DRUG PROBLEMS ESCALATE AFTER HURRICANE KATRINA

SLIDELL, La. -- It was just before dawn when the pickup truck arrived
at the two-story house in this middle-class suburb, which was hit
hard by Hurricane Katrina. But unlike most of the trucks here now, it
was not carrying construction supplies.

Federal agents, who were hiding in the bushes, say the truck was
bringing 50 kilograms of cocaine, worth $5 million, from Houston to
the murderous streets of nearby New Orleans. They also say that the
shipment, seized on May 18, was at least five times as large as the
typical drug delivery before the storm.

The drug trade in New Orleans is flourishing again, after its
dealers, who evacuated to the regional drug hub of Houston, forged
closer ties to major suppliers from the Mexican and Colombian
cartels. They have since brought back drugs to New Orleans in far
larger shipments than before, as the seized truck illustrates,
essentially creating violent distribution gangs now spread over a
much bigger area.

As a result, law enforcement officials in New Orleans and Houston are
struggling to keep up with the changes as the region's drug trade
merges to a greater extent than ever before, adding to the murder
rates in both cities.

As the drug-dealing returns, its effects are proving deadly for New
Orleans, where the police say that fights over turf for distributing
the drugs are the main reason for a spike in killings that threatens
the city's recovery. Even though its population is less than half of
what it was before the storm, New Orleans recorded 22 homicides in
July, the same number that it averaged each month in the three years
before the hurricane.

Several poor neighborhoods in Houston, which has long been the main
supply hub for drugs flowing across the southwest border, have been
reeling as well. According to the Houston Police Department,
Hurricane Katrina evacuees have been the suspects or victims in 44
homicides there, including many tied to gang-related drug dealing.
And 14 percent of Houston's felony narcotics arrests in the first six
months of this year involved people displaced by the storm.

Sgt. Brian Harris, a Houston police homicide investigator, said that
one evacuee, Ivory Harris, whose street name is B Stupid, was a
suspect in three killings in Houston before he was arrested in March
with a cache of drugs near New Orleans, where he was also wanted on
murder charges. Sergeant Harris said several others, including two
juveniles, once linked to a New Orleans gang called the Seventh Ward
Hardheads, had been tied to 4 homicides and 28 other crimes in Houston.

Some of the crimes involved New Orleans gang members fighting one
another over drugs and women during New Orleans music nights at
Houston nightclubs, Sergeant Harris said, adding that he and other
Houston officers were initially shocked by how many witnesses refused
to cooperate.

New Orleans police officials have long complained that fears among
witnesses about retaliation have hampered their ability to stop the
drug trade. But to the Houston police, persuading witnesses to talk
"was like trying to educate foreigners in the ways of the United
States," Sergeant Harris said.

Still, the Houston police have made enough arrests for word to get
around that it is much harder to get out of jail there than it is in
New Orleans, where murder suspects in the city's weak court system
have often been released after 60 days when no witnesses spoke up.

So some of the drug dealers have returned to New Orleans along with
their customers, while others are now commuting between the two
cities, law enforcement officials say.

Federal agents and the police in both cities have stepped up
cooperation in tracking these movements, and they are pushing for
more intelligence about the changes.

One of their biggest priorities is to try to choke off the supply of
cocaine and heroin moving from Houston to New Orleans, usually in
concealed compartments in vehicles zipping down Interstate 10.

Law enforcement officials say the vehicles -- now often pickup trucks
that can blend in with the post-storm construction traffic -- are
typically escorted by cars with heavily armed lookouts. Investigators
say they suspect that a Houston man, who has been charged with
killing a suburban New Orleans police captain in June, was one such lookout.

The cocaine truck seized here in May, which involved a mix of New
Orleans evacuees and Mexican-Americans from Houston, is "a really
good example" of the changes, said William J. Renton Jr., the special
agent in charge of the New Orleans office of the federal Drug
Enforcement Administration.

Before the storm, he said, "Whenever we'd seize drugs destined for
the greater New Orleans area, it was mostly 5 and 10 kilograms." But
since then, he added, "even guys who may not have been the biggest
dope peddlers in the city went to Houston and met people who were
involved in supplying, and new or deeper relationships developed."

Over all, the volume of drugs headed for New Orleans has probably not
declined as sharply as the city's population, law enforcement
authorities say, given the need to replenish stockpiles that were
destroyed when the safe houses were ruined in the floods.

"There was probably a lot of dope washed out into Lake Pontchartrain
during the flood," said James D. Craig, the D.E.A.'s special agent in
charge in Houston.

And because the New Orleans dealers would still be on the hook for
the cost of those drugs, "some of them are in debt" to the Houston
suppliers, he said. "And some of them are probably trying to make the
money back by saying, 'O.K., let me sell more dope.' "

Mr. Craig said the seizure of the 50 kilograms in Slidell illustrates
how displaced New Orleans residents have teamed up with people in
Houston to put together bigger deals.

Federal authorities said they believed the shipment originated at the
Houston home of Joseph H. Aguirre, 40, a Mexican-American with a
record of arrests for marijuana possession.

When the agents raided the house in Slidell, they also seized 3,500
Ecstasy tablets, 5 pounds of high-potency marijuana and $60,000 in
cash. And they arrested six people, including three men who had moved
from New Orleans to Texas after the storm and who are believed to
have driven the truck from Houston.

Records show that one of those men, and the house's owner, who was
also arrested, had both been previously convicted on drug
distribution charges. In Houston, Mr. Aguirre pleaded guilty last
month to state charges involving cocaine and other drugs found in his
apartment. The authorities say his connection to the Slidell shipment
remains under investigation.

James Bernazzani, the F.B.I.'s special agent in charge in New
Orleans, said Asian gang members from Canada had also recently begun
distributing large quantities of drugs in the eastern part of the
city, though the authorities had been beating them back.

But there has been little relief from the drug wars in the poor
neighborhoods in central New Orleans, where the bulk of the homicides
has occurred. And even if some of the local dealers are turning to
new suppliers in Houston, the police say, they have no intention of
giving up any of their own turf to newcomers.

James F. Scott, a deputy New Orleans police superintendent, said a
lone Hispanic man had recently showed up on a Central City street
corner to sell drugs. His body was later found there, with four
bullet holes in his back and four in his chest.