MANAHAN VILLAGE CONTESTS ITS DRUG IMAGE

[PHOTO CAPTION] `They're doing a damn good job,' a Manahan Village
resident, above, says of the police. Below, J.J. Wilfong, left, and Trevor
Parchment talk about their home. Parchment gestures to show the age of some
young dealers. Photo by Chris Pedota

MORRISTOWN -- Talk to heroin addicts, and you'll hear about dope for sale
at Manahan Village. Get a newspaper, and you'll read about people charged
with selling heroin there and on nearby Hillairy Avenue.

But talk to the people who live in the neighborhood, and you'll hear a
different story.

"We're not all bad down here," said a woman in her mid-60s who has raised
seven children in Manahan Village. "People come in here and do their dirt,
and we all get blamed for it."

There is heroin dealing in northern Morristown, much of it concentrated
near public housing complexes. But there is also a community in which
parents work, children learn in school, and many are stained with the broad
brush that marks it a "drug neighborhood."

The reality of that community makes the drug problem there complex and
vexing, residents and observers said. Because the community is black, many
are disturbed by the interference of outsiders -- most of whom are white --
even as they welcome the results. Because it is poor, the siren song of
easy drug money lures a steady trickle of disciples, and the dealing is
done outdoors. Because it is tight-knit, residents are sometimes reluctant
to turn in their nephews, friends, classmates and neighbors.

None of those who have died of overdoses of heroin this year in Morris
County was living in Morristown. None was black. Rather, all were from
predominantly white, middle-or upper-middle-class towns. Few seem to have
gotten their heroin in Morristown.

`A lot of good young men out here'

But the Village's reputation persists throughout the county.

"They don't want to admit that the kids in their own backyard are using a
drug that, in their minds, is for black people," said Sam Singleton,
executive director of Neighborhood House, a 100-year-old organization based
on Flagler Street. "There are still a lot of good young men out here."

He likens the plight of the current black residents to that of the Italians
who lived in the neighborhood earlier in the century. They were accused of
numbers-running, loitering, being bad parents. Now Latinos are plastered
with some of the same reputation.

"I truly believe Morristown has been a scapegoat for many, many years,"
Singleton said.

He was echoed by residents in and around Manahan Village, most of whom
declined to give their names, saying they did not want to draw attention to
the neighborhood or emphasize its problems.

"You can't stand down here certain times at night without someone labeling
you a drug dealer," one woman, holding the hand of a child, said on Clyde
Potts Drive.

"You've got every cop on duty coming through down here," one 29-year-old
lifelong resident said, declining to give his name. In the next breath,
however, he praised the work they have done, noting that the drug sales
were worse three, five, 10 years ago.

"They're doing a damn good job," he said. "It's time they clean it up."

`Police don't see it as a black-white issue'

The police department stresses that they are not singling out the Manahan
Village neighborhood.

"We've had a lot of complaints from the residents themselves," Sgt. Mark
Slockbower, the department's spokesman, said. And heroin has been a police
priority for the 23 years he's been there. "Police don't see it as a
black-white issue."

Until this year, however, the department has been understaffed, limiting
the number of officers available for foot patrols in heavily populated
areas like the downtown, Speedwell Avenue and Manahan Village. It also
hampered the department's ability to watch and document drug transactions
and track individual dealers.

"When you're understaffed, you're busy handling ordinary medical calls,
motor-vehicle accidents and a lot of other things," he said.

Increased patrols in recent months have helped slow the drug trade, said
Trevor Parchment, 50, who has lived in Manahan Village for 15 years.

"When the police come around, everything is good," he said. "No one wants
their kids to see the drug dealing."

J.J. Wilfong, standing nearby, said he likes the patrols, too, though he'd
like more.

But he also has little patience with the complaints of harassment. Though
he says white friends visiting him have been stopped by police who thought
they were coming to buy drugs, the 26-year-old lifelong resident calls much
of the complaining just so much smoke.

In the early evening, the appearance of a police car or foot patrol often
sparks the call "Five-oh!" -- a warning that is picked up and carried along
by others, apparently to warn drug dealers, he points out.

