TARGETING DRUG DEALERS

Go ahead. Make their day.

Common Council members are ready to go after the bad guys who have been
peddling drugs on the street. Council members have asked law enforcement
officials to prepare a report showing Buffalo's 12 most drug-infested
street corners. Then they want to pursue the dope dealers who foul those
corners.

In fact, they're ready to marshal the efforts of everybody, including
police, parking enforcement officers and building inspectors. If that's not
enough, they're ready to ask the county and state law enforcement agencies
for help. And if that's still not enough, Masten Council Member Antoine
Thompson is ready to go undercover, do a "buy" and videotape it just to
prove there are drugs on street corners.

We believe you, councilman. You don't have to go that far.

The Council's attention to this problem, though, is especially welcome now,
as winter wanes and the promise of warm weather returns vitality - and in
some cases crime - to city streets. Police also have been targeting the
problem of street drug sales for some time. As Police Commissioner Rocco
Diina pointed out, the department has developed a Flex Unit and Gang
Suppression Unit to hit drug dealers and the networks behind them. While
the units may sound like something out of an episode of the television show
"NYPD Blue," local law enforcement insists they have worked well.

But moving the drug dealers off one corner, police officials say, often
means they simply move to another. However, moving the criminals off their
turf does keep them off balance - and makes the streets less friendly to
them, and more friendly to law-abiding residents and visitors.

The Council deserves praise for getting ahead of this issue before the heat
of late spring and summer arrives. Last May's unusual spate of homicides
offered an example of why this effort is so important, and that requires a
multilayered solution that includes a lot of community involvement.