28 NABBED IN DRUG RAID AT SWINDALL'S FLEA MARKET

Dozens of battleclad Atlanta police Wednesday stormed into the dingy
Peachtree Street maze known as the Great Five Points Flea Market, arrested
28 people, seized 15.5 pounds of marijuana, mostly in small bags, and
announced they would try to seize the ramshackle building from its owner,
former U.S. Rep. Pat Swindall.

In a carefully orchestrated raid, Red Dog officers swept into the front
entrances of the building, behind Underground Atlanta, while undercover
police, piling out of a Ryder rental truck, hit the alley doors. The
sidewalk in front of the flea market was blocked off, and crowds gathered
across Peachtree to gawk at the goingson.

The street and basement levels of the building are a labyrinth of corridors
leading past booths selling CDs, incense, Afrocentric books, magazines and
jewelry, and fingernail and hairbraiding salons. However, Maj. W.B.
Shannon, chief of police special operations, said it is primarily a
marijuana market.

"It's not here for any other purpose than to facilitate this kind of
enterprise," said Shannon, gesturing at the battered walls, exposed
ductwork and creaking floors. "The owner doesn't really seek to make this a
viable commercial enterprise." He said the department will submit papers to
the U.S. attorney's office next week for forfeiture of the building as a
narcotics haven.

Police also said they seized five hits of crack cocaine, four cloned phones
and $3,451 in suspected drug money.

Shannon said there was no indication that Swindall "has any part of these
activities." Police had warned Swindall they would try to seize the
building if he didn't clean it up, Shannon said.

"We met with him in January," Shannon added, "and he promised full
cooperation. But as for active attempts to try to eliminate this problem, I
don't see it."

Over the past 18 months, police had made more than 20 arrests and seized
$60,000 worth of marijuana in the flea market, public affairs spokesman Jan
Northstar said.

Since the January meeting with Swindall, she said, "the problem has
actually increased." On Wednesday, officers pulled GripperZipper bags of
marijuana from behind counters, from holes in walls and from ductwork.

Swindall, reached just before his afternoon radio show, said he was "very
shocked" to learn police want to take away his building. "I've been very
cooperative," he said. "Right now, I'm drawing up plans to completely
renovate the property. We had a major meeting with Atlanta police, everyone
from the top brass down to the zone level, and I was very cooperative."

Asked what he had done to cooperate with police suggestions for cleaning up
the building, Swindall said he had to go and hung up.

Swindall, 46, a former Republican congressman from DeKalb County, went into
the talk show business on WNIVAM in 1995, shortly after he was released
from federal prison, where he served a oneyear sentence for perjury.