Pubdate: Sun, 16 Dec 2007
Source: Muskegon Chronicle, The (MI)
Copyright: 2007 The Muskegon Chronicle
Contact: http://www.mlive.com/mailforms/muchronicle/letters/index.ssf
Website: http://www.mlive.com/chronicle
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/1605
Author: John S. Hausman
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/coke.htm (Cocaine)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/heroin.htm (Heroin)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/find?136 (Methadone)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/rehab.htm (Treatment)

MUSKEGON'S PROBLEM

It destroys lives.

It sparks violence.

And, in the 20 years it's been in Muskegon County, crack cocaine has 
been a big, ongoing burden on the local criminal-justice system.

Think of crack-based crime as a chronic illness: not the acute crisis 
it once was -- but a draining, debilitating disease that drags on and 
on, with no remission.

Unlike other drug surges of the past, the most potent form of cocaine 
has never faded from favor. Since it hit Muskegon County like a crack 
of thunder in 1988, the cheap, enormously addictive drug has remained 
the No. 1 drug problem for law-enforcement officials and many users 
and dealers.

"Crack is still the drug of choice in the Muskegon drug trade," 
Muskegon County Prosecutor Tony Tague said.

"The most common thing we deal with is crack cocaine," said Michigan 
State Police Detective Sgt. Andrew Fias. Fias is a team leader for 
the West Michigan Enforcement Team, a multi-agency regional drug-fighting unit.

Muskegon County statistics show that more than half of all felony 
drug arrests are for the category that includes cocaine, heroin, 
opium and methadone. Police and prosecutors say cocaine constitutes 
the vast majority of that category, in the range of 80 percent to 90 
percent. And they say crack makes up the bulk of the cocaine arrests, 
although Michigan law doesn't distinguish between crack and powder coke.

Overall, Tague said, drug arrests make up about 20 percent of the 
felony cases his office prosecutes.

The crime story doesn't end there.

Not only is selling or possessing crack a crime, but the drug spurs 
other crimes -- from bad checks to break-ins to bank heists -- by 
addicts seeking money to pay for it. Also in the mix are robberies of 
buyers and dealers, and shootings by rival dealers.

In recent months, Muskegon County has had its share of high-profile 
crack-related crimes:

* Of the two homicides this year charged as murder cases, one was 
crack-based: the Aug. 5 death of reputed dealer Odell Brown in a 
Muskegon Heights alley, crushed against a pole by a van after three 
customers from the White Lake area allegedly tried to rob him.

* One armed robbery of a bank stemmed from a crack addiction: A 
47-year-old Muskegon Township woman was sentenced to prison for 111/2 
to 20 years last week after pleading guilty to the crime. On Sept. 
28, she took a taxi cab to a suburban Huntington Bank branch and 
stole more than $2,350. Pamela Louise Taylor told police she needed 
the money to buy crack. It was her third felony to get money to 
support her drug habit.

"It kind of goes to show the destruction that crack has," said 
Muskegon Township Police Detective Sgt. Ken Sanford, who investigated 
the case and interviewed Taylor. "She seems to be a normal 
middle-aged lady when you talk to her."

At her sentencing last week, Fourteenth Circuit Judge William C. 
Marietti stated: "If anyone has any doubts about the impact of crack 
cocaine on this community, they need to be here to see you sentenced on this."

* Several nonfatal shootings were spurred by dealers' turf battles, 
law enforcement officials believe. They suspect a resurgence of 
Detroit-based drug activity.

* A string of highly publicized "serial burglaries" of small 
businesses earlier this year have been attributed to the crack 
addiction of the two young suspects who eventually were arrested, 
police said. One, 20-year-old Ryan Michael Armstrong, pleaded guilty 
in three cases and faces sentencing Monday. The other, 23-year-old 
David Nicholas Snow, has denied involvement in the break-ins and 
still faces trial. Both defendants have admitted being crack addicts.

The list goes on, with endless burglaries, shopliftings, bad checks, 
credit-card frauds, armed or strong-arm robberies and shootings 
attributed to crack.

Fourteenth Circuit Judge Timothy G. Hicks estimates that 80 percent 
of the felony cases he sees "are probably related in some way to drug 
use," and of that, "crack's the biggest chunk of it."

Some police officials think local crack use, dealing and related 
crimes have been trending upward in the last few years, though others disagree.

Drug arrest statistics, which don't count related nondrug crimes, 
aren't conclusive. Numbers supplied by Tague's office show a modest 
increase in the number of felony charges filed in the 
"cocaine-heroin-methadone" category in 2006 compared to the previous 
three years, especially for small quantities of drugs. But this 
year's numbers were back to roughly the pace of 2003-2005. Each year 
of the last five, the number of charges -- in some cases, counting 
multiple charges against the same person -- has hovered slightly 
above or below the 300 mark.

Longer-term arrest trends also show no obvious pattern. A change in 
the reporting definition in 2002 made earlier numbers noncomparable 
with more recent ones. But Muskegon County's overall felony drug 
arrest levels from 1989 through 2001 -- the first 13 full years of 
Muskegon's crack era -- held pretty stable.

But local law-enforcement officials all say another important 
indicator has dropped sharply since the early years of Muskegon 
County's crack invasion: the amount of related violence, including homicides.

"Although the problem continues to be an issue in law enforcement, it 
is not at the same significant level that it was in the late '80s and 
early '90s," Tague said.

Most officials credit the damp-down of violence, and a much less 
out-in-the-open atmosphere of crack dealing to an aggressive effort 
by Tague and local police agencies to fight the first onslaught of 
Detroit-based crack dealing and the resulting turf wars.

