Drugs And Crime

Dozens of city workers swept through Mill Hill yesterday, clearing 25 tons of trash, slashing 16,000 feet of overgrown weeds and removing hundreds of feet of graffiti in an attempt to turn the tide in the Southwest Baltimore community's war on drugs and crime.The workers targeted a 13-square-block community sandwiched between Gwynns Falls Park and Washington Village to clear storm drains, bait for rats and board vacant homes that had become havens for drug users.Southwest District police officers aggressively patrolled the neighborhood of 750 homes in a search for prostitutes and drug dealers.

A new drug court making its debut in the Glen Burnie District courthouse is an alternative to the 1980s' lock-them-up style of fighting drugs and crime that has taken root across the country.First tested in Miami eight years ago as an experiment with drug-abusing first offenders, drug courts have spread to about 30 other cities.Prosecutors and treatment specialists tout them as the best way to halt drug abuse, which has led to increased crime in metropolitan areas and overburdened jails and prisons.

Mayor Kurt L. Schmoke tried to keep his rival Mary Pat Clarke on the defensive over a 1993 proposal to tax drug profits yesterday, but he had to back down on a police statistic as they sparred anew about drugs and crime in Baltimore.Mrs. Clarke, under scathing attack by the mayor for a bill to tax the income of drug dealers, fought back and forced the mayor to retreat from an earlier criticism that she had approved numerous police cuts during her council tenure.Charging that the mayor was distorting her record on crime in a "smear campaign," the City Council president produced a detailed accounting of her votes on city budgets that led him to acknowledge using an incorrect number in a televised mayoral debate last week.

Not so long ago, Needra Bland lived for her "dope 'n' coke," and to pay for those heroin-and-cocaine cocktails she would shoplift meat or cash stolen checks, sell drugs or sell herself. Pennsylvania and Gold was her drug corner of choice; she flopped in stash houses while others reared her kids.Now drug-free, she is reacquainted with her two children and living in a midtown Baltimore apartment. She's a member of the Baltimore drug court's first graduating class, and hers is just the kind of turnaround officials envisioned when they devised a program offering drug treatment to addicted, petty criminals.

Domestic violence is crimeWhy is it called a crime when it happens outside the home, and domestic violence when it happens inside the home?Why is it called domestic violence? Violence is violence.Makes no difference if you're a man, woman or child. Murder is murder. Beating someone is beating someone. One human, beating another. It's a crime and only a crime.If I were to go outside and someone would beat on me, he or she would be prosecuted. And vice versa. It would be considered a crime.

Causes of crimeHistory has shown us that punishment does not deter crime. Singapore has a low crime rate because its economy is comparatively healthy and its people are relatively prosperous.Its harsh penal system and torture of prisoners with brine-soaked rattan canes is brutal and reprehensible.Our economy is not healthy; we have no safety nets; one quarter of our children grow up in poverty. We have no affordable day care, health care or education opportunities that exist in so many other nations.

The news last week about a significant increase in illicit dru use by teen-agers caught a lot of us by surprise; surprise because such news represents a striking reversal of the downward trend seen over the last several years.But there it was, the bad news revealed in an annual nationwide survey of almost 50,000 students in the eighth, 10th and 12th grades: "Illicit drug use by teen-agers increased significantly between 1992 and 1993, driven by a dramatic rise in the use of marijuana and increases in the use of stimulants, LSD and inhalants."

Something old and something new characterize the concerns residents have about national issues, as measured by an annual survey of constituents by U.S. Representative Beverly B. Byron, D-6th.The federalbudget deficit again topped the list of concerns on constituents' minds, said Beau Wright, a Byron spokesman.The survey also generates comments on more recent issues, and with the rise of the savings and loan debacle during the past year, residents conveyed reluctance about allowing banks to enter the securities and insurance businesses.

The caskets were empty.Ministers prayed and mourners sang as about 40 people circled the coffins yesterday on the parking lot of a defunct pizza parlor in Northeast Baltimore.They were remembering friends and relatives whom they had buried, loved ones lost to crime and drugs, and they revisited their grief yesterday in the hope that other young people might be spared."Maybe [this] will put some sense through people's heads. Maybe they'll think twice before picking up guns and drugs," said William Towles, a passerby.