LANDLORDS JOIN FORCES TO FIGHT DRUG DEALERS

Wheeling Island Was A Haven For Narcotics And Prostitution, Until
Property Owners Traded Information And Stopped Renting To Suspected Criminals.

The vicious circle of guns, drugs and violence has gripped many West
Virginia communities.

Small wonder, when you look at the stakes.

A well-supplied, big-city drug dealer can make more than $100,000 a
month in West Virginia. If he can get illegal guns while he's here
and get back home alive, he could quadruple his money.

It's a short, violent life, but one that kids trapped in shattered
cities find hard to resist. But for the innocent people, there is no upside.

Yet some say a deterrent to the drug trade could be as simple as a
vigilant landlord.

Wheeling Island was separated from the rest of town by more than just
the Ohio River. Just a few years ago, the bad guys had taken over.
Law-abiding citizens were on the defensive.

Lifelong resident Norma Dorsch remembers how bad it was. "We had all
kind of people standing on the corner, stopping people,
propositioning for drugs and prostitution," she said.

Local cops could do only so much. They made arrests, but usually only
of addicts willing to sell drugs to pay for their own habits, while
the suppliers went untouched.

Tom Johnston, U.S. Attorney for the northern district of West
Virginia, was all too familiar with the problem. He was looking for a
way to shut down the trade, but he needed help.

"If you do one by a bust, you are not going to get the same kind of
sentence you are going to get if you do that then you find out who
this person is working with," Johnston said.

"Who else is selling in this organization? Who is their source of
supply? How often are they dealing? Where are they dealing? Is there
property involved that might be subject to forfeiture? It takes time
to build that kind of case," he said.

That's where Dorsch came in.

Working with the U.S. Attorney's office and members of the area's
drug task force, Dorsch and her neighbors formed a community
association and started watching, working with police and waiting.

"License plates, descriptions of people, descriptions of cars, house
numbers locations, everything," she said. "Anything that would help them."

After two years of weekly reports and untold meetings, residents were
growing impatient. They knew Johnston and his crew were working on a
big case, but they wanted results.

Dorsch and her neighbors, though, had another weapon.

Property owners figured that without a place to operate, dope pushers
and prostitutes would have to take their business someplace else.

Dorsch and her fellow landlords started watching for suspicious
behavior -- cars with out-of-state plates, frequent visitors, strange
hours. They also started doing criminal background checks on potential tenants.

"We got names of the drug dealers and stuff, and we just wouldn't
rent to them on the island," she said. "We just passed the names from
landlord to landlord."

At first, some landlords were reluctant to turn away a tenant. But
Dorsch and other association members made them see that the cost of
trashed apartments and ruined neighborhoods outweighed the rent.

"The people that we were trying to get off the island was the people
that was doing the damage," Dorsch said.

It took federal authorities more than two years to indict the alleged
suppliers. But thanks to Dorsch and her neighbors started their
crusade, the streets were already safer.

And if the landlords stick together, Wheeling Island won't be such an
easy target to the next gang of thugs looking for a place to do business.