The local homicide rate has dropped sharply since the mid-'90s, and 
crack dealing, though still widespread, is much less open than it was 
in that era, officials say. "When crack first came into Muskegon 
County, we had the street-corner marketplace," said Norton Shores 
Police Chief Dan Shaw, a WEMET detective in that period. "It was 
pretty bad. ... Now it's a little more underground."

Fias, the current WEMET team leader, agrees that the crack trade 
isn't wide open anymore. But finding crack to buy still is easy "if 
you know what you're doing," he said.

If you don't, Fias said, "it's probably going to be a robbery, or 
you'll get soap or candle wax. ... If you don't know the 'speak,' 
you're going to get ripped off."

It happened to him about two months ago. Working undercover, he was 
the victim of a strong-arm robbery. A man he was making a buy from 
sucker-punched him in the face -- bruising him -- and tried to grab his money.

State crime statistics show Muskegon's overall rate of narcotics law 
offenses compares well with most Michigan counties of similar size. 
Muskegon County's drug-offense rate in 2005 was near the bottom of 
the eight counties closest in size, according to state police Uniform 
Crime Reports.

Police give much of the credit to continued tough prosecution 
policies and local judges with a higher prison sentencing rate than 
the statewide average.

"We're tough on drug sentences (and charging decisions) from the 
prosecutor's office," said Muskegon Heights Police Chief Clif 
Johnson. "We're real strong about trying to rid or curtail this drug."

Part of Tague's philosophy has been to have drug teams focus not just 
on major dealers but on smaller, street-level operators as well. "I 
think it's extremely important," he said. "Having a drug dealer or a 
drug house on your block has a dramatic impact on the quality of life 
in that neighborhood."

One consequence of tough enforcement and sentencing is lots of beds 
filled in jails and prisons.

Locally, in the Muskegon County Jail, "there's a significant amount 
of bed space being taken up with people being charged with drug 
crimes -- in particular, crack," said Undersheriff Dean Roesler. Many 
more are taken up with people facing charges, or serving year-or-less 
sentences, for other crimes linked to crack.

At the state prison level -- where people convicted of felonies serve 
sentences of more than a year -- the percentage of drug offenders has 
declined over the years, according to Department of Corrections 
spokesman Russ Marlan. In 2006, 15.5 percent of the prison system's 
new inmates were drug offenders, with cocaine offenses the bulk of 
that. That ratio was more than 20 percent in the late '80s and early 
'90s, Marlan said. The number doesn't include people convicted of 
other crimes connected with crack dealing or using.

If state officials had their way, the number might decline more. In 
the interest of cutting state prison costs, Governor Jennifer 
Granholm earlier this year proposed a revamp of state sentencing 
rules to reduce penalties for some offenses, including low-level drug 
crimes. One outcome might be even more pressure on county jails.

So far, the proposal has gone nowhere in the Legislature, and it's 
unpopular among Muskegon County criminal-justice officials. "I find 
it unfortunate that Lansing is totally focused on cost, oftentimes to 
the detriment of public safety," Tague said.

Currently, penalties for crack possession and delivery vary from a 
potential life prison sentence for the biggest dealers with 
aggravating factors -- such as prior criminal record or gun use -- 
down to probation for those caught with small quantities and with an 
otherwise clean record.

Specific sentences depend on the state guidelines for each case. 
Judge Hicks said guidelines for possession or delivery of less than 
50 grams are typically zero to 17 months if there are few aggravating 
factors; that means a sentence to county jail or probation. Delivery 
of 50 to 449 grams usually means a prison term, while delivery of 
larger quantities guarantees multiple years in prison.

One gram is usually the equivalent of three or four "hits," police said.

Though it might not be the crisis it was in the early years, no one 
denies that crack is a prominent, continuing problem for local law 
enforcement and the criminal-justice system. It ties up jail beds, 
court time and police resources.

And crack creates criminals from all layers of society -- geographic, 
social, racial and age. "You look at people who wouldn't ordinarily 
commit crimes," Tague said.

Several law-enforcement officials noted the phenomenon of small-town 
users driving into Muskegon Heights to buy crack -- a trend that 
might have cost Odell Brown his life as the victim of a dark-alley ripoff.

"It's absolutely the worst (drug) by far," Muskegon Township Police 
Detective Sgt. Ken Sanford said of crack. "The people that I've 
talked to that are addicted to it, they know they're addicted. 
There's nothing they can do about it. It's such a physical addiction, 
they can't live without it."

Law-enforcement officials agree the crack problem is ingrained and 
unlikely to go away in the foreseeable future.

But if there's at least a partial answer to the problem, Sanford 
thinks, "it would probably be more drug rehabilitation programs -- 
successful ones, ones that work. There are some, but they're very expensive."

Muskegon Police Chief Tony Kleibecker said the same. "Dealers and 
constant abusers who cause communities problems, they need jail 
time," Kleibecker said. "(But) there are people who need treatment 
instead of jail time. You've got people with addictive personalities, 
and jail's not going to change that." He'd like to see more state 
resources directed toward treatment.

"In thirty years of police work, we've not addressed the situation in 
terms of the treatment perspective," Kleibecker said. "I think we've 
really missed the boat."

But that's not a universal perspective in law enforcement.

Fias, the WEMET detective, is skeptical of the value of treatment for 
crack addicts. He believes a better answer is more state funding for 
"putting enough police on the streets."

And, in the larger view, Fias said, "Society's acceptance of drugs 
has got to change." 
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