DEALING WITH IT: CITY FIGHTS BACK WITH BUSTS, TESTS, TREATMENT

Some people know houses by street numbers. New Bedford Police Sgt. Al
Pacheco knows them by drug busts.

"I've personally raided just about every one," he says while driving
his undercover surveillance car down a street in the city's South End.
"That one. And that green one over there -- they finally tore it down."

He points to another house and says with disgust, "This one was really
infested with drugs."

The repeated raids eased the neighborhood drug problem. But the
dealers adjusted to the police pressure by moving operations to
another part of town.

New Bedford is a small city, but it is big in heroin and
cocaine.

In 1998, the city police seized more than three times as much heroin
as four other cities its size and almost twice as much cocaine,
according to the state Department of Public Health's Bureau of
Laboratory Sciences. The bureau tests and tracks all the illegal
narcotics seized by state and local police.

Between 1995 and 1998, the total amount of heroin seized in the city
increased from 120 grams to 355, while the number of submissions rose
from 341 to 478. The number of cocaine submissions dropped from 473 to
357, but the amount of cocaine seized tripled from 3,255 grams to
9,530 grams, the bureau said.

Increases of that size likely are due to the presence of more drugs on
the street, said Ralph Timperi, assistant commissioner of the Bureau
of Laboratory Sciences.

"On a population basis, there is more heroin and cocaine being found
in New Bedford than in most other cities its size," he said.

But police say their enforcement efforts have paid off in recent
years, drastically reducing the numbers of drug dealers and
prostitutes on the streets.

A shift in the nature of the drug trade and increased law enforcement
has driven dealers inside. Instead of buyers coming to the dealers,
the dealers, equipped with cell phones and beepers, are now coming to
the buyers, says Lt. Melvin Wotton, head of the city's vice squad,
formally known as the Organized Crime Intelligence Bureau.

Lt. Wotton concedes law enforcement efforts sometimes simply displace
problems from one neighborhood to another. But he contends city
streets today overall are safer, especially compared to the mid- and
late-1980s when dealers and prostitutes were highly visible.

"We've tried to make New Bedford a better place to live and I really
think we've accomplished that," he says.

Prostitutes can still be found on city streets, but there are now so
few of them that some officers know them all by name. On a recent cold
winter afternoon, Sgt. Pacheco pointed out four or five prostitutes
walking between the city's South and North ends.

"They only stay out long enough to get $20 for their drugs," he said,
"instead of staying out all night like they used to."

Like Lt. Wotton, Sgt. Pacheco says he sees far less action on New
Bedford's streets today than in the 1980s when he was first starting
out as a narcotics cop.

"You could pull up at a street corner and dealers and prostitutes
would crowd around. It was crazy," he said. "We went after them on the
streets and they went into houses. We went after them in the houses
and now we're having a problem in bars."

The state drug lab compared the amount of drugs seized in New Bedford
to Lowell, Brockton, Cambridge and Fall River. While the number and
quantity of heroin and cocaine seizures increased in New Bedford, the
amount of those drugs seized in Lowell as well as the average of the
four other cities dropped between 1995 and 1998.

New Bedford police counter that one big bust in any given year can
skew the numbers.

They point out that in 1998, one raid involving about 7 kilos of
cocaine represented more than half of all the cocaine seized during
the year.

Also, a shift in enforcement strategy targeting middle to upper-level
dealers has resulted in the seizure of more drugs, says Lt. Wotton.
Just a few weeks ago, police seized 18 grams of pure heroin and 2,000
bags during a drug bust.

Instead of two or three major dealers who cut the heroin and then
distribute it to sellers on the street, the city's drug trade now is
dominated by smaller operators, Lt. Wotton said -- people who drive
down to New York City, buy 1,000 bags for a wholesale price as low as
$2.50 a bag, then sell it in New Bedford at a whopping profit of 200
to 300 percent.

Lt. Wotton, who says that many of the local dealers are transplants
from New York or Providence or illegal immigrants, worries about the
trend toward cheaper, purer heroin.

"We have to try and deal with it. If there was no demand, there would
be no supply."

Heroin use has been on the rise nationally.

The 1996 National Household Survey on Drug Use found a fourfold
increase in new heroin users between the ages of 12 and 17 between the
1980s and 1995. The 1996 Drug Abuse Warning Network, which collects
data on drug-related emergency room cases, found a 108 percent
increase in heroin-related episodes between 1990 and 1996.

New Bedford institutions are trying to cope with the constant pressure
exerted by the problem. The city is organizing comprehensive
after-school programs to keep children off the streets; it has also
increased police patrols and strengthened the alcohol licensing board
in a bid to crack down on barrooms where drug dealing is rampant. It
also has instituted the random drug testing of certain city employees,
including all police officers and those workers with commercial
driver's licenses.

Mayor Frederick M. Kalisz Jr. has even asked the nation's drug czar,
Gen. Barry McCaffrey, to send a team to New Bedford for a strategic
analysis of how best to organize an anti-drug effort.

In the meanwhile, he argues that improving economic conditions in the
city will help lessen the drug problem.

Treatment options

In the trenches, there is some optimism. Carl Alves, executive
director of the New Bedford Prevention Partnership, cites improvement
in the way the various agencies involved in drug treatment collaborate
with one another.

One result, he says, is an increase in the number of people receiving
treatment in the SouthCoast region. The increase reflects the
effectiveness of programs designed to get addicts into treatment, he
says.

Treatment that builds the addict's self-esteem has a champion in Third
District Court Judge John Markey. The judge has seen the same
offenders rotate through his courtroom. He has watched individual
prostitutes age and lose their looks, getting a little more haggard
each time.

"You see these guys walking around, their shoulders slouched over," he
says. "Every human being has skills and ability. Our job is to
encourage these people to use them."

District Attorney Paul Walsh agrees and says his prosecutors ask that
drug offenders be required to undergo counseling and treatment.

"But the judges just throw up their hands and say none is available,"
Mr. Walsh says.

No approach to the drug problem can work without the community
addressing the issue of demand, says Police Chief Arthur Kelly, an
advocate of greater emphasis on treatment.

The data indicates that treatment can help. Since December 1997,
Project Coach has offered a counseling program for drug and alcohol
offenders referred by Third District Court.

Those whose treatment included counseling, job search and educational
programs failed random urine screens only 17 percent of the time
during the past six months, compared to a 53 percent failure rate for
those not enrolled in counseling, according to Florence Choate,
executive director of Project Cope.

"We are going to have to be more proactive, to step up to the plate,
provide more education and be more attractive in terms of getting
people to come in and build businesses so we can employ more people
and give our young people some hope that there's a future for them,"
she says.