WEEDING EFFORTS TAKE FELONS OFF STREETS

Nearly 150 drug dealers and violent criminals have vanished from the most
crime-ridden streets in Southeast Missouri. They no longer peddle addictions
and terrorize families.

They were targeted, collected and locked away by prosecutors and police
united under a Department of Justice crime-fighting program: Operation Weed
and Seed.

After eight years in Southeast Missouri -- first in Sikeston and then across
the region -- those 150 or so Weed and Seed defendants have been ordered to
serve a total of 1,392 years in prison.

The first Bush administration rolled out the Weed and Seed program in 1991
to reduce crime in drug-ridden neighborhoods and revitalize blighted
communities. On the weeding side of the program, budget-strapped police
departments suddenly received extra dollars for officer overtime, drug buys
and special operations. The major drug dealers they arrest -- those involved
with selling more than 5 grams of crack cocaine or possession of 220 pounds
of marijuana, for example -- must be tried in federal court, where the
sentences are tougher.

On the seeding side, the DOJ funds existing programs to encourage learning
and counteract drug abuse, such as the Boys and Girls Club in Cape
Girardeau, and set up some of their own.

But the law enforcement side, which organizers point to as having the most
visible success, has received the least amount of money. The U.S. attorney's
branch office in Cape Girardeau hasn't added staff to deal with Weed and
Seed drug cases -- existing lawyers in that office just started picking up
more cases, giving priority to the ones in designated neighborhoods.

And of the nearly $3 million awarded the regional Weed and Seed organization
over five years, half has gone to police departments.

What Sikeston did

The first Weed and Seed program in the area started in Sikeston in 1995. It
went regional in 1998, expanding to take in Cape Girardeau, Poplar Bluff,
Charleston and Caruthersville and oversee those individual sites from Cape
Girardeau.

But Sikeston remains officials' favorite to point out as a weeding success
story. The city's Sunset neighborhood was a crack stronghold, where police
efforts routinely met with rock-throwing rioters and arson. Today, it's a
different place.

For instance, the intersection of Osage and Luther streets, in the middle of
the Weed and Seed neighborhood, used to be a nightly gathering spot for
enormous crowds.

"We used to get 10 calls a night for this block, but we probably haven't had
maybe 10 calls here in the last two years," said Sikeston Department of
Public Safety director Drew Juden.

Cape Girardeau joined the program three years after Sikeston. Its target
neighborhood stretches from the riverfront to West End Boulevard and is
bordered on the north by Independence and on the south by Southern
Expressway. The drug of choice is crack cocaine.

The police department opened a substation on Good Hope Street in March 1999,
calling it the center of the agency's community-oriented policing efforts.
It is where officers plan foot and bike patrols and special drug operations.

Weed and Seed money pays the station's rent and utilities. The city's
seeding coordinator also has an office there. Police say the substation's
visibility has helped curb crime, even though the substation is unstaffed
for long periods of time.

Between April 1999 and June 2003 -- the only dates for which police
department records were available -- Cape Girardeau police received more
than $59,600 from Weed and Seed to fund 2,981.5 hours in officer overtime
used in special operations in the target neighborhood. During those
operations, they made 303 arrests, according to department spokesman Sgt.
Rick Schmidt.

The average sentence length in 63 Sikeston Weed and Seed cases was 108
months. In Cape Girardeau's 23 cases, the average sentence was 143 months.
Inmates must serve 85 percent of a sentence before being eligible for
release.

State courts rarely hand down such long terms for felony drug convictions,
according to Cape Girardeau County's prosecuting attorney, Morley Swingle.

State courts typically prosecute dealers who sell just a couple rocks of
crack or small amounts of marijuana as opposed to pounds and pounds of
marijuana, Swingle said. Even before Weed and Seed, state prosecutors had
the option of asking federal courts to deal with major drug cases.

"Occassionally we'll have someone who'll have a larger amount and we'll see
them in state court, but I would say 75 percent of our drug cases are small
street level drug deals," he said. "Before we had the local U.S. attorney's
office in Cape Girardeau, there was only the St. Louis office, and they
handled very few of our drug cases."

The U.S. attorney branch office opened in Cape Girardeau in 1991.

Weed and Seed isn't popular with the federal public defender in Cape
Girardeau, Jeff Rosanswank. About one in 15 of his office's cases deal with
Weed and Seed crimes. He said it's unfair to increase a suspect's chances at
a lengthy prison term by putting a case into the federal court system simply
because the suspect was arrested in a particular neighborhood.

"If citizens are treated differently in one community as opposed to another
community, how fair is that?" he said.

Seeding is local matter

Assistant U.S. Attorney Larry Ferrell's office has no authority over the
seeding portion of Weed and Seed. Communication between the two elements is
limited to board meetings and occasional consultations on legal issues such
as contracts, he said.

The U.S. attorney's office has prosecuted Weed and Seed cases without one
extra dollar, Ferrell said. He points out, however, that the program did not
increase the Cape Girardeau office's caseload, it merely shifted the focus
to those cases, he said. As Swingle pointed out, the federal office took on
many major drug dealers before, but now more attention is given those in the
Weed and Seed neighborhoods.

Four U.S. attorneys in the Cape Girardeau office devote part of their time
to Weed and Seed cases. A fifth prosecutes methamphetamine cases only,
Ferrell said. The office also has three secretaries and two paid student
workers.

The loss of the Weed and Seed program would not affect the size of the Cape
Girardeau office's staff, but it would redirect the office's resources,
Ferrell said.

"If these areas were not designated as Weed and Seed areas anymore, they
would not receive the priorities in this office," he said. "We'd still
prosecute major cases from there, but our efforts would not be concentrated
on those areas."

"We'd refer many of those cases to the state level," he said. "We're at
capacity now and would be at capacity with or without the designation of
Weed and Seed."

Funding is in jeopardy

The future of Southeast Missouri's Weed and Seed program is at jeopardy.
Unless the regional board's reapplication is approved, money for police
overtime pay will vanish.

However, at a July regional board meeting, U.S. Attorney Ray Gruender
reminded the group that Weed and Seed wasn't designed as a permanent
fixture, but rather as a temporary effort to curb crime and help communities
in desperate need.

But the board doesn't appear ready to accept a graduation from the federal
grant pool anytime soon. They are trying to keep those dollars coming by
proposing an expansion of the boundaries of the target neighborhoods in each
of the five sites, doubling their coverage areas.

The proposed exansions to the Sikeston target neighborhood seem like a good
idea to Juden.

"If they'd looked at that area in the beginning, it should have been
included," he said.

Those expansions will mean more federal penalties for offenders and more
funding opportunities for law enforcement, he said.

"We must remain committed to keep our programs running," he said. "Or the
problem could come back."