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Small-town setting provides an attractive target for Detroit's drug dealers
newsroom@observer-reporter.com
In a decaying city like Detroit, where the heroin and crack market is tight, veteran dealers must wage a drug war to eliminate their competition.
So to stay in business, many look elsewhere - to smaller cities like Washington - where there are hungry drug users and fewer police.
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And that is a concern for small- to- mid-sized cities across Pennsylvania, said Nils Frederiksen, deputy press secretary for the state's attorney general, Tom Corbett.
Three Detroit men were arrested June 28 on charges of dealing crack, heroin and Ecstasy in Erie, the Erie Times-News reported. Two of the men were being held on $150,000 bond because the district judge considered them to be a flight risk.
In another case, Erie County Judge William Cunningham sentenced a Detroit man Monday to 23 to 47 years in prison to discourage Motor City drug dealers from operating in the city.
Jeremy R. Mulligan, 24, of Detroit, paralyzed his girlfriend by shooting her in the neck when he thought she was going to steal his money and drugs, The Associated Press reported.
These dealers also have targeted such towns as Oil City, New Castle and New Kensington with a well-crafted business plan to control the market.
They have even followed the Greyhound bus line as far south as Charleston, W.Va., a city where police have arrested about 100 dealers hailing from Detroit over the last five years.
Young Boys Inc.
made history
These drug networks are modeled after tactics innovated by Young Boys Inc., the nation's first black gang to employ schoolchildren to peddle heroin on street corners.
Teenagers in Detroit used to be able to drop out of school and enter the work force when the city's auto industry was booming, Taylor said.
But the city's population has dropped from 2 million residents in the 1950s to 900,000 people today as industry has stumbled.
Those conditions made it ripe for Young Boys to emerge as the most successful illegitimate business in the Motor City.
The violent drug gang was founded in the 1970s by a small group of playground friends and became so powerful that it soon controlled the heroin traffic in Detroit. Its leaders enticed kids by giving them expensive clothes, jewelry and bicycles, while they hid behind a well-guarded wall of secrecy.
The gang was dismantled in the mid-1980s after its lieutenants were arrested, but it left a legacy that would inspire a long list of knockoff gangs.
"They used the blueprint that I'm afraid we're still suffering from within the United States," Taylor said.
They invade Washington
Dealers from Detroit began to infiltrate Washington more than 10 years ago. Since then, 10 dealers from Detroit have been arrested in Washington, and countless others have eluded authorities.
Evan Jamar Howard of Detroit was caught three years ago peddling 45 stamp bags of heroin in Washington at the tender age of 16.
He filtered through the juvenile court system only to be arrested again Dec. 28 at Maple Terrace in Washington in a sting that netted large amounts of heroin and crack.
He and a co-conspirator, Maurice Clayton Lane, 19, also of Detroit, disappeared after District Judge J. Albert Spence lowered their bonds in January from $25,000 to $2,000, allowing them to leave Washington County Jail.
Both are wanted on warrants for failure to appear in Washington County Court. Meanwhile, Washington County District Attorney John C. Petitt has filed a court petition to keep more than $3,800 his office confiscated in the drug bust.
Spence said Friday he was unaware that Lane and Howard had become fugitives since their last appearance in his court.
He could not recall whether anyone from Pettit's office had approached him to object to his lowering their bonds. Since the suspects left the area, Spence said, the county can revoke their bonds.
In good company
Washington is on a list of smaller cities susceptible to this trafficking because it's within a day's drive from drug capitals that also include New York and Philadelphia, Frederiksen said.
Dealers in New York funnel drugs into Altoona via Interstate 80. They also supply drugs to Allentown and Lancaster through the Route 222 corridor. Philadelphia dealers, meanwhile, follow the Pennsylvania Turnpike to the same destinations.
Being at the crossroads of Interstates 70 and 79 is both a "blessing and a curse" for this very reason, said Washington Mayor Ken Westcott.
"People are not aware that a lot of drugs pass through the motels in the area," he said.
