THE DRUG TOLL

Examining A War Fought On The Streets Of Worcester

WORCESTER- Two men are leaning up against the vinyl supply building at 836
Main St. Both in their mid-20s or so, neither well-nor poorly dressed. Just
two nondescript young men wearing black pants and coats alongside a busy
street on a sunny but frigid February weekday in Main South.

Shortly after 10:30 in the morning, a gray Toyota, noticeably clean and
free of the salt and road dirt so evident on nearly every other vehicle on
the road, pulls up. The driver, the only person in the car, lowers the
passenger-side window. What the three are doing becomes more and more
obvious as the taller of the two men talks to the driver, at first shaking
his head from right to left a few times, then nodding in agreement.

The deal is on.

From half a block away, there's no way of telling whether the driver is a
man or a woman, how he or she is dressed, or his race or ethnicity. The man
on the street reaches inside the window, takes something from the driver,
and in practically simultaneous motion gives it a fast but thorough look as
he shoves it in his pocket. He then motions to his partner, who darts on
foot across Main, heads up Allen Street, turns left on Mount Pleasant
Street and stops in front of what's left of an abandoned car. The partner
takes a quick look around, reaches inside and grabs something small enough
that it fits inside his right glove. He then retraces his steps back to
Main, where the taller man and the driver have been waiting no more than a
few minutes.

The tiny packet is given to the taller man, who instantly hands it to the
driver and the Toyota pulls away.

The deal is done.

On June 17, 1971, a declaration of war was issued by then-President Richard
M. Nixon. The eradication of illegal street drugs, he vowed, would receive
the full attention and resources of the federal government because they
were "decimating a generation of Americans.'

Three decades and a new century later, the War on Drugs continues, with the
primary combatants - drug dealers, with the immutable law of supply and
demand seemingly on their side, and local police - battling daily for
control of the streets, the front lines of the war.

It is no different in Worcester, Massachusetts.

Everyone from top city administrators to the guy next door acknowledges the
existence of illegal street drugs in Worcester. The evidence is stark and
includes the drug overdose deaths of about 300 people since 1996 - a great
many of them attributed to higher purity levels and lower prices for heroin
and cocaine - and a total of 522 HIV/AIDS cases in Worcester County
transmitted through intravenous drug use as of Jan. 1.

The flip side, however, is that with the exception of the relative few
actively engaged in the war, it is hard to detect much concern or focus on
how pervasive illegal drugs are here.

The public disgust and frustration that pushed Mr. Nixon to declare a war
on drugs is only faintly echoed in 2003, yet by any measurement the problem
is getting worse. Heroin, cocaine, marijuana and myriad variations on the
theme are much more accessible and potent; considerably more people are
shooting, sniffing or smoking them; and the impact on society is far
greater than was the case in 1971.

In January and February, Sunday Telegram reporters interviewed more than 65
people - including police, prosecutors, dealers, users, health care and
social workers, representatives of active neighborhood crime watch groups,
and others - as the starting point for a continuing examination of the toll
taken by street drugs on life in Worcester. The sources' experiences and
observations make it quite evident that while the war's casualties are far
greater and more widespread than the conventional wisdom assumes, the
situation here is far from hopeless.

William T. Breault, chairman of the Main South Alliance for Public Safety,
for instance, often has been at odds with the city administration and
Worcester police whenever he believes drug laws aren't being adequately
enforced in the Main South neighborhood he's lived in the past 46 years. Of
late, however, he sees a turn for the better.

"It's definitely tilting our way,' he says of the War on Drugs as it is
being waged in Worcester. "You not only see it out on the streets; you
sense it, you feel it.'

Some of the key points raised during those two months of interviews:

While in no position to wipe out street drugs in Worcester, city police
have managed to maintain a lid on the situation, a significant achievement.
By placing an emphasis on cultivating informants and targeting the dealers
who supply the street-level dealers with drugs, officers have helped
protect Worcester from the extensive violence and economic deterioration
that have overwhelmed other, less prepared communities.

Selling drugs and drug addiction are not the exclusive domains of any
particular ethnic background or economic class in Worcester, nor does
education level necessarily protect oneself from the pitfalls of street drugs.

While prevalent throughout the city, the negative impacts of street drugs,
not surprisingly, are considerably more pronounced in low-income
neighborhoods, particularly Main South, Vernon Hill, Belmont Hill, the
Austin-Piedmont streets area, and the Great Brook Valley housing project. A
commonly repeated complaint in that regard was that locating the city's
limited number of drug rehabilitation and treatment facilities, as well as
other social services and low-income housing programs, in neighborhoods
already heavily victimized by drug activity only exacerbates problems.

