DESPERATE DRUG WAR FOUGHT ALL OVER WEST VIRGINIA

Appalachia Home To Growing Crime Wave

CHARLESTON, W.Va. -- Joe Ciccarelli grew up in West Virginia and
became a cop, then left for an FBI career taking down narcotics
traffickers in St. Louis and south Florida.

He spent the 1990s in Miami, working to cut off America's cocaine
supply from South America. But in 1998, weary of the city, he
transferred back to the Mountain State.

Now he sees where that cocaine ends up, on the small-town streets of
home.

"You see what 15 or 20 years ago was a nice community and now it's not
so nice," said Agent Ciccarelli, who heads the FBI in southern West
Virginia under the supervision of the Pittsburgh office.

"It's the end of the supply line. We don't have multiple kilos coming
in here the way I saw in Miami. But I think you see the impact here.
You see the human toll it takes."

West Virginia is fighting a desperate drug war on every
front.

Crack dealers are flooding the state from all sides, especially from
Columbus and Detroit, where many people trace their roots to
Appalachia, but also from Atlanta, Charlotte, Washington and other
cities.

Homegrown cocaine rings have killed federal informants.
Methamphetamine labs dot the backwoods. An epidemic of prescription
pill abuse rages in the impoverished southern coalfields, where a
podiatrist was recently accused of doling out prescriptions for cash.

Out-of-state crack dealers take advantage of the wide-open gun culture
to buy weapons cheap and resell them back home, setting up lucrative
import-export enterprises.

"They're doubling or tripling their money on either end," said Paul
Cross, of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.

The drugs and guns often move along traditional migration routes, such
as U.S. Route 23 between Columbus and Charleston.

Fifty years ago, thousands of West Virginians began moving to Columbus
and Detroit in search of better opportunities. Many left family
behind. When crack exploded in the late 1980s, some dealers began
moving back to Appalachia and word got out that the state was a good
market. Since then, the drug trade has flourished.

Even in once-isolated Logan County, near the Kentucky border, Columbus
dealers traveling U.S. Highway 119 out of Charleston have invaded the
tiny neighborhood of Cora, which locals call "Cora Alley."

"The world is coming to rural southern West Virginia," said Charlie
Brown, the head of an anti-drug community group and the chief
probation officer in Logan. "We're no longer insulated by our mountains."

User state Dealers come for the simplest of reasons: there's little
competition so the money is good, and the law, sometimes derided as
"Barney Fife," is perceived as less effective than in metro areas.

The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration classifies West Virginia as a
"user state," where dealers can charge higher prices because the
supply is low and the demand high.

"I've had them tell me in interviews that they come here because they
can make more money than they can in Cleveland and there's less risk,"
said Sgt. Matt Moore, of the Ohio Valley Drug Task Force in Wheeling.

As for homegrown meth, some authorities see it as the latest phase in
a tradition of Appalachian backwoods alchemy that began with
moonshine. In the Charleston area alone, police raided 171 meth labs
last year and more than 40 this year.

Part of West Virginia, along with Tennessee and Kentucky, is
designated as a "High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area," or HIDTA, one
of 28 where the Office of National Drug Control Policy helps
coordinate anti-drug efforts.

The Appalachia HIDTA was created in 1998 to eradicate marijuana
because an estimated 40 percent of the nation's pot crop is grown in
the region. But its mission has expanded to include other illicit drugs.

The national program has been criticized as ineffective and President
Bush has proposed cutting its budget, but those on the front lines say
it works in rural areas such as West Virginia where local and state
police work closely with the FBI, the Criminal Investigation Division
of the IRS and other federal agencies.

"We're a poor state. The local departments would be sorely handicapped
if they didn't have these resources," said Kenny Burner, a former
state police officer who heads the West Virginia HIDTA. "We need to
get a handle on this violence. We're fighting as hard as we can."

Mr. Burner has seen the problem firsthand. Last year, his teenage son
was carjacked at knife-point in Huntington. The suspect? A career
criminal from Detroit now under indictment on a federal carjacking
charge.

"He tries not to let it affect him, but he's lost some of his
innocence," Mr. Burner said of his son. "The violence is more
prevalent than it used to be. I think it's getting worse."

Killing informants West Virginia remains one of the safest places in
the nation, but it's not as safe as it once was. According to the FBI,
the violent crime rate in the state rose 16.4 percent between 2002 and
2004 while dropping 5.7 percent nationwide.

The 2004 rate of 271 per 100,000 people is still lower than in 1999
and far below the national figure of 465. But pockets of the state are
every bit as nasty as some big cities.

Charleston's rate of 1,555 violent crimes per 100,000 people was
higher than Pittsburgh's 1,118 in 2004. And in Huntington, where the
Detroit influence is strongest, there were 13 murders last year
compared with the usual four or five.

More shootings this year have heightened public fears, especially when
gunmen sprayed a house with bullets in the affluent Fairfax
neighborhood.

