WOMEN IN CRACK COCAINE'S GRIP NEED HELP

You can spot them on any given morning on certain streets of our fair city.

So early, the sky has not made up its mind what color it wants to be yet.

Everything is quiet and peaceful, no activity anywhere.

Except for these women, lone figures beckoning to passing cars.
Fast-walking the avenue, unkempt and hair undone, one eye always on the
lookout for police.

Working girls killing time, in more ways than one.

This type of prostitution on the north side of town is fueled by more than
capitalism. More times than not, it is the result of a staggering addiction
to crack cocaine that has decimated a portion of the north side, both
physically and spiritually.

With the latest death of 39-year-old Maryetta Griffin last week, there have
been 13 women -- at least -- killed in a specific area of the north side in
a specific manner. Each one was strangled to death, with the body dumped
like garbage.

Since 1986, the list has grown with new names, all with similar and
depressing backgrounds.

Drug addicted women cut off from their families; lost women selling their
bodies in return for a brief high that will have them back out on the
street in a few hours, regardless of the time of day.

A Milwaukee police officer who is not assigned to investigating the murders
suggested this weekend it was curious Griffin's death came so quickly after
reports police had linked the main suspect in the death of one victim to
three additional women.

The suspect, a crack user named George L. Jones, also known as "Mule" is
currently in custody. A 27-year-old man was arrested, but not yet charged,
in connection with Griffin's murder.

Like a lot of his colleagues, the officer thinks it is likely more than one
killer is to blame. No serial killer like Jeffrey Dahmer out there lurking
in the shadows, preying on vulnerable subjects.

Rather, the deaths can all be attributed to the lifestyles of these women,
the places they frequent and the kind of people they hang with.

"These women are easy targets," the officer told me. "As long as they're
out there using that rock, this is what they're risking."

The words make sense, but they also skirt the issue. Imagine 13 women dead
in any other part of town, and try to predict how things would be different.

There is curiously little outrage over the deaths, particularly from the
community where it happened and the individual families.

In some cases, maybe news of the death of a loved one who was already in
many ways a walking zombie brought more relief than any other emotion; the
theory being, now she is finally at peace.

What shouldn't be left in peace is the continued plague of crack cocaine
that reaches everybody at all levels of society but takes its greatest toll
on those already with nothing.

In some areas of the north side, a child younger than 10 years old can
point out the local dope house. Test tubes and steel wool used to smoke
crack are sold at the same mini-markets where selling beer and cigarettes
to minors is illegal.

What is needed are solutions. More and better community-based drug
treatment programs where addicts can find help. Some sort of safe house for
those with no place to go at night and no support group to turn to for help.

Better yet, an all-night patrol to search the streets for these ghost
women, round them up before harm finds them.

Don't hold your breath. Welfare reform will help you find a job -- maybe --
and take care of your kids -- maybe. But when it comes to beating crack,
you're on your own.

Especially if you're a poor woman on the street at four in the morning, a
killing time in Milwaukee.