FORCED TO FLEE: COUPLE LEAVES HOME AFTER POINTING OUT DRUG DEALERS

A drug informant said Trenton police told him and his wife to leave home
and go into hiding after he pointed out all the suspected narcotics dealers
on his block.

From his hideout at the home of a relative, the informant said he was not
offered police protection after he helped officers bust a dozen suspects on
his West Ward street.

Now the drug dealers want him dead, said Joe Doe, a fiftyish laborer whose
name is being withheld by The Trentonian.

"They are going to shoot me," said Doe. "They are mad because I closed
their drug store down. I have to walk sideways now, always looking behind
my back."

Doe said his troubles started about six months ago when a financial setback
forced him and his wife to take an apartment on Christoph Avenue, where
rent is cheap because the street is an open-air drug market.

Doe said neighbors who weren't druggies, most of them elderly people,
advised him that the safest tact was to ignore the narcotics dealing on the
street.

Blinded by fury, however, Doe said he immediately decided to help one night
last month when the cops showed up and busted a dozen drug dealers outside
his home.

Doe didn't cower inside his building like his neighbors when the cops asked
for information. Instead, he stood on his stoop and pointed out the bad
guys one by one.

"I said 'that one there' and 'that one over there,'" explained Doe,
recounting the moment he fearlessly let himself be seen pointing to the
criminals who had been wreaking havoc in his neighborhood.

The drugfest on Christoph ended only briefly, Doe said. Within days, the
dealers were out on bail and back on the streets.

That's shortly after a uniformed officer showed up at his door and urged
him to get out of the neighborhood -- advice echoed by some of his neighbors.

"'It's best that you get out of there,'" Doe's wife quoted a neighbor as
telling them.

Doe and his wife, though away from Christoph, still get jolted by noises
and are uneasy about the fact that someone wants them dead.

Still, Doe doesn't regret putting his life in danger for having performed
his civic duty.

"They can come and get me." Doe said defiantly. "But if they hurt my wife,
I'll get a back hoe and tear the house down."

"I don't want him getting hurt over bull," his wife said quietly. "They
didn't like us because we didn't do drugs or didn't deal. We told them to
just leave us alone."

Doe said the culprits had planted drugs on his property, after breaking
into his apartment. They destroyed his wife's car. They intimidated and
harassed him.

"When I asked them to get off my car, they went like this," said Doe,
touching his hip as if there were a gun.

"We go back on the porch and drink our soda, and they urinate, throw trash
off the tier," he said, recounting his life on Christoph Ave. "Animals
don't even live like that."

Elderly neighbors and long-time Christoph residents sympathized with Doe
but have been too afraid to speak out.

"Every morning they are out there cleaning up their mess," said Doe's wife.
"I think they think we upset the community. We stirred everything up."

Doe and his wife finally moved out and two others left the state.

But dealers are still doing a good ecstasy business in the building, they
said. The couple laments not getting enough support from the community to
stop the business.

"If we got killed, I wouldn't be able to tell this," Doe said despondently.
"People have got to know about what is going on."

A police spokesman, Lt. Joe Juniak, said he hadn't heard about the big bust
on Christoph or this particular complaint about intimidation.

"Anytime there is a threat made to someone, especially if there is
retaliation for providing information or insisting on cleaning up their
neighborhood, we take that very seriously," said Juniak.

"We provide some relief. We ask people to step up. Most of the time it is
anonymous. Not too many people will step forward because of fear of
retaliation."

Doe said police did all they could that night and followed up days later.
He said he had placed a call to the mayor after the arrest.

"They were frustrated," said Doe about the cops after his neighbors ducked
and some suspects fled. "You get tired of locking up the same people."

"Now I have to watch my wife like a 5-year-old."

Juniak said that "people should take interest in their neighborhood and not
hide behind doors.

"Basically, live in heir neighborhood and not let the criminal element take
over."

Anyone with concerns can call anonymously 989-DRUG or 278-TIPS. All
information is confidential.