FBI Agent Matt Hoke, coordinator of the Huntington Violent Crimes/Drug
Task Force, points to a map of the region on his wall. Each pin marks
a drug complaint.

"I'm going to have that map filled with pins," he said. "We'll get
four or five drug tips a day. We just don't have enough people to
chase them all down."

The killing of informants in federal drug cases is relatively rare,
and, some say, stupid because it generates relentless pressure from
federal authorities, but it's been happening in West Virginia.

"They think this will solve the problem," Agent Hoke said.

In Mingo County, Carla Collins, 33, was tortured and shot last year
while working with agents investigating a cocaine ring run out of a
pizza shop in the town of Red Jacket. Several defendants have pleaded
guilty; the ringleader is awaiting trial and could face the federal
death penalty.

"Tattoo" Mike White, 44, a DEA informant in a case against a gang that
sold cocaine, oxycodone and hydromorphone, was shot to death last year
outside his tattoo shop in rural Mercer County.

Maurice T. Gibson, 33, of Bluefield, has been convicted of leading the
group, and his airplane, rental properties, a motor home and two SUVs
were seized after the IRS pieced together his money-laundering trail,
but the killing remains unsolved.

The Iron Pipeline In many southern states, including West Virginia,
guns are sold at stores, roadside pawn shops or out of the back of
pickup trucks.

"It's part of the culture," Agent Ciccarelli said.

When Charleston enacted an ordinance limiting purchases to one a
month, a restriction that several states have imposed, the Legislature
passed a law that said cities couldn't regulate gun sales.

"Buying a gun in West Virginia is a lot easier than buying a gun in
New York City," said Jon Kott, spokesman for the Americans for Gun
Safety Foundation in Washington, D.C.

As a result, firearms from West Virginia feed the so-called Iron
Pipeline, a gun-dealing network that runs from Ohio to New York and
from Alabama to Chicago.

According to Mr. Kott's group and the ATF, drug dealers come to West
Virginia and either exchange drugs for guns or use straw purchasers to
buy weapons. Then they go where guns are harder to buy and sell them
at a huge profit.

Ron Fluharty, an IRS agent in Parkersburg, investigated one group of
marijuana dealers from Texas who transported 150 pounds of pot in a
horse trailer equipped with hidden compartments. They sold it for
pistols and rifles, all destined for a drug dealer in Mexico.

Because guns were in such demand south of the border, the group could
get $2,000 for a gun worth $500. "They would rather have the guns than
the drugs," said the agent.

The Justice Department has long prosecuted straw purchasers, but many
West Virginia guns still land on the streets of New York, Detroit and
other cities.

No one knows how many because ATF no longer disseminates gun trace
information to the public. But Americans for Gun Safety said in 2001
that 1,183 guns used in crimes in other states had been traced to West
Virginia.

Reaching the 'gonnabes' Despite the grim statistics, hope
remains.

Charleston, at least, may be turning the corner.

Murder isn't always the best barometer of trends, but there has been
one this year compared with 11 in 2004, and other crimes are down,
too.

Police credit a beefed-up force, increased patrols and an FBI task
force that works with prosecutors to pursue gun and drug cases in
federal court, where the penalties are stiffer than in state court.

"Man, they get down here, they get banged up," said Detective Errol
Randle, a task force gang expert who lives in a once-rough public
housing project where violence has recently declined. "We have a good
relationship with the U.S. attorney's office and they take a lot of
cases. 'Cause the one thing these guys don't want is to go federal."

On a drive through town, he points out the hot spots, the graffiti,
the West Side shooting scenes. He rattles off the names of gangs that
police have identified.

About 20 members comprise the "22nd Street Bloods" and "218," all from
Columbus. Homegrown or hybrid gangs include "LPT" in the Littlepage
Terrace public housing project and the "304 Boys," who take their name
from the state's area code.

Most of the gangs are black and urban. But a group calling itself the
Latin Kings has set up in Belle, a town of 1,200 south of Charleston.
About five years ago, an all-white gang was active there, too, calling
itself "T.O.B." for "town of Belle." They marked their turf by
painting over the "S" on stop signs and changing the "P" to a "B".

"We don't consider them 'wannabes,'" said Detective Randle of the
local gangs. "We use the term 'gonnabes.' "

Part of the police approach is to understand the street mentality and
to educate young people who often have had no parental influence in
their lives.

"You have to reach the parents and teach them that they are
responsible for their kids," said Detective Randle, who has a baby
girl.

He said putting dealers in prison and moving aggressively to seize
their assets is critical. For some young toughs who need to be taught
a lesson, he said, "going to jail ain't so bad."

Police Chief Brent Webster credits the mayor with tearing down drug
dens and targeting slumlords "who will rent to anyone."

"Charleston has been successful in cracking down on drug dealing,
although maybe we're forcing it out into other areas," he said. "You
know you can't win that drug war. But we are controlling it."