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Lothar121

Unsavory Visitors, Creeping Back After a 10-Year Hiatus
Alex Mindlin | New York Times | 10/30/2005

The grandmother in the dark apartment darted to the window. "Come here!" she said excitedly. "Look at this one!"

Less than 10 feet outside her building, a man with a shaved head was bending over a scrawny sapling and rummaging in the grass at its base. When he straightened up, he held a small plastic bag in his hands.

"I think today it's marijuana," the woman said. "Marijuana or crack. They keep it at the bottom of the tree. When somebody's coming to buy, they pick it up from there."

How often did this happen? "Every 10 minutes," she replied. Indeed, over the next half-hour, a visitor witnessed two more visits to the tree.

These events unfolded on Audubon Avenue in Washington Heights. Out of fear of reprisal, the apartment's occupant spoke on the condition that she not be identified. But stories like hers are heard with increasing frequency in Upper Manhattan, where residents say that open drug trafficking is returning after a decade of relative invisibility.

"There's more visibility of narcotics sales in the street," said City Councilman Miguel Martinez, whose district covers half of Upper Manhattan. "We've heard a lot, and we've seen it." His constituents have reported finding bags of drugs stashed in mailboxes and sitting atop the tires of parked cars. He has seen drug dealers hanging out at night on the sidewalk in front of his office. "I'm embarrassed," he said, "because I have a public office here, and it's becoming a shelter for drug dealers."

No one is suggesting that Washington Heights is as drug-ridden as it was in the 1980's, when the neighborhood was a center of the city's crack cocaine trade. These days, the drug most often sold in Washington Heights is said to be marijuana, and the violence associated with the trade is far less than it was. There have been 15 reported homicides in Inwood and Washington Heights this year; in 1986, the precinct that covered Washington Heights and part of Inwood reported 72 killings.

Still, residents worry that the neighborhood could slide back. They point to a spate of recent violence, including at least three killings in Upper Manhattan since September. Two weeks ago, police arrested 21 people in Inwood, charging them with involvement in drug rings selling cocaine and marijuana; many people see the arrests as evidence that the drug trade is back in the open.

At a community meeting last week, organized by State Senator Eric T. Schneiderman, residents expressed bafflement that the police could not stop crimes taking place in plain sight. When Mr. Schneiderman restated one woman's question for clarity by saying, "If kids in the neighborhood know who's selling drugs, how come it's so hard for the Police Department?" he was greeted with applause.

Law-enforcement officials cite two reasons the recent rise in crime is hard to fight. One is that marijuana offenses are hard to prosecute because most people arrested for selling marijuana are charged with misdemeanors and don't face jail time. In addition, the 34rd and 33th Police Precincts, which cover Inwood and most of Washington Heights, have together lost about 60 officers, or 16 percent of their force, since 2002, according to Martin Collins, district manager of Community Board 12. (A Police Department spokesman would not confirm these numbers, and a request to speak with the 33rd Precinct's commanding officer was not granted.) The cuts parallel, but exceed, wider reductions in the city's police force.

In her rocking chair, the woman on Audubon Avenue kept her eye fixed on the window. "The police, they try," she said. "Sometimes they take them into court. But the next day, you see them on the street."

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Justin22

I'm confused by this article. The woman says that "every ten minutes" a random, apparently shady character rummages around at the base of a tree and picks up drugs. Let's take this a bit further and see how this situation may be implausable:

1. Unless the dealer lives in this tree, there is no way he or she could regulate the drugs taken by each individual. So what she's trying to say is that there is a veritable pinata of drugs in the tree and each person takes his/her given quantity and type of drug? what?

2. While we're on the topic of the tree, who hides drugs in trees? I live in Santa Cruz, CA, and there is a location downtown where cocaine-based products are bought and sold. These people don't have the inclination or, I would suspect, the wherewithal to have a semi-complex business arrangement where the customer buys the drugs and then is lead to a drug tree where their given substance is dispensed. In fact, these dealers perform their transactions openly.

3. The woman remarks that "today" its "marijuana or crack". How the f*ck did she get this information? or maybe she pulled it out of thin air.... like perhaps the rest of her story?

teufelfisch

I fail to see the connection between the number of homicides and the number of drug arrests. Is the author implying that all of these homicides are drug-related?

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ChronicSmoke7

the point is the expensive failure of the drug war

reggie_the_dog

its good to know where to score while in NYC, i thank the authors of this article for letting me know where to go.