OH, NO! NOT AGAIN

THE ITEM made an appearance in yesterday's newspapers across the nation and
on the other side of the Atlantic. From the Los Angeles Times and the
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette to the Sentinel papers in Florida to the Daily Post
in Liverpool, England, and the Irish News, the story was essentially the
same: "Former Washington D.C. mayor . . . has denied having illegal drugs
after the U.S. Park Police said it found traces of marijuana and cocaine in
his car." The account, based on a Sunday Washington Post story, said the
Park Police reported finding apparent traces of marijuana and cocaine in
former mayor Marion Barry's Jaguar while he was parked last Thursday night
at Buzzard Point, a remote section of Southwest Washington. Mr. Barry has
denied being in possession of any illegal drugs.

But the incident, for anyone who has been in the Washington area since the
1980s, has an ugly and depressing familiarity.

Rumors of drug use. Indignant denials, drug-free declarations. More rumors
and suspicions; finally a videotaped drug arrest seen around the world.

That sequence is as much a part of the Barry legacy as the reality of his
four terms as mayor.

But so is the humiliation of a city forced to endure the downfall of its
self-indulgent mayor and the financial and political repercussions that
followed his disastrous last term in office.

Most had hoped that by now those Barry years were behind them -- a thing of
the past. But with the recent news of his decision to run again for the
council comes now a police report calling to mind the worst of Mr. Barry's
days in public life. We join with most residents in hoping that the city is
not about to go through the same thing again.

The Park Police's March 21 "Criminal Incident Record," made available
yesterday, was stark in its presentation: "at approximately 2138 hrs [9:38
p.m.], [Marion] Barry, age 66, green coat, green trousers, brown shoes, was
questioned in the 100 block of S Street SW in reference to narcotics activity.

BARRY was released from the scene without charges. SUSPECTED DRUG SEIZED:
CRACK COCAINE, MARIJUANA. QUANTITY: TRACE. All units cleared at approx 2200
hrs [10 p.m.]."

Park Police spokesman Sgt. Scott Fear told this page that a citizen
suspicious of a Jaguar parked in a no-parking zone flagged down a
patrolling Park Police officer.

The officer said the occupant, who turned out to be Mr. Barry, was
"ingesting something"; the officer also said he noticed a "powdery
substance" under Mr. Barry's nose. A police dog trained to detect drugs was
called to the scene.

The dog reacted as if it had detected illicit drugs, and a subsequent field
test on the interior of Mr. Barry's car indicated positive "traces" of
marijuana and cocaine, but in quantities too small to make an arrest.
That's why, police said, Mr. Barry was allowed to leave.

Marion Barry, with no police case against him, is free to decide his next
move. His account given to The Post on Sunday -- that he was meeting in the
dark of night in a desolate part of town to counsel a female political
friend -- is perfectly consistent with his past explanations of
inexplicable behavior but, after all these years, rather tiresome.

It is within Mr. Barry's power to spare the city -- and himself -- a return
to a sad era best left in the past.