NW HOUSING COMPLEX A TANGLE OF DRUGS, DESPAIR

The Catholic founders who conceived of the Sursum Corda Cooperative
nearly 40 years ago envisioned an urban village for the District's
poor, where townhouses, courtyards and narrow streets all promoted a
sense of community.

Built around a horseshoe-shaped street, Sursum Corda was given a name
as lofty as its mission: Latin for "Lift up your hearts." But the
social planners of 1968 could not have foreseen the onset of crack
cocaine in the late 1980s, or how the development's layout would be
ideal for drug dealers who could sell openly and then vanish at the
sight of police.

The urban village is now an infamous housing complex off North Capitol
Street. It is a place where a nun lived for nine years until the risks
became too great, where visiting federal prosecutors were shot at,
where some residents help drug dealers out of fear, and where
14-year-old Jahkema Princess Hansen was fatally shot Jan. 23 after
apparently witnessing a murder.

For police, Sursum Corda is one of the most daunting of the 100 or so
open-air drug markets in the city. "It was designed like the Alamo. It
is very hard for us to get into," said Sgt. John Brennan, who has
worked in the D.C. police's major narcotics branch for 24 years. "You
worry about sending in undercovers because it is so confined."

The illicit drug trade at Sursum Corda is controlled by two or three
loosely knit gangs primarily made up of dealers ranging in age from 14
to 17, many of whom live in the complex, according to D.C. police.
Investigators said that the gangs, which have little, if any, formal
hierarchy, sell crack cocaine but have also found smaller markets in
marijuana, PCP, ecstasy and firearms.

Last week, dealers were openly selling drugs along the horseshoe and
soliciting passing cars, even though marked police vehicles, with
lights flashing, were parked around the complex. On Wednesday, when
Mayor Anthony A. Williams (D) paid a visit to Princess Hansen's
mother, a drug buy took place within 30 feet of a police van.

Dealers can quickly disperse and hide in townhouses that line Sursum
Corda's horseshoe, off the unit block of M Street NW, or lose
themselves in the tangle of alleyways and courtyards. Or they work
"the backside" -- K Street -- where, police say, much of the dealing
occurs in the Temple Courts apartment building.

Helen Mitchell, 72, who has lived in the Temple Courts apartment
building since the 1970s, said that a granddaughter was killed on a
nearby street in the mid-'90s. "I have grandchildren, and every time I
hear a gunshot, I think it's one of them," she said last week.

At the Peace Room, an after-school refuge inside a community center
around the corner from Sursum Corda, the impact of all the violence is
clear. The children's artwork, displayed on the "dream wall," depicts
their visions of what a harmonious neighborhood should be. "I have a
dream of a world without guns," reads one of the banners.

One day last week, three girls, only a few years younger than
Princess, shared their fears about life in and around Sursum Corda. "I
thought you die when you are old. But you don't," a 10-year-old said
as she fidgeted with a cell phone. "You die young because of killers."

An 11-year-old described what she felt when she heard that Princess
Hansen had been killed. "I was sad and crying because that person
could have been me," she said. "Today, I couldn't find my sister for a
while, and I was scared somebody had snapped her up or something."

Another 10-year-old wouldn't discuss Princess: "I don't want anybody
to shoot me in the head."

Mary Joan Park, who runs the Little Friends for Peace program in the
Peace Room at the Perry School Community Service Center, said that
children are afraid of the violence in their neighborhood.

"Some kids won't sleep in their own rooms, and some won't even go
downstairs to see if the door is locked," Park said.

A Lauded Beginning

The concept for Sursum Corda grew out of a socially progressive idea
to provide affordable quality housing to poor residents. The intended
beneficiaries were those who were displaced after a sprawling slum on
the site bounded by K, M and North Capitol streets was razed as part
of the urban renewal that was taking hold in the District at the time.

When the townhouses were finished, they were praised for offering
residents air conditioning, garbage disposals and washers and dryers.
At the time, an editorial in The Washington Post lauded the architects
for building "a compact little village."

Sursum Corda was made up of about 155 townhouses and 44 apartments.
Fifty townhouses in the area are now owned by the D.C. Housing
Authority; the rest have a variety of private owners. Throughout the
complex, as well as the neighboring Temple Courts apartment building,
most of the residents receive some kind of public assistance.

For the past 15 years, murderous feuds have erupted as dealers vied
for control of the city's increasingly lucrative drug business,
including at Sursum Corda, which quickly emerged as one of
Washington's main markets for cocaine as well as PCP.

