Part 4 Of 6

DRUG WARS

Battlefield Report - Buys, Busts And Bad Guys; There Is Nothing Glamorous
On The Front Lines Of The War On Drugs On The South Shore

In downtown Brockton, construction crews are expanding the public library,
a new courthouse presides over Main Street and skinny kids with their
toughest faces screwed on lounge around outside the YMCA.

The district attorney's office is less than 100 yards away, but low-level
drug dealers have become so comfortable on their corners they've stopped
going through the motions of hiding their business.

The drug problem is like a stubborn root here. It burrows underneath the
city, destabilizing already rickety three-family homes and overrunning
neighborhoods with filth, addicts and crime.

And yet Brockton is lifting itself up by its bootstraps. Many crack houses
are parking lots now. Trouble spots have been dismantled and cast off one
block at a time.

The city is taking big steps, but the road ahead is longer than the one behind.

For three months, undercover State Police officers from the Plymouth County
District Attorney's office have cruised Main Street, buying cocaine,
heroin, marijuana and anything else people shoot, snort or smoke.

They are targeting low-level dealers who "pump," or sell, along Main Street.

Brockton is a drug hub. People from other South Shore towns travel there to
buy drugs, and Brockton dealers bring their merchandise to the suburbs. Law
enforcement successes in Brockton directly influence the suburban
communities on the South Shore.

State Police Sgt. Tony Thomas, on the drug beat since 1987, sits parked in
his undercover car, watching the crack whores glide by, the junkies
scuttling across the street and kids playing "dealer."

This isn't the big time. The people on the corners are addicts, not
entrepreneurs, and they sell drugs or disrobe to support their habits.

"I sometimes wonder how they went wrong," Thomas says as he eyes the scene
through binoculars. "Where's that fork in the road where these people get
taken down? They were something before this."

Thomas has chestnut hair, olive skin and powerful hands. He is 40 and
dresses sharply from his Bill Blass ties to his Allen Edmonds shoes.

"I made a buy from a kid who was 9 years old," Thomas says, wincing. "The
dealer had a 9-year-old deliver the heroin."

Kids are everywhere. They ride by on chrome BMX bikes, dressed like
"gangstas" in MTV videos. Some are so young they look like they'd have a
tough time swinging a baseball bat.

The older dealers are gaunt and they look dirty. There's no heroin chic
here, just the ugly red boil that is addiction.

A team of state troopers and Brockton officers has been buying drugs from
the dealers for three months. They've made more than 30 buys and will be
back in a few weeks to round up the people who sold to them.

"Look, there they are," Thomas says, pointing at two undercover officers as
they approach the dealers.

The agents go undercover carefully and they dress the part. One wears
rolled up sweat pants and a V-neck undershirt. The other opted for the
burnt-out hippie look, more Jimmy Buffet than P. Diddy.

The dealers slouch irreverently outside Sweeney's, a local bar. Police have
busted patrons for everything from brawling to dealing drugs.

It is early afternoon and the junkies congregate like vultures, forcing
those who work downtown to step around them or walk on the opposite side of
the street.

"The problems are magnified in the cities because you have more people,"
Thomas says of the open-air drug market. "The people in small towns go to
urban areas to get drugs."

The dealers know most of their customers, but they'll take new ones with a
few questions. If an undercover agent can complete a buy, it is more likely
the dealer will end up in jail.

"An agent's testimony is a lot stronger than any other," Thomas says. "He
can testify in the first person because he participated in it. There's no
hearsay involved."

Through the looking glass of Thomas' windshield, everybody seems
suspicious. Unremarkable activities take on a menacing quality.

A man pauses in front of the dealers before he crosses the street, and
Thomas notices.

A teenager chats on his cell phone and leans against a chain-link fence.
Again, Thomas takes an interest.

People walk by, ride their bikes or run errands, and Thomas assesses.

He uses his eyes, his ears and his instincts to separate the menace from
the masses.

A run-down woman limps by and lingers near the car. Her eyes seem hollow.
Thomas says she has been exchanging sex for drugs for years. She knows
Thomas is a cop, that he's sitting less than 50 feet away from the dealers,
but she doesn't walk over to tell them right away. Eventually she leaves.

The undercover agents arrive outside the entrance to the bar. They are
wired and Thomas can hear every word they say through a speaker in his back
seat. They lean against the building and pass the time shifting from one
foot to the other, criss-crossing their arms and watching the cars pass by.

They don't have to wait for long.

"What you need?" a dealer mumbles in view of more than 20 pedestrians.

"Dope," the agent tells him. Dope is slang for heroin.

"Are you a cop?" the dealer asks. "You look like a cop."

"I ain't no cop, man," the hippie says, sounding angry. "I'm just doing my.
..."

"You look like a cop. I don't know you," the dealer says and makes like
he's going to walk away.

The line goes quiet. The agents act annoyed.

"People here know me," the agent says. "I'm around."

After a bit more foreplay, the dealer decides the cops are legit.

He doesn't have the heroin on him but asks the agents for $10, saying he'll
be right back with the dope.

He leaves his driver's license with them, "as security," and sets off to
get the drugs.

Thomas says every junkie is a con artist and tries to charge too much, sell
molasses instead of heroin or powder instead of coke.

While the dealer is gone, the agent reads his name and address out loud.
Thomas writes it down.

