A CALL FOR LEGALIZING DRUGS TO BRING PEACE TO CAMDEN

An iconoclastic activist told a Rutgers forum the way to curb
violence is to "just say yes."

Frank Fulbrook, a Camden activist familiar for his efforts to improve
the city, says he believes he has the solution to the crime that is
one of its biggest problems.

Plain and simple: Legalize drugs.

"Drugs are everywhere," Fulbrook said, arguing that the war against
drugs had been a failure and predicting that Camden's underground
narcotics economy would remain vibrant with about 150 locations, or
"drug sets," around the city.

It's not a popular view, and in a Rutgers University-Camden lecture
sponsored by the Political Science Society and the Urban Studies
Association, Fulbrook tried to persuade about 30 students, faculty
members and residents that policymakers should "just say yes" to drug
legalization if they truly wanted to save Camden and other urban areas.

Fulbrook, 57, who has experience with drugs - "I've tried them all,"
he said - blamed much of the devastation in Camden and Philadelphia
on the blight and terror fostered by drug sets and battles over them.

Citing crimes such as the killing of 10-year-old Faheem Thomas-Childs
in Philadelphia two years ago, Fulbrook compared modern violence in
Camden and Philadelphia to that in Chicago during the late 1920s,
when 800 people died in the "alcohol wars."

Only lifting the prohibition against alcohol ended that violence, he
said, and only lifting the prohibition against drugs will end the
current scourge.

Using a pointer and a push-pin map to show neighborhoods that he said
drug sets had destroyed, Fulbrook contended that Camden could not be
revitalized without drug legalization. He pointed out 1,167 property
forfeitures in the fall of 2000 that he had documented; they were
clustered like electrons around nuclei suggested by the 150 drug locations.

"Drug prohibition is destroying cities, not suburbs," said Fulbrook,
who had hoped to debate an opponent yesterday but could find no one
to take on the topic. Instead, he threw his views out to an
uncomfortable audience that seemed mostly to disagree.

Even a longtime pal and ally, City Councilman Ali Sloan El, said he
was there not to support Fulbrook's position.

Far from giving up on the battle against drugs, Sloan El said he was
organizing retired police officers, officers currently on the street,
and residents to begin patrols with clipboards, flashlights and
walkie-talkies in his Whitman Park neighborhood.

Audience member Robert Hopely hotly jousted with Fulbrook, contending
that legalizing drugs would be "capitulation."

North Camden resident Jean R. Kehner, 77, echoed that sentiment.
"Make it legal, and all of sudden they will all take part," she said.

Anthony Bertolotti, 20, said legalizing alcohol had not prevented but
rather fostered crimes such as domestic violence.

"I don't see any good coming from making drugs legal," he said.

Despite such opposition, Fulbrook, who has been vilified as a thug
and a "nut" for his views, said he believed that officials battling
crime in the city were beginning to come around to his point of view.

"It's a touchy subject," retired Camden Police Chief Edwin Figueroa
said in a telephone interview before the forum. "You just can't say,
'Let's legalize drugs.' What are the after-effects? How will it be
implemented?"

Camden revitalization czar Melvin R. "Randy" Primas Jr. said the
issue needed more discussion.

"I agree we may need to look at drug policy. Not necessarily to
legalize it but look at the realities surrounding it," he said.