FIRE FATAL TO 6 LEADS A CITY TO SCRUTINIZE ITS DRUG WAR

BALTIMORE, Oct. 18 - In this city where 60,000 people, about one in 10
residents, are addicted to narcotics, a simple message appears on
billboards, police cruisers, city buses, T-shirts, brochures and in
television advertisements: "Believe."

That slogan, from a $2 million antidrug 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 just became harder to believe that the war on drugs and
violence can be won. Angela Dawson believed enough to confront dealers
outside her East Baltimore row house and report them to the police - with
horrific results. Early Wednesday morning, Mrs. Dawson, who was 36, and
five of her young children burned to death in their corner row house in a
fire the authorities said a 21-year-old drug dealer set in retaliation for
Mrs. Dawson's crusading against the drug market outside her home. Mrs.
Dawson's husband, Carnell Dawson Sr., 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."

The fire heightened already rampant fears about possible retaliation by
drug dealers, but community activists promised to fight back against the
dealers and demanded more police protection in violent neighborhoods.

Baltimoreans United in Leadership Development, a citywide group of about 50
religious congregations, said it expected 500 members at a rally on Sunday
outside the Dawson house. "There are people willing to stand up to drug
dealers in this neighborhood, but for people to stand up, this mayor has to
offer them protection," said Robert English, an organizer with the group.
"We're calling on the mayor to devise a plan to protect this neighborhood
and others because people are being terrorized."

Mr. O'Malley, who has made crime-fighting the chief goal of his
administration, praised Mrs. Dawson's antidrug crusade and clung to the
belief that the deaths would galvanize the city in its fight against drugs.
"These deaths are a strange combination of line-of-duty deaths and the
slaughter of the innocents," said Mr. O'Malley, a Democrat. "There are a
lot of us who have been asking what will make us stand up and say, `Enough
is enough.' Maybe this it. This city is in crisis."

Mr. O'Malley has repeatedly criticized what he called lax prosecution of
gun and drug crimes by the city state's attorney and the United States
attorney for Baltimore.

Today and Thursday at closed-door meetings attended by the city's police
commissioner and city and state lawmakers, there were 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," State Senator Nathaniel J. McFadden said. "It's a
revolving cycle that we are going to break. This arson has made the Dawson
family martyrs in our efforts to rid the streets of crime."

Mr. McFadden 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 Qaeda and
Osama bin Laden, we want the same thing available for the citizens in
Baltimore City," Mr. McFadden said. "We consider this an absolute terrorist
attack on the community."

Downtown at a hearing, the suspect in the case, Darrell Brooks, was ordered
held without bond today on six counts of first-degree murder, arson and
related charges.

Prosecutors read witnesses' accounts detailing how Mr. Brooks kicked open
the door of the Dawsons' home after 2 a.m. Wednesday, poured gasoline on
the floor and ignited it, then went back to his house a few doors away.
Inside a closet at Mr. Brooks's home, the police said, they found a
measuring cup and a jar containing gasoline.