OFFICIALS HOPE FIRE WILL INSPIRE DRUG FIGHT

Baltimore Blaze Killed Activist Mom And 5 Of Her 6 Children

BALTIMORE - In this city where 60,000 people, about 1 in 10 residents, are
addicted to narcotics, a simple message appears on billboards, police
cruisers, city buses, T-shirts, brochures and in TV commercials: "Believe."

That slogan from a $2 million anti-drug campaign Baltimore began six months
ago, is part exhortation, part call to action, part desperate plea to take
back the neighborhoods, to report drug dealers, to seek drug treatment, to
become a police officer or a mentor to a troubled youngster.

But for many, it became harder to believe last week that the war on drugs
and violence can be won. Angela Dawson had believed enough to confront
dealers outside her East Baltimore row house and report them to the police
- -- with horrific results. Early Wednesday, Dawson, who was 36, and five of
her six children died in their house in a fire that authorities said a
21-year-old drug dealer set in retaliation.

Dawson's husband, Carnell, was struggling to live after suffering serious
burns over half his body.

Now, Baltimore is trying to come to grips with what Mayor Martin O'Malley
calls "the most barbaric act in the recent history of our city."

O'Malley, who has made crime-fighting the chief goal of his administration,
praised Dawson's anti-drug crusade and clung to the belief that those six
deaths would galvanize the city.

"There are a lot of us who have been asking what will make us stand up and
say, 'Enough is enough.' Maybe this it," said O'Malley, a Democrat.

He found small signs of hope, such as seeing Dawson's mother at a funeral
home Friday wearing a black T-shirt that said "Believe" in white letters.

The fire drew calls for more police officers in drug-ridden neighborhoods,
and a few city and state lawmakers went so far as to suggest bringing in
state troopers or even the National Guard to rid inner-city neighborhoods
of drugs.

On Thursday and Friday, at closed-door meetings attended by the city's
police commissioner, city and state lawmakers, there were often heated
exchanges and criticism of what many view as inadequate police protection
and a criminal justice system that routinely returns violent offenders to
the streets quickly.

"The Police Department locks drug dealers up, they make cash bail and
they're out again," said state Sen. Nathaniel McFadden, D-Baltimore City.
"It's a revolving cycle that we are going to break."

McFadden, who spent much of the day on the streets near the charred row
house in his district, said he would push for more crime-fighting help from
the governor, the Legislature and the Maryland congressional delegation.

"Just like resources have been made available for fighting al-Qaida and
Osama bin Laden, we want the same thing available for the citizens in
Baltimore City," McFadden said. "We consider this an absolute terrorist
attack on the community, and we're going to respond accordingly."

Downtown at a hearing Friday, Darrell Brooks, the 21-year-old suspect, was
ordered held without bond on six counts of first-degree murder, arson and
related charges. The Department of Public Safety and Correctional Services
said Friday that an officer assigned to supervise Brooks, who was placed on
probation for a car-theft conviction in April, never tried to reach him
even after he failed to make contact.

Prosecutors read witnesses' accounts that described Brooks kicking open the
door of the Dawsons' home after 2 a.m. Wednesday, pouring gasoline on the
floor and igniting it, then returning to his house a few doors away.