The human cost of lost and wasted lives caused by street drugs is hardly
confined to users: Children of drug addicts, for instance, are at
considerably higher risk for neglect and abuse at home. Spouses can find
themselves without a place of their own to live when an addict is fired
from his or her job, or no longer is able to work. Living with an addict
parent can emotionally cripple a child and generate a ripple effect that
harms not only that child's ability to learn in school, but others in his
or her classroom.

Street drugs claim a significant financial toll on everyone, drug user or
not. Tax money pays for health care and social services for users who
cannot afford them, for the enforcement of drug laws, and for the
prosecution and incarceration of drug dealers. Revenues lost to shoplifting
and robberies committed by addicts are passed on to consumers; absenteeism
and poor work performance by employees who use drugs raise prices and
decrease the quality of products or services for which the user is responsible.

Preferences for street drugs come in cycles. Heroin currently is the drug
of choice among users, regardless of age or income, and the use of crack
cocaine, a purified form of cocaine that is smoked, is high on the list.
The popularity of so-called designer drugs such as Ecstasy generally is
short-lived, with curiosity attracting initial experimentation, but high
prices sending drug users back to their standbys.

The myths portrayed on television and in the movies to the contrary, there
is no single person, family, cartel or syndicate ruling over a drug empire
called Worcester.

"We hear it all the time,' notes Sgt. Timothy J. O'Connor, supervisor of
the day shift for the Worcester Police Department's Vice Squad. "Be nice if
it was true. We'd know exactly who to go after. Unfortunately ..'

The list goes on and on, and the more one considers what those on the front
lines have to say, the more evident it becomes that there is little hard
and fast knowledge on combating illegal drug use. That, in turn, produces
many more questions than answers.

Decriminalize street drugs and channel the resources now devoted to
enforcing drug laws into treatment programs? Opponents counter that the
track record of existing treatment programs isn't good and that too many
addicts would still resort to crime for money to live on.

Mount drug education and prevention programs for young people on a scale
similar to the successful campaigns over the past 10-15 years that
discouraged the use of tobacco?

"Have you been on a college campus or around a high school lately? Have you
seen how many young people are smoking cigarettes?' asks police Lt.
Alexander Donoghue, who has spent 20 of his 33 years as a cop working
narcotics. "No one, and that includes police officers, disputes the need
for treatment and prevention, but this (anti-smoking campaigns) isn't
working nearly as well as you seem to believe.'

Then there is the outlook of Margaret, a street prostitute and heroin
addict, that, if shared by many others, seems to suggest there is no use
even trying to get people off their drug habits. She says she started
"dabbling' with heroin when she was a teenager and has been a junkie the
last 10 to 12 years. Margaret, who says she is 33 but would have no problem
passing for 60, adds that she has been in and out of various rehabilitation
programs and even quit using for nearly a year.

She's back on the habit now, however, and insists that is precisely the way
she wants it.

Does anyone even know the extent of the drug problem in Worcester?

By one account, Lt. Donoghue points out, there were 6,000 to 7,000 addicts
living in Worcester a few years ago, which would translate to more than 4
percent of the city's population at the time. The veteran narcotics
investigator has doubts, however, about the reliability of the estimate,
which was included in an analysis conducted by a local college. It relied
upon data that included drug arrests in the city, but did not specify the
hometowns of those arrested.

In other words, the analysis appears to lump "tourists' from other area
communities who come here to purchase illegal drugs with local residents
and classify all of them as Worcesterites.

Whether the number is high, low or accurate, is something the lieutenant
says he has no way of knowing. What he does know is that 1,230 people were
arrested last year on felony drug sale and distribution charges - the count
rising steadily each of the past five years - and that Vice Squad officers
encounter new faces on the drug scene every day.

Who are the people who use drugs in Worcester?

"Nurses, lawyers, factory workers - you, me, anybody, everyone,' says Raul,
a cocaine and heroin dealer in the city. Sgt. O'Connor concurs with the
dealer's assessment.

Raul should know about such things. He was busted last year by Vice Squad
officers and became a police informant in the hope that his sentence,
expected next month, will be reduced.

Wearing a gold watch, ring and necklaces easily worth more than $20,000, he
looks every bit the dealer that Hollywood would have us expect, adding that
he is anxious to leave Worcester and return to his homeland.

"These guys arrest a dealer,' he says of the Vice Squad, "and five new
dealers drop out of the trees. There's a lot of business out there, but
it's getting tougher to deal with.' Asked what is needed to put men such as
himself out of business, and his answer comes quickly:

"Get people to stop buying.'

