full paramilitary response, he said. "If you have a mind-set that
the goal is to take out a citizen, it will happen," Galvin said. "A
successful intervention for us now is one where nobody gets killed."

In Dallas, the paramilitary unit has been taken off most drug raids, which
are carried out instead by the narcotics squad. In Seattle, the SWAT team is
also out of the business of drug raids and suicide calls. Nor do the Seattle
police use a helicopter.

But in Fresno, or Meriden, or Champaign, Ill., where the SWAT teams serve
most of the drug warrants, there are no plans to retreat. The officers in
camouflage and helmets, carrying MP5s and Street Sweeper shotguns, are part
of the night.