YEARS OF DRUG DEALING AT COMPLEX ALLEGED

For two years, the Bromley-Heath housing development was transformed into a
drug market by high-level dealers who sold crack cocaine inside apartments,
hallways, and on the streets in quantities ranging in price from $10 to
$1,600, according to federal authorities.

Those allegations surfaced during the federal court arraignment of Clifford
Jones, one of 38 people indicted in a sweeping drug raid last week. The
raid on the Jamaica Plain complex, one of the city's largest, was prompted
by a two-year investigation featuring repeated drug buys by informants and
undercover officers.

The indictments may also result in the eviction of the nation's first
tenant director of a public housing complex. Authorities say two grandsons
of Mildred Hailey, the Bromley-Heath director, allegedly were involved in
the drug ring. The men, who allegedly lived with her, are expected to be
arraigned tomorrow. Under a federal policy, tenants of public developments
can be evicted if someone living with them is accused of dealing drugs.

As a result of the raid, the Boston Housing Authority took control of the
development, which had been tenant-managed for 25 years. In the process,
the BHA fired all of the Tenant Management Council's employees. The
investigation into the alleged drug ring is ongoing.

Yesterday, a half-dozen of those suspects had their detention hearings
postponed in federal court, but Jones's arraignment proceeded. During the
hearing, prosecutors laid out their case against him, and said the others
face similar cases.

Prosecutor Thomas Frongillo said Jones ''has been pumping cocaine and
infecting that housing development. He is dangerous to the people who live
there.''

Frongillo told US Magistrate Judge Marianne B. Bowler that during the
investigation, which began in October 1996, federal agents and city
detectives have compiled more than 100 video- and audiotapes of undercover
crack cocaine and heroin buys at Bromley-Heath.

Sergeant Stephen Meade, a drug investigator with the Boston Police
department, testified that Jones was a right-hand man of Algernon ''Al''
Wilson, an alleged high-level dealer who also lives at Bromley-Heath. Both
men face possible life sentences if convicted.

Frongillo described a Dec. 4, 1997, transaction in which Jones and Wilson
allegedly sold 29 grams of crack cocaine to a man who paid for 62 grams.
The buyer, a DEA informant, said Jones and Wilson were armed, and out of
fear, he fled Wilson's apartment without the drugs.

Jones's attorney, Paul Garrity, asked the judge to release his client on
bail, but like the other 26 people facing federal indictments, Jones is
being held without bail by US marshals.

The allegations angered the men's relatives and neighbors, who packed the
courtroom yesterday. ''We're not talking about Al Capone here, we're
talking about Al Wilson,'' Wilson's mother, Barbara, said after the hearing.

Nene Judge, 18, who lives in Bromley-Heath, also attended the hearing. ''I
have grown up with these guys, and these men are not drug dealers,'' she said.

Checked-by: Pat Dolan