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Lowlevel drug dealers are now a high priority

By William Kleinknecht

STARLEDGER STAFF

In a dramatic shift in its local drugfighting role, the U.S. Drug
Enforcement Administration is teaming up with state and local police to crack
down on violent streetlevel dealers in New Jersey's largest cities, according
to officials.

The effort to put local, state and federal investigators side by side in
tracking drug gangs has had success in other states but has never been
embraced in New Jersey, in part because of institutional rivalries and the
state's lack of a large central city, according to federal and state
officials.

But with Attorney General Janet Reno pressing federal law enforcement
agencies to assist cities in dealing with drugrelated violence, the DEA's
field office in Newark has begun forging new links with other agencies in the
state.

The field office recently moved to new quarters on Newark's Raymond
Boulevard, partly to make room for a large office that could accommodate
investigators from Newark, Jersey City, Paterson and other cities now working
out of the DEA office.

"It is sort of community policing at the federal level," said John Coleman,
special agent in charge of the DEA's Newark office. "We are embarking on a
strategy that says it is most effective to attack the distribution level of
drug trafficking, rather than the wholesale level."

Across the country, the effort to enlist the DEA in confronting streetlevel
drug dealing has provoked criticism from some experts who believe the agency
is better suited for its traditional role of investigating drug importers and
highlevel wholesale distributors.

But the streetlevel emphasis has captured the imagination of Reno and other
toplevel law enforcement officials in Washington. Most notable among them is
DEA Director Thomas Constantine, who has created 19 squads of specially
trained agents known as mobile enforcement teams that sweep into cities
and help local authorities clean up neighborhoods plagued by drug violence.

Underpinning the effort is the belief that years of investigation of high
level drug kingpins has had little impact on the nation's drug problems. By
contrast, crackdowns on streetlevel gangs are seen as rescuing individual
communities from the ravages of fear and gunfire.

"If you can drive the dealing indoors and lower the level of gunfire, it is
a great triumph, even if you haven't changed the overall volume of sales,"
said Mark Kleinman, a UCLA professor, who has advised the Clinton
administration on drug control.

The concept arrived in New Jersey in early 1995, when the DEA sent a mobile
enforcement team into Camden to help deal with drugrelated violence that had
sharply increased the city's murder rate.

Over a period of about three months, DEA agents working with Camden police
and several other law enforcement agencies made more than 200 arrests and,
according to Coleman and others, sharply curtailed streetlevel dealing in the
city.

The enforcement team has since joined local authorities in crackdowns in
Asbury Park and Paterson and is gearing up for a major assault on street
dealing in Newark, the state's largest and most crimeridden city. Coleman
said the DEA is also considering four or five other cities, including Jersey
City.

The DEA had been hesitant to enter into a partnership with Newark while the
department was headed by former Police Director William Celester, who pleaded
guilty to corruption charges last year, Coleman said. But he said the DEA has
confidence in Celester's successor, Joseph Santiago, and the two agencies have
begun to expand cooperation.

The DEA's new emphasis on street activity has shown up in its arrest
figures. The number of DEA arrests increased from 629 in 1995 to 981 last
year. But because of the focus on lowlevel sales, many of the cases have not
been suitable for federal prosecution and have ended up in state court.

One of the keys to the streetlevel assaults is cooperation between
agencies, Coleman said. While the DEA has long participated in multiagency
task forces in New York, Detroit, Boston and other cities, New Jersey's lack
of a major city has hindered its use here.

Law enforcement in New Jersey is broken up among 21 counties and hundreds of
municipalities, each with their own rivalries. And local investigators have
sometimes had strained working relationships with federal agencies, often
grumbling that the DEA and FBI want police help on cases but refuse to share
their own information.

Coleman, a career DEA official who was appointed to head the Newark field
office in October 1994, is credited by State Police and local departments for
improving the relationship between the agency and local drug investigators.

When he came on the job, the State Police and the state Attorney General's
Office were about to withdraw from a task force funded under the federal High
Intensity Drug Trafficking Area program, state officials say. New Jersey's
HIDTA had been funded for several years but was making few meaningful cases,
in part because of resentment on the part of state investigators at the way
DEA was controlling the program Coleman said.

Coleman persuaded the state to stay by agreeing to make them equal partners
in the program. HIDTA has since grown from 10 to 50 investigators. The
investigators are drawn from the state's five northern counties, six federal
agencies and the two state agencies. It is now investigating 40 violent drug
trafficking organizations, said John Delesio, a detective sergeant first class
with the State Police and deputy commander of the task force.

Lt. Howard Butt, head of the State Police narcotics and organized crime
bureau, welcomed the DEA's new approach to fighting streetlevel dealing and
said his agency is also expanding contacts with other agencies.

"The entire law enforcement community has recognized that to have the
greatest impact on the drug problem, the key ingredient is cooperation," he
said. "And the climate for that cooperation is better than it has been for a
long time."