"Then they cry, `Oh, they're harassing me because we're black,'" he said.
"If (they) are standing out in the cold all day, you know what they're
doing. It's not because they're comfortable."

Those dozens of young men and women milling about on Flagler Street at dusk
in good weather may look ominous to visitors, but they aren't all drug
users or dealers, Singleton said, though it's still a far cry from his own
youth when Manahan Village residents slept with their doors open in the
summer.

"It's a mixture of people just hanging out, people hanging out who are
predators -- and people you may consider business-people, who are in the
drug business," Singleton said.

The money in the drug business draws those who do deal. Sometimes the money
is for the seller's own habit, sometimes it's money for its own sake.

Deal drugs, or work at McDonald's

Some want to "buy that car, pay that child support," even raise money for
tuition, college textbooks or spending money, Wilfong and others said. Some
want to help families trying to get by on low-income jobs. A few even
succeed at "the game," the legend goes, without getting addicted or caught.
Then they move away.

Not many are so lucky, authorities said. But either way, the lure is there.

"Do I work for four or five dollars an hour or sell drugs?" said David
McCoy, 40, who grew up in Morristown and now runs Beginnings, the town drug
rehabilitation program that counseled 1,800 people last year. "Sure, it
could be a cop out. But we're dealing with human beings."

One former cocaine addict, who spoke on condition that his name not be
used, said he sold the drug in the 1980s, when residents say the drug
trafficking was much worse. Thirty-five years old and a lifelong resident
of the neighborhood, he said he understands why some residents get into the
drug trade, though he cannot condone it.

"I grew up with nothing," he said. "It's kind of hard to say, `Go get a job
at McDonald's' when you can be down here making more than people making $17
an hour.'"

If money makes drug-dealing attractive and customers make it possible, the
neighborhood's closeness makes it a little safer, police and residents said.

In a part of town where many have grown up together, the drug dealer on the
corner was once the child you -- or your sister, friend or neighbor --
baby-sat. The addict down the street is someone's brother, girlfriend or son.

"Everyone knows everyone," Wilfong said.

Take Sammy Hickenbottom, tagged as the ringleader of the group accused of
selling heroin from two Hillairy Avenue homes after an April raid.
Hickenbottom could not be reached for comment through his attorney.

It's not clear if anyone in the neighborhood actually protected him. But a
lot of people have known him a long time, McCoy said. He grew up in
Morristown and was well-known for his sense of humor and easygoing ways.

"He had always been a fun guy, never caused problems," McCoy said. "I
believe he was a guy in the community who just got into selling drugs."

The community's intimacy also puts the brakes on some of the most dangerous
elements of drug culture, McCoy and others said.

"Guns are not tolerated in Morristown," McCoy said, echoing several others.
Gangs, too, have not flourished as they have in cities.

"Every now and then, you'll have someone with a weapon," he said, but it's
usually an out-of-towner, a conclusion with which police agree.

Although a nuisance that is sometimes threatening, the drug activity in the
neighborhood is not often dangerous, residents said. Parchment warned that
those known to have called the police must be careful where they go at
night, but he and Wilfong said few people are threatened overtly. Mostly,
the activity is just annoying.

"No one wants their kids to see that," Wilfong said.

But guns represent a serious, immediate threat. Like other sudden threats
to the neighborhood -- overdoses, a rapid increase in dealing -- but much
more quickly, firearms trigger the frustration that otherwise may take
years to build.

"Residents become so frustrated with the activity outside their windows and
their doors," McCoy said, describing the thought process: "John is out
there. I know John. I watched him grow up, but I'm sick of the noise."

A small community discourages gangs

But if someone is hurt, overdoses or pulls a gun, residents become much
more willing to call the police, or to call places like Beginnings and
Neighborhood House, McCoy and others said.

The smallness of the community, rather than its closeness, has prevented
gangs from flourishing, others said. Without the large, impersonal
populations of large urban areas, the drug industry doesn't need the kind
of rigid control that has let gangs take over parts of the state's cities.

Checked-by: Mike Gogulski