CRACK: Destroying neighborhoods,destroying lives/COVER STORY
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RICH, POOR, YOUNG, OLD: IT HURTS US ALL
SUN APR 24 1988 ED: FINAL
SECTION: NEIGHBORS MB PAGE: 15 LENGTH: 44.77" LONG
ILLUST:
SOURCE: DAN FROOMKIN Herald Staff Writer
DATELINE:
MEMO: CRACK: Destroying neighborhoods,destroying lives/COVER STORY
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RICH, POOR, YOUNG, OLD: IT HURTS US ALL
Crack cocaine dealers have transformed more than 101 street corners in Dade County into open-air
markets for drugs.
From Hialeah to Homestead, South Beach to Sweetwater, the crack sales bring dealers and addicts and
crime and fear into Dade County neighborhoods.
Gunfire becomes common in some areas. North Miami Beach resident Ulys Ware has a bullet hole in
his front door to remind him. South Miami resident Rossie Bentley saw her neighbor die in a crossfire.
In Wynwood, friendly chatter between neighbors has been replaced by updates on who is smoking
crack, stealing, going to jail. In Miami Beach, retirees live like prisoners in their apartments.
Residents put iron bars on their windows and doors and vicious dogs in their front rooms. Rosa Lee
Rogers of Coral Gables put up a six-foot, barbed wire fence to protect her home. Drugs are dealt openly in
the shadow of Joe Robbie Stadium.
Children are caught in the middle. One crack-ridden stretch in Northwest Dade is bounded by Liberty
City Elementary on the north and Charles Drew Elementary on the south.
Dealers routinely use teen-agers as their runners and lookouts.
Police departments in Dade County say they have attacked the crack problem with their entire arsenal:
undercover officers, confidential informants, SWAT raids, reverse stings. They are losing the battle.
The laws of economics are on the side of the dealers. Profits are high, supply is plentiful and demand
is intense, driven by the addiction of the users.
The risks are slight. Most street dealers carry small amounts of crack if any. They stash supplies in
trees, dumpsters, crack houses. They swallow their stash when police arrive.
Jail time for possession of small amounts of crack is generally insignificant. Overcrowding in the
court system, jails and the state prisons means that even traffickers and major felons are serving only
about 20 percent of their sentences, said Dade State Attorney Janet Reno.
To police, success against open crack sales often means pushing the dealers to another street --
sometimes only for a week or two.
The police departments know where crack is sold -- The Herald's list of crack sale areas comes
primarily from them. But officers can't simply drive up and arrest people. They need evidence collected
from buys by undercover officers or informants.
Getting evidence is getting tougher. Metro-Dade's South Narcotics Division has few undercover
officers left that the dealers don't know. "It gets a little difficult to make a buy," said Sgt. Gary Wilcox.
Wilcox said he relies more on informants, but they can be unreliable.
Reno said there may be a way to solve the crack problem in Dade, but only at great cost and with an
approach including education, extensive drug treatment programs and more prison space.
Otherwise, "I suspect that it would get worse," Reno said.
"If you can't punish and you can't treat, I don't think it's going to prevent people from using the stuff
and abusing the stuff and hurting other people because of it.
"I think the neighborhoods are fed up and I think the neighborhoods would support a comprehensive
program. And I think they'd be willing to pay the price as long as they knew the money was being used
effectively: to punish the dealers and straighten out the youth before they get involved in this horrible
world."
For teen-agers, crack is easier to buy than beer. Dealers don't ask for ID. Many pay a terrible price.
In February, two Miami Beach High students stole their mother's wedding rings to buy more crack.
One was 16; the other 15. They both had run out of things to steal that their parents might not notice.
Babies are victims, too. About once each day -- about 300 times each year -- a pregnant addict walks
into Jackson Memorial Hospital, said Dr. Salih Yasin, an assistant professor of obstetrics and gynecology.
More than half the babies born of these mothers are born with severe medical problems. About 25
percent of the mothers have sexually transmitted diseases, which can be passed on. Many babies are born
addicted to crack, suffer from behavioral problems and must be detoxified. About 35 percent of the
mothers give birth prematurely -- many to sick and underweight babies.
Crack sales flourish in Dade's poorer neighborhoods. Low rents and abandoned buildings attract
dealers and users. And the young people in the depressed neighborhoods are easy targets for dealers -- as
potential employees and customers.
"Up here you don't have any malls," said a crack dealer who wouldn't give his name, working the Base
Station, a crack corner on Northwest 18th Avenue in Northwest Dade.
Metro-Dade police officer Joseph Silvani said the money dealers make is tempting. "How can you sit
there and tell kids they're doing something wrong when they're making $600 and $700 a week?"
Crack sales follow different patterns. How much dealers profit varies. Crack is the smokeable product
of cooking one part powdered cocaine with two parts baking soda. It can be made on a stove. It can be
smoked with a half-smashed soda can and a pack of matches.
