Pubdate: Sun, 24 Jul 2005 Source: Sun-Sentinel (Fort Lauderdale, FL) Copyright: 2005 Sun-Sentinel Company Contact: http://www.sun-sentinel.com/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/159 Author: Matthew Hay Brown, Orlando Sentinel FEUDS AMONG DRUG GANGS TURN DEADLIER EVERY YEAR LAS PIEDRAS, Puerto Rico -- The men pulled up at about 8:30 that night, stopped outside Building A-6 of the La Ribera public housing project and opened fire. Nine AK-47 rounds ripped into 5-year-old Paola Nicole Ortega Santiago. She died instantly -- another innocent bystander in a feud between rival drug gangs. The May bloodbath, in which five others were wounded, was another battle in a decades-long drug war that has pushed the homicide rate in this self-governing Caribbean U.S. commonwealth of 3.9 million to more than three times the national average. Through Saturday, 439 people had been killed in Puerto Rico since the start of the year. That's 16 behind the pace set last year, when authorities counted an eight-year high of 793 murders. "The crime rate is the No. 1 problem for Puerto Ricans," said Gov. Anibal Acevedo Vila, who took office in January. "It's been the No. 1 concern for the last 30 years." It is the misfortune of this Spanish-speaking land to lie both geographically and culturally between the cocaine- and heroin-producing countries of South America and the vast and lucrative market for illegal narcotics in the United States. Of the hundreds of tons of drugs that reach this Connecticut-size island each year, authorities say, up to 20 percent stays here. "We are a natural way station, a stopping point for smugglers," said Roberto Medina, until recently the special agent in charge of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement for Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands. "Once they are here, it's much easier to transit to the U.S. mainland." The struggle for control of the local narcotics market fuels the bloody turf battles that account for more than 60 percent of the killings here, including the May attack at the La Ribera housing project. Police say the gunmen had been targeting Hector Nieves Martinez, 18, a drug dealer at the project. When Nieves Martinez saw them coming, police say, he ran to an apartment full of children, thinking his assailants would not fire. He was wrong. Nieves Martinez was wounded in the attack, as was Paola's mother, Denise Santiago Vargas, 29; a half-brother, 3-year-old Alexis Gonzalez Santiago; Danny Soto Agosto, 16; and year-old Isaias Morales Fernandez. "It's an emergency," San Juan physician Jose Vargas Vidot, founder of one of Puerto Rico's most prominent social-services agencies, said of the ongoing violence. "It is carrying away a generation of our people." Violence has touched all levels of society here. In December 2004, a nephew and two grandnieces of former Gov. Carlos Romero Barcelo were shot to death while their car idled at a traffic light outside the San Patricio shopping mall in suburban Guaynabo. The previous December, two men gunned down former Major League Baseball all-star Ivan Calderon at a bar in the north-coast town of Loiza. That impoverished community has suffered so much violence some parents have taken out life insurance policies on their teenaged sons. Government officials are confronting the drug trade on three main fronts: public-education programs that focus largely on the young; treatment for those who are addicted; and prosecution of traffickers and dealers. The last of the three gets the most attention -- and the most money. Since Sept. 11, 2001, law-enforcement officials say, island and federal agencies have enjoyed budget increases, improved coordination and taken advantage of new investigative powers. The results, they say, have been positive. In the unending task of stanching the flow of drugs, federal agents, working with foreign governments, have dismantled several South American trafficking organizations. The U.S. Coast Guard seized a record haul of illegal narcotics last year, almost doubling the amount of cocaine and marijuana confiscated in the Caribbean. "All this is economics-driven," said Jerome Harris, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration's special agent in charge of the Caribbean. "The bottom line is, if we can't give people a job, how are you going to effect some change?" The roots of the problem run deep. Annual per-capita income is $16,543 - - - less than half that of the United States. More than 40 percent of public-school students drop out before graduating from high school. Unemployment has risen to 11.2 percent. Given such conditions, gangs have little difficulty recruiting members. "There is an absence of correct models for the youth," Vargas Vidot said. "It's a climate of consumerism, individualism, an addiction to consumption, a syndrome of instant gratification." The violence has helped power the continuing exodus of Puerto Ricans to the mainland -- a brain drain with serious implications for the island's development. The impact of violence on tourism in Puerto Rico is unclear. Nelly Cruz, a spokeswoman for the Puerto Rico Tourism Co., says no tourist has been a victim of violent crime since she joined the government agency at the beginning of 2003, and she knows of no earlier incident. But the loss of productivity to addiction, criminal activity and violence carry other costs. "The other impact is the possibility of attracting investment," said Salvador Santiago Negron, chairman of a government-appointed commission on violence and president