The dealer returns and escorts the agents to an area with less foot
traffic, but the exchange takes place in plain sight.

The agents get a used KENO ticket with a thick blob of what the dealer
calls heroin on it. It looks like creamy excrement smeared on paper.

A lab test later determined the substance was counterfeit. But the dealer
will be charged with selling a counterfeit substance and, if convicted,
could serve up to a year in jail.

Catching dealers is an imprecise science. Sometimes, they get away without
being identified. Other times, they rip off the police.

The prostitute who lingered near Thomas' car appears in front of Sweeney's
and tells the dealers and the two undercover agents that Thomas is watching
them.

"He's over there," she says, pointing at Thomas, who is parked within
sight. The dealers and the undercover agents stare directly at him.

"Later," one agent says, acting put out by Thomas' presence. The dealers
nod good-bye and go into the bar with the prostitute. The agents cross the
street and head out of sight.

The police are going after the dealers with hopes that removing them will
improve the downtown Brockton experience. There is no need for
confrontation. The police have what they came for, their cover is intact
and they'll return another day to make their arrests.

Thomas pulls out and heads to a prearranged rendezvous point.

"It's a quality of life issue. Merchants are complaining," Thomas says.
"Dealers are selling on downtown streets. They asked us to do something.
... In time, they'll go to jail."

He doesn't expect the dealers to stay away forever.

"I believe they'll move out for a period of time," Thomas says. "Six
months, maybe a year."

In the worst neighborhoods of Brockton, there are good people. They're new
to the area or they've been there most of their lives.

In one of the roughest residential sections of town, an 85-year-old
grandmother lives on the second floor of a two-family home she's owned for
50 years. She asked not to be identified by name.

"It's terrible around here," she says over ginger ale in her kitchen. "It
was wonderful when I moved here."

The woman lives around the block from the house she grew up in. She's less
than a quarter mile from the section of Main Street where the police are
making their undercover buys.

"Idon't rent it out no more," she says of the vacant first-floor apartment
beneath her. "Good people don't move here no more."

She says 11 people live in one neighborhood apartment and it's "drugs galore."

The woman is a spunky "natural" brunette, her house is spotless and she
passes her time listening to a police scanner that sits on her kitchen table.

"I love this neighborhood," she says, gripping her kitchen table. "I don't
want to leave it. I want to die here. I lock the doors, stay inside and I
watch things. Do you see the filth?"

The street outside is dirty. Houses on the block and neighboring streets
are boarded up. Some were once crack houses. Others nearby still are.

"We've got pigs around here," she says. "Litterbugs. They're selling drugs.
The nice neighbors down the street say, 'Does anybody in this neighborhood
sleep at night?' And I say it's quiet now in the middle of the day. They're
sleeping now."

A month has passed since the undercover buy on Main Street and in that time
police have gotten warrants to arrest 22 dealers who sold them drugs.

Today they will round up those they can find. The operation begins at 11 a.m.

The officers gather in the parking lot of the Brockton police station. They
team up in twos and travel in groups.

The first stop is Stillman Street, inside a Brockton Housing Authority
development.

"Nobody knows what they'll find until you go through the door," says State
Police Detective Lt. Bruce Gordon, Thomas' supervisor. "Two years ago, you
hit a door and one out of 10 locations you'd find a weapon. Today you find
a weapon at 6 out of 10."

Three carloads of officers in T-shirts with "Brockton Police Department"
and "State Police" silk-screened on them pull into the Stillman Apartments,
a 121-unit cluster of two-story buildings that look more like brick boxes
than homes.

The officers approach numbers 56 and 62, where suspects Margaret Y. Mack
and Jennifer E. Robinson live.

Their neighbors trickle outside and stand warily by their doors, watching
the police. In minutes, more than 30 people have gathered.

Neither suspect is home. A neighbor says Mack is at Wal-Mart buying a
dehumidifier and Robinson has been away for "a while."

"Let's drive around," Thomas says. "They never venture far."

From the car, Thomas scans broken sidewalks, empty side streets and
overgrown parking lots.

"There's a war out there," he says. "I don't know if we'll win the war, but
every battle we fight, we'll win that. As soon as we arrest someone,
there's another person we need to get. We're in it for the long haul. We'll
continue to do it until we're done. We're law enforcement officers. We know
what our job is. I'm never going to give up."

Voices of other cops crackle over the radio.

"We just got the suspect over at Wal-Mart," one says, announcing they've
arrested Mack.

Thomas smiles, but his satisfaction doesn't last for long.

As he drives down Main Street, a known dealer sees him and puts his hands
up high, his palms flat against a building and spreads them in a "V."

It is an exaggerated "Come and arrest me" dance - and the dealer shakes his
head and wiggles his butt, daring Thomas to arrest him.

The man knows the heat is on and figures, correctly, if Thomas had anything
on him, he'd have arrested him already.

"He's been out there for a while," Thomas says. "But we don't have him this
time."

In this series:

DRUG WARS

Today: Stakeouts, Buys And Busts

It is dirty and dangerous for undercover agents making buys. But that's the
way the war on drugs is waged

Thursday: Our Pill-Popping Nation

Far more people abuse prescription drugs than ever touch cocaine or heroin.
It the silent epidemic

Friday: Is There A Better Way?

To anti-drug warriors, it's simple: do everything we've been doing and
more. But drug-policy reformers say that's doing more harm than good