Source:The Boston Globe
Contact:letter@globe.com
Pubdate:March 26, 1997

The bloodshed of the drug wars is visible from Irene
Henderson's Lenox Street apartment, if only in her memory.

Out front, 16yearold Robert Burdette was killed in the
courtyard by a stray bullet in July 1994. Out back, Paula
Rosa, a grandmother sharing Thanksgiving leftovers with a
friend was gunned down in November 1991 and became the
111th homicide victim of the year. Yesterday a crush of
federal agents and Boston police swept the development and
flushed alleged drug dealers and their crack cocaine from
the midst of Henderson and her neighbors.

"It'll help for a while," Henderson said.

Agents from the Department of Housing and Urban
Development's Inspector General's office, the FBI and
Boston Housing Police arrested six men on federal cocaine
trafficking conspiracy charges yesterday morning.

The arrested men include Kareem Richardson, 21, who was
tried and acquitted in 1993 for the slaying of Rosa. He
could face 10 years to life on the charges filed yesterday.

The violence brought to the housing development by drug
dealing has caused many people to moved out.

"It's frightening," said Henderson, "We have gunplay
here, and where you have drugs you always have robberies."

That's why Henderson never ventures out after dark. "We
do everything we have to do in the daytime," she said.

A few buildings over from Henderson's home, Cecilia
Paniagua is raising four children in an apartment in an
area where drug dealers sell their wares from bicycles.
Asked if drugs are a problem in her building, Panigua, a
native of the Dominican Republic, said, "muchas, muchas,
muchas."

Authorities said that yesterday's raids were just the
beginning of Operation Safe Home, a national program
providing money for undercover drug buys.

The program also will help residents and housing
authority staff members work together to bring lasting
change to public housing developments where violent drug
rings have become entrenched.

Raymond Carolan, special agent in charge of the HUD
inspector general's office, said the raids were "not a
quick fix."

"We'll continue to lay phase after phase to try to
effect positive change," he said.

Lenox Street residents like Henderson have come to
expect occasional crackdowns. They can map law enforcement
efforts that target one complex, then another, as the drug
trade travels from development to development.

A retired clerk from Woolworth's recovering from foot
surgery, Henderson says she likes the apartment where she
and her husband have spent the past 18 years. She just
hopes this crackdown will last.

Peering out the window, she smiled at the empty
courtyard, quiet for now. But she said she hopes that no
one thinks the job is done.

"As soon as they relax," she observed, " it will go
back."