CRACK - 'IT'S THE DEVIL'S DRUG'HAMILTON COPS DECLARE WAR ON CRACK
HOUSES

These Are Their Stories

HAMILTON -- The thin man with his hands cuffed behind him leans
forward in his kitchen chair to talk to a cop looming over him.

He looks at Hamilton Det.-Const. Terry Cahill as masked narcotics
officers scour his basement apartment looking for crack cocaine.

"About the f---ing raid," the thin man says to Cahill.
"Thanks."

His eyes reveal he's sincere. He hopes the arrest is his ticket back
to a normal life, and the end of being a hostage in his own apartment.

A joint team from the Drugs and Vice Unit and the Break, Enter, Auto
Theft and Robbery Unit invited themselves over with a search warrant
and a battering ram in the middle of the three-week Project Crackdown.

Four people in the apartment are arrested for possessing
crack.

The day Grant, the thin man, moved in to his Mericourt Dr. home in
Westdale, he says his dealer and the man's prostitute girlfriend also
moved in, taking over and using it as a base to traffic crack.

Grant says he's been forced to sleep on the couch, the perennial guest
in his own home.

The dealer and his girlfriend claimed the bed and keep the door
closed.

Grant shouldn't be handcuffed watching police dissect his
life.

He's a talented man who graduated in 1992 among the top of his class
from George Brown College's hospitality course, after he suffered a
head injury in a traffic accident that doctors never expected him to
recover from. He was on the Dean's List. He was employee of the month
at the Four Seasons Hotel in 1993.

"Look at that," says an officer looking in Grant's fridge. "What is
that? Shrimp linguine? We usually find Kraft Dinner with green things
growing on it."

It was just something he threw together, Grant says
modestly.

"I'm a good cook, guys," he tells the cops.

"I've mastered the normal life," he says, explaining his decision to
turn to cocaine and then crack about 17 years ago. It was a challenge
to him and he wanted to live life on the edge.

"So I tested myself a little more on this end," he says. "I fell off
the edge. I'm living in hell."

Grant can't quantify how much crack he uses in a day. All he knows is
that when he wakes up, he starts with a blast. Every morning. And then
all day. "I've got a psychiatrist. I've got a social worker," Grant
says. "I'm trying to get better. That's what I want, to be normal.

"My last five jobs I've lost because of this drug."

He says he lives with a paradox. Grant knows he can succeed without
crack, but if he does, he's tempted to use it.

"Ego moves in and I say, 'I'm not going to let what happen last time
happen this time.' But it does," he says.

His eyes turn red and moist, on the verge of crying, and he says, "I'm
dying.

"C'mon, think of how I feel right now. I used to manage a fine-dining
restaurant at the Sheraton Hotel, I used to manage the Royal Hamilton
Yacht Club for 15 months, good money," he explains. "From my brain
injury, I had a big settlement where I had lots of money, and all that.

"Now, I'm unemployed with f---ing handcuffs on me with people living
in my place that I can't f---ing get rid of," he says.

He's tried to remove his unwanted guests. He says he's been beaten up
for it and so decided it's safest just to put up with the intruders.

On this chilly night, the last Thursday in March, police also arrest a
suspect of special interest to the city's homicide squad. John Robert
Howard, 60, lies on the floor in cuffs charged with possessing crack.

He chit-chats with the narc cops and exchanges pleasantries, but he's
adamant that he won't say anything dealing with his doings.

Homicide investigators consider him a suspect in the 1998 slayings of
Ancaster lawyer Lynn Gilbank and her husband, Fred.

Two other men who were charged with the couple's first-degree murders
were released last year after Ontario prosecutors ruled there wasn't
enough evidence. Hamilton homicide Det.-Sgt. Steve Hrab said the case
is still open and unsolved. He didn't elaborate on Howard's alleged
role in the slayings, except to describe him as "a
sub-contractor."

The Hammer has a serious crack problem.

Recently, there's been a spike in related crimes, including break-ins
of homes and businesses, and street muggings.

And March has been declared crack-house season for
cops.

The three-week project isn't necessarily to pile on statistics, says
BEAR Det. Paul Henderson, but to stanch street crime and calm fearful
neighbours.

Anecdotally, there's been a drop in break-ins since the project began
March 19. Cold, hard numbers show there were no retail heists and only
one commercial break-in during the weekend of March 30-31.

