CRACK CENTRAL

On the beat with Toronto Police's Community Response Unit, reporter
Rob Lamberti and photographer Alex Urosevic tour 51 Division's dark
side.

Window washer William Toth makes a quick stop in a restaurant that has
become a notorious drug depot in the heart of Cabbagetown.

After a quick meeting with a woman Thursday afternoon, the 51-year-old
walks his bicycle to a nearby coffee shop.

The unkempt man with scraggly beard looks surprised when he's suddenly
surrounded by 51 Division Community Response Consts. Karen Chapman and
Conrad Rozario, asking about a tiny package in his pocket.

Wrapped in a plastic bag are three creamy-white rocks of crack -- $30
worth of death that won't be lit up.

Toth, a soft-spoken man who speaks in short sentences, admits he
smokes "quite a bit." He's been on the drug for a long time, he says,
between 10 and 15 years.

The Seaton House resident claims he can control his $80-a-day
habit.

Back at the restaurant, police swoops in on the woman alleged to have
sold the drug.

No drugs are found, but $450 is in her pockets. Rayline Robichaud of
Oshawa is charged with possessing and trafficking cocaine.

She tells Chapman she'll get a lawyer.

Formerly Fort Apache

"Yeah, it's the land of the living dead," Rozario says, spotting a
known crack user as he drives towards Cabbagetown.

The downtown section of Toronto known as 51 Division is no longer
called Fort Apache. That was when the station house was on Regent St.
on the edge of Regent Park.

But the new building at Parliament St. and Eastern Ave. hasn't changed
the area. Crack is the area's number one commodity. It's what fuels
the underground economy.

"Around here it's more blatant, it's done out in the open," Rozario
says.

"Crack is like the poor man's cocaine," adds partner Chapman. Of all
the recent shootings in the division, Chapman says "every single one
is about drugs."

There was a crack-related shoot-out between two gunmen Oct. 24 where a
bullet lodged in a passing van at Sherbourne and Bloor Sts. On Nov.
24, a man was wounded while sitting in a car at Ontario and Dundas
Sts. One group tried to gun down another on Sackville St. on Nov. 21.
On Dec. 1, another shootout occurred at Dundas and Sackville.

"It's not getting better," CRU Sgt. Darren Halman says. "It's the same
people over and over again. I've been arresting the same people for 10
years.

"I used to work in Parkdale for years," he said. "They moved from
Parkdale to 51, and then once they get arrested a lot in 51, they go
back to Parkdale."

Chapman says cops have found teen dealers carrying between $2,000 and
$2,500 cash when arrested.

"As long as they stay clean," it clear and free money, she
explained.

"It's so lucrative," Rozario said. "It's so prevalent."

This team is set up to target business alleged to be centred at a
Cabbagetown restaurant, which had its liquor licence revoked for 21
days last year for allowing narcotics on the premises.

Because the division no longer has its own drug team, CRU watch the
deals and then move in to get the dealer and buyer.

A neighbourhood petition was launched earlier this year asking for the
return of the drug squad because of the contraband and traffic.

A restaurant employee says there aren't any problems at the eatery.
Anyone doing drugs does it outside.

The investigation into the restaurant is continuing, Halman
says.

Crack House

Sgt. Dan McDermott and four other CRU officers ride the elevator up in
a St. Jamestown highrise to check out a suspected crack house.

Dealers have taken over an apartment. Throughout the night, users walk
up, bang on the door, smoke in the stairwell, fight.

"All the time, especially at night," a neighbour says. "The worst
times are after midnight."

He says he's a cab driver and noticed that the same people who enter
the crack house are among the same crackheads he sees hanging out at
Dundas and Sherbourne Sts.

His wife is constantly calling him while the house is cracking,
begging him to pull up stakes and move the family out.

"I smell it," he says. "All through the night."

"This lady used to be a very good lady," he says. "But I don't know,
suddenly (she) changed" less than a year ago.

The cabbie says the lady isn't his concern, but the people who have
been using her home. What if they try to get into the wrong apartment
because they got the numbers mixed up?

When the rebuilt wooden door opens after McDermott knocks, the
collection of pictures in the crack house show an attractive woman,
healthy and beaming. The emaciated woman who lives there now has
hollow cheeks and empty eyes. There's no way she weighs 100 pounds.

She's on the verge of tears as she explains how her home has been
taken over by crack dealers, using her apartment to deal, to smoke, to
party.

She nods when McDermott asks if the men have guns. There's no way she
can say no to them.

They moved in "when they found out my brother was gone," she says. She
said her brother was her protector.

The worst times, she says, are "in the morning, 2, 3,
4."

The woman doesn't respond or flinch when asked if the men had hurt
her.

She's trying to get out: "I don't care, anywhere."

Police find two homemade crack pipes in a room once reserved for a
child, one constructed with half-inch copper pipe and the other a
glass bottle and plastic pipe.

But the conversation with the woman stops when a friend suddenly
arrives.

"Nothing," he says when asked if he has a record. "No," he says when
asked if he'd ever been arrested.

Unfortunately, the computer never lies: He has conditions including
house arrest while awaiting trial for trafficking cocaine and
assaulting police during a February arrest.

He struggles as five officers try to arrest him.

"Don't be stupid, you're under arrest," says one voice in the scrum as
the bodies intertwine in a violent game of Twister.

"For what?" Sheldon Blair Carter says. "What did I
do?"

"Lie down on the ground right now," adds another voice. "Stop
resisting. Put your hands behind your back."

The five cops then begin coordinating out loud the movement of limbs
until finally the man assumes the position.

"There ya go," said one cop, finally. "Relax, okay?"

Before McDermott leaves, he urges the woman who's dying to get out to
begin the paperwork requesting a move from the subsidized apartment.

Arrested Three Times

Fazid Mohammed has become a rallying cry for the Cabbagetown community
battling the crack trade.

He's been arrested three times around the Cabbagetown restaurant,
twice within six days in September, and again late November.

Twice he was given bail. Twice he's accused of blowing
it.

But after the third arrest, Mohammed was kept in custody, possibly
until a preliminary hearing next year.

He was released the first time with conditions which included not to
be in the area and not to have a cell phone or pager. Darren Halman
says the man was arrested during the Cabbagetown Festival while
getting a new cell phone.

Halman says detectives took about $7,000 in cash off the man during
the three arrests, and thousands more in crack.

"But it took three times," he said. "It's ridiculous."

"We want to clean this up," says a Cabbagetown resident who didn't
want to be named for fear of retaliation. He's launched a petition to
get police to reform the local drug unit.

The man says dealers and users have been using the street and some of
its businesses as their own.

"More cops isn't the only answer but for now they have to know it's
not a police no-fly zone,"he says.

He doesn't understand the legal system's revolving doors which let
dealers peddling poison out within days.

"The next step up is there's going to be a turf war and we going to be
dodging bullets down here," he says.