DRUG HOUSE IN GARY RAZED WITH FEDERAL MONEY

GARY, Ind. -- For three years, a two-story brick house flanked by two
shuttered churches had trouble written all over it. The graffiti on the
side identified the house as a place run by gang members, and the address
under a broken porch light was familiar to narcotics officers, who raided
the house twice last summer, seizing crack cocaine, five handguns and a
shotgun, and arresting seven people.

The house, owned by the Roman Catholic Diocese of Gary, was bulldozed on
Tuesday with the diocese's permission by Indiana National Guard engineering
units. Forty-two other crack houses in and around Gary have been selected
for bulldozing in a federally financed anti-narcotics program.

Rep, Peter Visclosky, D-Ind., who shepherded the $2.3 million program
through Congress last year, said it was intended to complement a $3 million
federally financed anti-drug effort by Lake County.

Charles Blanchard, the director of legal counsel for the Office of National
Drug Control Policy in Washington, said in Gary last week that it had not
been easy to coordinate city, county, state and federal officials to
surmount the bureaucratic obstacles to starting the program.

Each building was identified through police records as a site of drug raids
and arrests or as an abandoned building where police officers had
videotaped drug use.

The house owned by the diocese was bequeathed to the Holy Trinity Catholic
Church by its owner, who died in 1994. The Rev. Charles Mosley, the former
pastor of the church, said that he never collected rent from the tenants
and that, after his first attempt to do so, he was told that he would be
killed if he went to the house again.

"They said they were going to smoke me," Mosley said. "And I had every
belief they were quite capable of doing just that."

Except for the house owned by the diocese, all other properties have been
transferred to the county because of defaults on property taxes. The
exception for the diocese was not a favor to the church, Visclosky said. He
and other officials said that the site was the most notorious drug house in
the city.

In the cases of houses not owned through tax defaults, searches have to be
conducted to ensure that the buildings are not on historic registers. City
building inspectors have to ensure that the sites are fit for destruction,
and each demolition is subject to the approval of Gov. Frank Bannon.

Copyright 1998 The New York Times Company