The development has become so daunting that the last of the many nuns
who had lived there to help the community moved out -- albeit
reluctantly -- about four years ago. Her car had been stolen and her
townhouse had been burglarized. Virtually everything in the house was
taken, including CDs of religious music, electronic equipment -- even
her socks.

Sister Helen McCulloch, who lived at Sursum Corda for about nine
years, said the burglary happened while she was on a trip. When she
returned, she learned that many of her belongings had been sold in a
parking lot.

"At that point, I was angry, and I didn't feel that was a good way to
be there. People were starting to tell me to be careful," recalled
McCulloch, who was growing increasingly concerned about the drug and
gun sales at the complex.

"There were many good people there with so much hope and a strong
sense of community, but the evil was becoming insurmountable," she
said. "The heart is broken there, and it needs to be lifted up and
healed."

Her departure marked the end of the nuns' long presence at Sursum
Corda. One of them had run an anti-drug program in the 1980s for
youths, and others managed the complex into the 1990s.

A year before McCulloch left, an unmarked car carrying two assistant
U.S. attorneys and a police detective was fired upon by a dealer after
they photographed a drug buy, according to the detective, Neil
Trugman. The three, who were visiting because the prosecutors were
starting an anti-gang unit, were not hurt.

During the winter, anywhere from a dozen to two dozen dealers work the
streets at Sursum Corda. In warmer months, the number of dealers can
swell to 40 or more at any given time.

Brennan, the narcotics sergeant, said the dealers position lookouts at
the entrance and exit of the horseshoe. If they see any approaching
police cars, they can yell to the sellers, who can scatter into nearby
alleys or townhouses.

"They see you coming from 200 yards away, and they just meld into the
scenery. By the time we move in, we have already been seen or warnings
from lookouts have already been issued," Brennan said.

"Some residents over there are so scared that they will help them by
leaving their back doors open," he said. "Some of these people get
compensated by the dealers for their help."

Brennan said the dealers generally conceal the drugs in the complex.
"Here they can stash the drugs in apartments, for example," he said.
"At other open-air markets, you can't stash too far away because the
drugs could get stolen."

Police said they believe that most of the individuals who buy drugs at
Sursum Corda live in the neighborhood. Because many people are fearful
of entering the horseshoe, the dealers at the complex do not get the
high volume of car traffic from Maryland and Virginia and other parts
of the District that more accessible drug markets do.

A citywide buy-and-bust strike force formed in April 1999 resulted in
about 50 arrests at Sursum Corda over the six months that the mobile
unit was in operation. Officers from the strike force were eventually
given other drug assignments, and Sursum Corda became less of a focus.

Cmdr. Thomas McGuire of the 1st Police District, where Sursum Corda
is, said that in recent months he has used his own officers and some
who were redeployed from other parts of the city to patrol the
complex. Vice officers have also performed several buy-and-bust
operations targeting the area.

Until the shootings over the past two weeks, Sursum Corda had been
relatively calm. McGuire said there had been little reported violence
or other types of friction between the dealers.

String of Slayings

On Jan. 18, a Sunday, two men were killed within nine hours. Mario J.
Evans, 21, was shot to death in a hallway at Temple Courts, and Tommy
Cardwell Jr., 36, was slain in a parking lot nearby. Marquette E. Ward
was charged in Evans's death; there have been no arrests in Cardwell's
slaying.

Police investigators said they believe that the slayings were the
result of a feud over drug turf. Caught in the middle was Princess,
who police believe witnessed the fatal shooting of Evans.

But the 14-year-old girl declined to cooperate with the police
investigation, despite warnings from authorities that she would be
killed if she returned to the complex, according to police and the
teenager's mother.

The following night, according to police, 22-year-old Franklin
Thompson burst into a nearby townhouse at 1175 First Terrace NW and
shot Princess seven times, hitting her in the head, neck and chest.
She died at the scene.

To some residents, the killing was a tragic but familiar tale. Sursum
Corda had lost another life in a brutal homicide.

Last May, for example, two men were convicted of dragging another man
to the First Place NW side of the horseshoe and shooting him 13 times.
The motive might have been robbery, prosecutors said, or perhaps a
prior argument with one of the killers.

And several years ago, there was a killing over a PlayStation video
game. According to investigators, Felix Wood shot his friend Antonio
Davis 13 times with a World War II-era rifle, then beat him with the
firearm hard enough to break off part of the wooden stock.