CITY COUNCILS MUST DEAL WITH CRIME

Sunday suits and murder scenes Brandi Jacobs-Jones is the youngest and one
of the newest members of Huntington City Council. She ran unopposed in her
district last November.

She lives in the very heart of the city's drug-dealing district, only a few
blocks from where four teenagers were gunned down Sunday morning.

Last week, she looked out her window and saw young men and women aimlessly
walking her street. Some of them were prostitutes, she says. Some of them
were dealing drugs. Some of them -- the ones who "look like zombies" --
were drug users.

Earlier this week, all that activity had come to a halt, at least for the
time being. The death of the four young people at a house on Charleston
Avenue brought extra patrols from Huntington City Police, State Police and
the Cabell County Sheriff's Office to her neighborhood.

For the moment, she said, it is the kind of street she and most of her
neighbors hoped it would always be -- quiet and free of drug deals.

"If it were like this for the next six months, really aggressive
patrolling, I think it would make a difference. Of course I'm known in the
community as a Pollyanna," she said.

As an outreach worker for the Ebenezer Medical Clinic in Huntington, a free
medical clinic for the poor and medically underserved, she works in the
area where she lives and where the shootings occurred.

She hears things on the street that lead her to believe what the Huntington
police believe: The four cold-blooded murders were somehow drug-related.

Jacobs-Jones and the police believe three of the four were in the wrong
place at the wrong time. The target was Donte Ward, who lived in the
Charleston Avenue house. All four were shot in the front yard about 4:30
a.m. Sunday.

"I arrived there about 7:30 a.m. (Sunday). While I was there, I noticed two
young boys, nine or 10. Their mothers had dressed them in their Sunday
suits. They were ready to go to church and they had come out to see what
was happening. They were taking it all in.

"I thought to myself, 'How sad they had to see this.' I can't imagine what
kind of impression it had on them," Jacobs-Jones said.

Like the police, Jacobs-Jones believes drug dealers from the Detroit area
were the shooters. She believes they left town soon after the murders. But
that still left more -- perhaps many more -- Detroit crack dealers in town.

Detroit is the source of most of the crack cocaine in Huntington, according
to police. They supply an unknown number of crack addicts in Huntington and
probably Charleston.

It's said that crack is sold at a premium in Huntington. It's much more
expensive here than in Detroit. That's the reason for the insidious
"Detroit connection."

That connection directly and indirectly caused the execution-style deaths
of the four teenagers. Jacobs-Jones believes -- or at least she hopes -- it
was a one-of-a-kind tragedy that will never happen again.

Jacobs-Jones is the daughter of Tom Jacobs, who used to work as a TV
newsman for WSAZ in Huntington. She has lived a lot of places, but she came
to Huntington to attend Marshall University, where she was the first female
and the first African-American to become student body president.

After graduation, she settled in Huntington "to make a difference. I really
love my neighbors and there's such a sense of community here, like no other
place I have ever lived."

When she looked out her front window before the crackdown, she saw "young
men and women so beaten down, they didn't believe they had any
opportunities or any future.

"When young people achieve some success, they leave here. All that's left
are these youngsters with no hope. They see the dealers making fast easy
money and they fall into the trap. Somehow we have to give them hope."

Sometimes, she says, a few words can help enormously.

"I have a friend who recently got in trouble and went to jail. When I saw
him I told him that he is special. 'That's the first time anyone ever told
me that,' he said. Maybe if someone had told him that earlier and had
believed in him, he wouldn't have gotten into trouble."

Jacobs-Jones believes the drug problem is the most serious problem in
Huntington, but doesn't believe all members of council agree with her. "And
I think it might be even more serious in Charleston,' she said.

What to do about it?

The solution, she said, must involve everyone -- the police, families, the
men and women on the street who really want to bring drug-dealing to an
end, and the people who work with kids to give them hope, a sense of
belonging and "jobs that matter."

The member of council has taken it upon herself to study what other cities
are doing to combat the crack cocaine epidemic. She says she will collect
ideas and offer them to the community, which she hopes will develop an
action plan.

It's better, she says, than sitting quietly in her council seat, casting
"yea" and "nay" votes that may or may not matter and worrying about uncut
weeds on vacant lots, a seemingly perennial topic at the meetings.

Winter will take care of the weeds, but not the city's horrendous drug problem.

People, not a simple change of seasons, must solve the problems that most
likely caused Sunday morning's murders.