FEDERAL DRUG FIGHTERS TO OPEN OFFICE IN CITY

NEW BEDFORD -- The federal Drug Enforcement Agency hopes to open a
permanent office in the city within six months to combat what agents
describe as a serious trafficking problem in the area.

Special Agent Pamela Mersky said last week the agency is looking for office
space in the city. The agency, which has been covering the New Bedford area
from its Cape Cod office in Barnstable, plans to station two agents in the
new office, she said.

"It's a community we have paid attention to in the past several years," she
said of New Bedford, "especially with the heroin problems and a pipeline
going right through New Bedford from Providence and New York."

She cited an influx of cheap, fairly pure heroin as the area's biggest
problem. The most common form of transportation appears to be hidden
compartments in cars, she added, not boats, as in years past.

Nationally, drug agents are seizing heroin with a purity level of around 40
percent, but purity levels in Massachusetts and the rest of New England
hover at 60 percent and higher, she said, noting that heroin seized in
Massachusetts has tested as high as 90 percent pure. And the street price
has dropped from as much as $20 for a small, postage-stamp-size bag a
decade ago to as low as $5.

"Because of the higher, purer levels, it's being administered in a number
of different ways," she said. "More people are snorting it now and getting
a good high. That makes it more socially acceptable. It's not like these
users are your typical junkie with a needle."

Local law enforcement authorities say the average age of heroin users has
dropped. Many of the people arrested for dealing heroin in recent years are
in their late teens and early 20s, said Bristol County District Attorney
Paul F. Walsh Jr.

The nature of the drug trade also has changed in recent years from big
dealers controlling a large segment of the market to smaller independent
operators who sell their product using cell phones and beepers, he said.

The shift has meant dealers no longer operate from one apartment or house
and are less visible on the streets, said New Bedford Police Lt. Melvin
Wotton, who heads the city's narcotics squad. The lower visibility has
resulted in safer streets, but has made it harder for police to nab
dealers, he said.

Out of 1,150 arrests last year in New Bedford, close to 95 percent were
drug-related, Lt. Wotton said. Of those, more involved larger quantities of
drugs than in the past, he noted.

"We've seized more drugs than ever before last year," he said, adding that
cocaine and marijuana also are a problem in the city.

Still, noting that the city's crime rate has dropped, Lt. Wotton said he
thinks the area's drug problem is not as bad as it once was.

Federal agents shared an office with the state police in Mr. Walsh's office
from 1996 until about a year ago, he said. Neither he nor state police Lt.
Patrick Fitzgerald, supervisor of the state police detectives assigned to
the district attorney's office, could explain why the agent moved out of
the office.

"We kept on getting an agent on temporary assignment, then next thing we
knew he was gone," Mr. Walsh said. "We'd welcome their presence back again."

But even though the federal agency moved its employee out of the local
office, Lt. Fitzgerald said, the group still worked cases with the federal
agency.

"They have not been gone from the scene," he said. "They are just not
physically here in this office."

The federal agency also has offices in Boston, Lowell, Springfield,
Worcester and at Logan Airport.