Profits grow in each stage of the distribution process, said Miami Beach Police Sgt. Tommy Hunker.
A kilogram of cocaine can cost $12,500. By the time it is made into crack and sold in tiny rocks on the
street, that kilogram produces roughly 34,000 rocks worth about $340,000.
Sometimes the crack dealers use runners, paying them $3 for each rock they sell or giving them a free
rock for every third customer. Hunker said the runners sometimes take chips off the rocks they are selling.
"I sell crack because I want to be rich," said a 19-year- old Homestead dealer who calls himself Big
Mo D. "I want more clothes, more gold and fancy shoes."
Some crack corners are supplied by nearby crack houses. But some areas have supplies brought in
from farther away. Hunker said some crack in South Beach is cooked locally; some brought from Miami.
Metro-Dade's Wilcox said Perrine crack corners are supplied by deliverymen from Miami; some others by
men from Opa- locka.
Though the crack markets are in poor areas and the dealers are mostly young, crack use cuts across all
boundaries.
In a predominantly black neighborhood in Coral Gables east of South Dixie Highway, customers are
mostly middle- and upper- class Anglos and Latins driving fancy cars, police said.
A reverse sting in Lake Lucerne last year netted more than 50 arrests in 12 hours, including laborers,
professionals and a Coast Guard employee, Wilcox said.
Some crack corners are busier and more destructive than others. The most destructive overrun entire
neighborhoods.
In North Miami Beach, crack dealers shot out a street light to darken the corner at Northeast 153rd
Terrace and 15th Court, where George Bell's family grocery store stands.
"Every home out here is touched by drugs, one way or another," Bell said. "Either they're on it or
trying to sell it or they're scared by what's going on."
Marshall Williamson Park, at 6700 SW 61st Ct. in South Miami, used to be a nice place for a walk.
No more.
"Drug dealers are on the park benches," said South Miami police detective David Lanier. "Ninety-nine
percent of the people going into that area want to buy drugs. The other 1 percent is lost."
Bennett Lifter, who owns more than 50 percent of Lake Lucerne, said crack sales are "like an
invasion." He fought back by putting a fence around an apartment complex blamed for some of the drug
problem there, but the dealers tore the fence down and shot out lights. Now Lifter is putting up a
guardhouse and hiring security patrols.
The highly addictive nature of crack, combined with its easy access, makes it extremely hard to stop
using even after only one hit, said Maude Holt Madry, director of the Dade County Division of
Rehabilitative Services intake and detoxification center.
About 300 crack addicts each month come to the center, 2500 NW 22nd Ave. They include every
ethnic and economic group, Madry said. Rich people sometimes arrive after they've lost their jobs and
their medical insurance has run out. Family members bring in husbands, wives and children.
There is not enough room in treatment centers for the majority of addicts who seek help, Madry said.
But leaving addicts in the neighborhoods where crack is abundant condemns them to continued addiction.
Steve Pierre, nursing supervisor at the detoxification center, has seen hundreds of addicts come and
go. "I haven't seen any that could kick the habit in the same environment," he said.
State Attorney Reno is lobbying state legislators to approve a 12-point plan to reduce Dade's drug
problem. She wants more room in state prisons and the county jail. She wants evaluation and drug
treatment programs in prisons, jails, probation offices and in the community for young people before they
go to jail.
She wants more judges, education and prevention programs in public schools, education programs for
mothers who are pregnant and addicted and day-care and preschool programs to keep small children off
the streets.
Police departments are working hard to stop drug sales on streets, said Dade Chief Circuit Judge
Gerald Wetherington. "They're arresting tremendous numbers of people right now," he said.
But the drug problem is complex, Wetherington said. "That kind of cultural problem is not going to be
addressed simply by traditional law enforcement techniques."
Miami Police Chief Clarence Dickson agreed that limiting the drug trade overall is beyond the ability
of any police department, but he said he thinks his department's reliance on reverse sting operations is
putting a dent in street sales in Miami.
Dickson said Miami officers have arrested 5,000 people in two years in reverse stings. After busting
street pushers, officers take their places. Users buy from them and get arrested.
The buyers don't get long jail terms. But, Dickson said, they are so shocked at being arrested and so
grateful at being released that many decided to kick the habit.
"That is the dose that they need to change their habit of using crack cocaine."
Dickson said the stings are working and street sales have declined in the past two years, he said. "You
can take back the streets," he said.
Other departments say reverse stings only scare away customers to other areas. Treatment experts
doubt that anything less radical than long-term care can stop crack addiction.
Metro-Dade police detective Jose Diaz is investigating the April 7 murder of Barry Jackson -- shot
over a $20 debt at a corner known for crack sales.
Police, Diaz said, are simply an extension of the community. Drugs, he said, are not just a law
enforcement problem, they are a community problem.
"We cannot enforce what the people don't want to enforce," Diaz said. ADDED TERMS: drug sale
mi md
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