"First of all, from the drug angle, we shut down some neighbourhood
problems," Henderson says. "Whenever you have a crack house on your
street, you can't appreciate until one's gone what a relief it is to
the people who live in that area."

Henderson says the stream of Toronto dealers continues into
Hamilton.

"We're making arrests locally, but a lot of arrests we're making are
from the GTA," he says. "There's so much of it out there. It's a big
money trade."

He says police have cleared a handful of break-ins, and recovered
thousands worth of stolen property and drugs.

"Crack houses seem to pop up everywhere, and of course, every
community feels theirs is very important to target, and of course it
is," Henderson says. "But it's a small drug unit."

He says the odds of permanently cleaning up the trade are
nil.

"The bottom line is that we're cleaning up communities. Granted, we
might be moving it to another location but we are solving the problems
of the people that we're trying to (help)," Henderson says. "There
will always be crack houses. All we can keep doing is try to do our
best to eliminate them one at a time."

It's managing, he admits, to keep the lid on the garbage
can.

"We tell people there are options out there," he says.

BEAR's role is to find out where some of the currency of the crack
trade -- stolen property -- has been going. In the Mericourt raid,
stolen loot hasn't flowed through the basement apartment. It's
strictly a cash business.

Whenever a crack house appears, there's a spike in break-ins and
robberies.

"The reason for that is because the crack addict will do anything
possible to get money to purchase crack to fulfill that need they
have," Henderson says. "When they're going full tilt, it's an
addiction that's a very strong addiction, it's an expensive addiction."

It's also a dehumanizing addiction.

He recalls a man arrested early in the project who claimed a
$2,000-a-day addiction funded by break-ins. Henderson also recalls a
heterosexual man who traded oral sex with men for crack money.

"We've seen people steal from their families," he says. "Several years
ago, a young man physically assaulted his 73-year-old grandmother and
stole her purse. So, it's sad, it tears families apart and, as I said,
it's the devil's drug this crack cocaine.

"Some are victims of society, some are victims of circumstance and
some are victims of themselves," he says. "I don't know of too many
people who call themselves a former crack addict."

June McIntosh, whose daughter was arrested for crack possession when
police raided her Britannia Ave. roominghouse, says she's a former
crack addict.

Henderson and crime analyst Sgt. Craig Leishman say otherwise, and
that her story is filed in the LLPOF file. That's the Liar, Liar,
Pants On Fire file.

Leishman says the neighbourhood wanted a crack house shut
down.

He points to one neighbour who disguised a video camera as a window
ornament and provided police with evidence.

"It was hell," McIntosh, 48, says of living in the crack house. She's
done time for dealing and using, she said. She says she wasn't angry,
but heartbroken, by her daughter's involvement.

"You can only tell them, not make them," McIntosh says. "My mom told
me, but ...

"See, this is what happens, no teeth and everything," she
says.

"Well, s--t happens. I love my kids. They're great. I'm trying to get
straight and narrow. I'm sort of on the right track. I've got my own
place. I'm getting my teeth. I'm working at getting a job. I have to
get the teeth for that, because you can't smile at people.

"It's history now. I still hang around with people who still use. But
hey, they're my friends. They can puff all night long. I like my
whisky," she says. "I never let it control me and I only did it just
to support my kids."

She says she has six kids and seven grandchildren.

But Henderson steps in and tells McIntosh that there's an outstanding
arrest warrant charging her with possessing crack for the purpose of
trafficking. She tries to close the door on Henderson and Leishman.

There's a brief struggle: "Close the door quick," she yells to someone
in her home.

"It should have been nice and easy, June," Henderson
says.

"I need my shoes," she says.

Anne, who didn't want her full name used, moved into her bungalow a
few doors from the crack house last October. She says she felt as if
she were a hostage in her own community until police took down the
crack house.

"You shouldn't have to feel you need to look all around before you go
to your house," she says. "When I moved here, it was not what I
expected to happen or what I wanted.

"It's just seeing the people coming and going," she says. "You look at
them and you don't want to get out of your car when these people are
walking around. That's happened at night, I'll sit in my car for a
little while and wait until they get in their car before I get out."

Since the raid, no user has taken her parking spot and there's less
traffic.

"I was happy they did do it, let these people know you don't do this
in a neighbourhood," Anne says of the raid. "When they did it, it
tells them they don't have the right to do this. It makes me a little
more comfortable."