And it isn't just the towns themselves that are being targeted.
Roommates needed
Retired Washington police Sgt. Jim Ward said soon after the Detroit dealers arrive in the city, they look for single girls with babies to feed, clothe and house them.
Once they are accepted into a family, many of the girlfriend's relatives soon become addicted to crack or heroin, giving the drug dealers instant customers and local business partners.
"The next thing you know, you have another drug house," Ward said.
Keso Lamar Cowans of Detroit might have been using that technique.
Cowans, 21, of Detroit, was only in town for about a week when he was arrested in the summer of 2004. Within that short time, he had found living arrangements with a 17-year-old Washington girl.
Officers confiscated more than 300 stamp bags of heroin and two ounces of crack - what they believed was a day's supply for his operation - in the mobile home where he stayed in nearby South Strabane Township.
"It's business 101. It's all about the money. These people tend to be good businessmen," Frederiksen said. "But they've chosen to go to the dark side."
Westcott agreed.
"The dealers are often more educated than the police," he said. "They always seem to be one step ahead of police."
The Detroit operations start out small, but they quickly burgeon after they undercut local suppliers. The local dealers are then forced to buy from the Detroit supply.
"A lot of the people from Detroit, they get more bang for their buck here," said Washington police Cpl. Chris Luppino.
While a rock of crack sells for $10 or $20 in Detroit, dealers from that city can double their prices in Washington, he said.
Once in control of the supply chain, these upper-level dealers instruct their street-level counterparts to sell crack in the smallest increments they can, usually by the rock.
"They can sell a smaller product for a lot more money," Luppino added.
And, Frederiksen said, there are more street-level dealers than some people might realize.
"It's a sad state of affairs, but you can take all the street-level dealers off the streets and there would be people back on the corners the next day taking their places," he said.
Polaroids and parties
In a sting last year in New Castle, police learned that the Detroit dealers had been throwing "crack parties," where the doors were locked down until all the drugs were sold, he said.
Before anyone was permitted to leave, the dealers snapped Polaroid pictures of the users, creating a file of their customers.
The dealers used the photographs as a threat of violence against anyone who snitched to the police, Frederiksen said.
"That's how you regulate," Taylor said. "You put fear into your competition."
To confuse officers, Frederiksen said, the dealers even rotate their suppliers back to Detroit before police can make an identification.
"As soon as they are identified in a sting, they are out of town and someone else has taken their place," he said.
In many cases, the locals don't even know the dealers by their names or where they live.
Luppino keeps a list of street names he hears to familiarize himself with those involved in the local drug trade for this reason. They have gone by such handles as "Detroit Shawn," "Miss Poochy" and "Fat Steve."
The dealers, however, are well aware of the names of city police officers.
"They know my officers. It's not like one of my officers can go undercover," Westcott said. "Once they establish themselves, they're dug in like ticks and it's hard to get rid of them."
So their businesses, however illegitimate, continue - often lucratively.
In fact, Frederiksen said, one dealer bragged to undercover officers that his goal was to make $20,000 a day dealing in New Castle.
In one year, Detroit drug dealers can make as much as $1.5 million in places just like Washington, he said.
"It's not out of the question."
But that profit doesn't come without a price - one the community ultimately has to pay.
"The money has to come from somewhere," Frederiksen said, adding that users will commit everything from prostitution to burglary to make the money they need to feed their addictions.
Sherman "Detroit Shawn" Springer, 37, was among those who knew the Washington market well. He was sentenced in 1998 to 22 years in federal prison after pleading guilty to distributing more than 50 grams of cocaine in the city.
Released from prison early after appealing his sentence, Pettit and city police suspect Springer is back in business in the area.
And Springer probably realizes that Washington lacks the resources it needs to make a dent in the local heroin and crack market.
Sarah Core contributed to this report.
This is the second in a three-part series about how drugs and dealers from Detroit have plagued Washington.
Next Sunday: Everything came together at the wrong time for Washington, leaving it vulnerable to drugs and violence.