of Carlos Albizu University in San Juan. "If we are a corporation, will we invest here, where we have close to 20 homicides per 100,000 people, or will we invest in Costa Rica where there are only two homicides per 100,000?" Nestor Mu=F1iz's daughter, Nicole, a college-bound honors student at the Academia San Jose in San Juan, once wrote about helping to end the violence. "I want to make a difference in this life, a positive difference," she wrote in one high school assignment. Disdain For Authority Nicole was driving past the Villa Esperanza public-housing project in San Juan one night in August 2003 when she was struck by a stray bullet thought to have been fired by a sniper defending drug turf. Her car slammed into a bridge abutment, killing her. She was 16. Now Nicole smiles down from anti-violence billboards in the capital. Her father has taken up her campaign -- serving on Santiago's commission, leading marches of survivors, speaking at anti-violence conferences and planning a Casa Nicole after-school program for at-risk young people. "We need a return to family," Mu=F1iz said. "There is a lack of respect for authority. Fifteen years ago, parents were more conscious of their responsibility to raise their children. Many people now are afraid of their children." Mu=F1iz and others are advocating for new approaches to the drug-fueled violence here -- ideas that range from earlier closing hours for bars and curfews for youth to improvements in public education. "We have a minimum unemployment of 10 percent," Santiago said. "In some communities it's 40 percent. So there is a factor: The underground economy pays off. Then you look at the profile of the typical person arrested. He's a male, under 25, with only a ninth-grade education, unemployed, no bona-fide marketable skills. That's the profile of a failed school system." Troubled public education and sluggish economic growth are decades-old problems here. Seeking to address them, Acevedo, the Puerto Rico governor, campaigned last year on what he called the "Triangle of Success" -- better schools, more jobs and safer streets. But perhaps his boldest move so far has been crossing political lines to appoint Pedro Toledo as superintendent of the Puerto Rico Police Department. The former FBI supervisor returns to the position he held from 1993 to 2001 under then-Gov. Pedro Rossello, Acevedo's main opponent in last year's bitterly fought election campaign. High-Tech Tactics His appointment recalls the tough-on-crime approach of the 1990s, when Rossello called in the Puerto Rico National Guard to occupy high-crime areas. Since his return, Toledo has supported proposals to close bars earlier, establish a curfew for youth and install security cameras in public places. He wants to bring criminal databases and DNA analysis fully online. "We have to do preventive work, investigative work to identify not only the drug dealers, but the people that finance them -- the higher levels," Toledo said. "Of course, those people are very well protected, isolated, and that's why we need the federal government to be able to do wiretaps and go into the bank accounts." Chronic violence makes Puerto Rico more dangerous for law-enforcement officers than any U.S. state. Forty were killed here from 1994 to 2003 - - - more than in Florida and New York combined, and the highest number per capita in the United States, according to the FBI. Vast Police Corruption Protecting his officers is just one challenge confronting Toledo, who takes over a department tainted by scandal. Commanders have fired hundreds of officers in recent years, including dozens charged with aiding drug smugglers. More than 60 officers were charged in a pair of operations in 2001 and 2002, accused of protecting drug shipments, selling guns and drugs, returning seized cocaine and heroin to dealers and helping to hide dealers during sting operations. Getting less attention are efforts to reduce the demand for drugs. The central government estimates 75,000 islanders are addicted to heroin, cocaine or other illegal drugs. The only treatment it offers is methadone for heroin addicts, through a network of clinics and mobile units currently running at capacity with 9,155 patients. Municipal and private programs do not make up the difference. While the drug trade fuels gang violence, drug dependency brings its own problems. "What strikes us and affects us is the consequences of addiction, in terms of crime, and health and disturbed families because of all the legal implications, the criminality," said Pedro Morales, assistant administrator of the governmental Administration of Mental Health and Addiction Services. Nestor Mu=F1iz, the father of Nicole, says Puerto Ricans have grown scared. "We live behind locked doors," he said. "We have to be talking about a curfew to protect our kids. We are afraid even to let them go to the movies." Mu=F1iz has two older daughters. One lives in Pensacola with his first grandchild. She has spoken of returning to the island. He says he has tried to discourage her. "With a pain in my heart, I have to tell her that Puerto Rico is not a good place to raise kids," he said. "Many people are leaving." For himself, he says, he plans to stay and fight. He expects a long struggle. "People believe it's overnight," Mu=F1iz said. "People have to know it's going to be a long struggle. I'm not going to see an end to it. I hope to see some changes for my daughters and my grandchildren. I want to leave them a culture of peace in Puerto Rico." - --- MAP posted-by: Larry Seguin