The business may be getting tougher and riskier, but there's a reason so
many attempt to sell drugs in the city. It can be summed up in one word,
according to Lt. David Richardson of the Vice Squad: "Greed.'

At times, he noted, it is difficult not to empathize with addicts who can
be as dependent on drugs as they are on food or water. The people who sell
to them, however, are a completely different story.

Evidence of how much a dealer can make recently was found on piece of paper
hidden in a room rented by an El Salvadoran who had been in Worcester about
five months and was being watched by police. There was no indication he was
anything more than a low-level dealer, but, unlike others who fit that
description, he did not use drugs himself.

He managed to get out of town just before officers raided his room. No
drugs were found, but tucked behind some ceiling molding was a copy of a
wire transfer he had sent to his homeland a few days earlier.

It was for $86,000.

Is Worcester even willing to attempt new means of combating the drug problem?

Actually, it has tried. For much of the 1990s, the local incarnation of the
national Fighting Back project launched by the Robert Wood Johnson
Foundation was hailed as the magic bullet that would result in innovative
and sure strategies to combat drug, alcohol and tobacco abuse.

The local effort was called Worcester Fights Back and, banking more than $5
million from the foundation and the federal government, it attempted to
come up with a communitywide approach involving local schools, health care
organizations, neighborhood and religious groups, businesses and local
government that would focus on helping drug users quit and, more important,
help keep young people from turning to drugs in the first place.

Worcester was one of 15 U.S. communities selected for the first phase of
the project and from 1992 to 1997 the money rolled in. That last year,
however, WFB was notified by the foundation that Worcester wasn't among the
eight communities selected for the second phase of the project. A
postmortem on WFB conducted by analysts from Brandeis University's Florence
Heller Graduate School of Advanced Studies later concluded that the local
project was plagued by policy rifts between business and local government
leaders who emphasized direct services such as treatment and rehabilitation
programs, and neighborhood activists who pushed for funding for job
training, crime prevention and housing.

The project's longest-serving director and senior program manager both
described the evaluation as "pretty fair' in its conclusions.

The foundation's own evaluation of its Fighting Back program was similarly
direct.

While demonstrating some positive results, "the sustained, 10-year
community-based coalition approach with ample technical assistance and
direction, top-notch people and sites that were pre-selected, did not
produce robust results in terms of decreasing substance abuse,' according
to the evaluation.

The report also states that the foundation will continue to help
communities combat substance abuse.

Interestingly, among projects now receiving funding from the well-heeled
foundation is the Drug Policy Alliance, which actively advocates for "more
sensible and humane drug policies' that promote "realistic alternatives to
the war on drugs.' Among other things, the DPA has called for eliminating
criminal penalties for marijuana and "redirecting most government drug
control resources from criminal justice and interdiction to public health
and education.'

Is anything working?

The unyielding determination of fed-up neighborhood crime watch groups
combined with more aggressive police enforcement is helping move the drug
trade off the streets. The most common place now to buy drugs in Worcester,
said Vice Squad Sgt. Thomas J. Gaffney, is "any parking lot in the city,'
while some former "crack houses' in Main South and on Grafton and Belmont
hills now are homes for families with children.

Even so, "Some properties remain problematic no matter how much energy and
time are put in to changing them,' said David McMahon, co-director of
Dismas House, a residence for former prisoners located on Richards Street.

He is speaking of a three-story apartment house almost directly across the
street from Goddard School of Science and Technology, a public elementary
school.

According to neighbors, cars come and cars go at the apartment at all times
of the day and night. Pedestrians wander to the back of the building at odd
times, stay briefly and wander off. Syringes tossed from windows at 11
Richards St. sprinkle the adjacent community garden. Garbage and trash
spills from the house onto the lawn. Cars are disassembled so often that
neighbors are convinced the address is also a chop shop.

"It's been like this for more than 20 years,' said one resident of the
street. She has lived on Richards Street for longer than that.

"It's too bad because this is really a nice street, very diverse with a lot
of neat people. We just have this one bad apple and it affects all our
lives. It sits in the middle of the street. There's no escaping it.'

Owners over the years have either ignored neighbor complaints or, as one
did, respond with a new paint job.

"Nice guy,' Mr. McMahon said. "He had a Free Tibet bumper sticker on his
Volvo.'

Sporadic police raids have slowed but never stopped the business at 11
Richards.

Mr. McMahon does not believe a police crackdown or longer prison terms for
drug offenders will solve a problem that he is convinced remains rooted in
poverty and despair even more intransigent than the dope houses.

"Heroin in Worcester is a massive problem,' Mr. McMahon said. "It's cheaper
to buy a couple of bags of heroin than a couple of six packs of beer.'