Pubdate: Sat, 29 May 2004
Source: Herald-Sun, The (Durham, NC)
Copyright: 2004 The Herald-Sun
Contact:  http://www.herald-sun.com
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/1428
Author: Jim Wise

JAIL IS JUST BUSINESS INCUBATOR FOR DURHAM'S DRUG TRADE

DURHAM -- For years, we've complained about the Durham County Jail being 
the most dominant feature of our town as seen from the incoming Freeway. We 
were all wrong.

Rather than a humiliating commentary on the values and priorities of the 
community it serves, the jail should be regarded as a tribute to the 
free-enterprising spirit. According to Durham Sheriff Worth Hill, our 
Stalinesque pokey is a veritable business incubator.

And it's serving the richest trade in town: drugs.

Durham's gangs are practically running the jail, to judge from what the 
sheriff told the County Commissioners the other day, and using the county's 
hospitality as their own recruiting depot and boot camp. Gangs, of course, 
when they aren't shooting up DATA buses, manage Durham's booming narcotics 
trade.

According to Paul Martin, who is in a position to know, drugs are a 
$10-million-a-day habit. That's $3.65 billion a year rippling through the 
local economy: about $1 billion more than Duke University's total impact on 
Durham County.

Martin now works for the Sheriff's Office, but you may remember him as the 
city police captain who, nine years ago, led a Crime Area Target Team that 
conducted more than 500 drug busts and made more than 3,500 arrests before 
running afoul of local politics. Toward the end of 1995, Martin's CATT 
squad was disbanded in a curious Police Department reorganization. By the 
sheerest of coincidences, in 1996, the city's murder rate set a record of 42.

This week, we see Durham's Finest are reorganizing again, bringing back a 
citywide CATT to go with two specialty gang units. Hmm.

Well, best wishes to them, for in a recent conversation, Martin said, 
"Durham is in a crisis and it's going to break loose." He foresees a turf 
war like Durham has never seen. Think Chicago in the '20s.

Narcotics, after all, is a business, and it's been an open secret for 40 
years that Durham is a regional hub. Just as the Research Triangle draws 
high-tech and biomedical enterprises, so the crack, smack and meth exchange 
attracts bullish entrepreneurs who, like all businessmen, must compete in 
their chosen market. The competition is stiff. It also produces stiffs.

"In Durham," Martin said, "violent crime is just a reaction of a number of 
individuals to a large underground economy they are trying to control."

Such business practices, however, have unfortunate consequences for 
everybody else's quality of life and property values in a city with a bad 
case of denial. Crime in Durham is no mere "image problem," and 
self-congratulation over window dressings like the American Tobacco Project 
doesn't do a thing to change the facts of life in Cripsville -- a 
quarter-mile down Blackwell Street.

"You have a downtown area," Martin said, "and to north, south, east and 
west, you have prime drug-dealing territory."

Surprise? Dope has boomed since the '60s, and gangs first made their marks 
here 20 years ago. What to do about it? Wring hands, hold a vigil, convene 
a conference, hire a consultant? Midnight basketball, maybe.

 From Martin's point of view, Durham's crime/drug/gang situation is the 
product of racial politics, "to some extent incompetence and an element of 
corruption" and a philosophy he calls "vulgar Marxism" that rationalizes 
crime away as an aspect of class warfare.

"These political beliefs and these attitudes don't reflect what people see 
in the real world," he said.

In the real world, people see the biggest thing in Durham is a jail. Can't 
miss it.

Jim Wise's Sense of Place appears each Saturday. 
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MAP posted-by: Jo-D