Crack Alley - Battling drugs on South Fountain Street

Situated between Lorimier and Middle streets, a nondescript gravel driveway connecting William and Good Hope streets is a virtual drive-through buffet for anyone seeking illegal drugs.

Police and some locals call it Crack Alley. Technically it's South Fountain Street and it draws people from all over the city and from all social strata. It boasts one house, the garden of which was once often used as a "smoking lounge" or a "shooting gallery," depending on one's drug of choice.

Now, two large Rottweilers discourage such activity.

An undercover narcotics officer for the Cape Girardeau Police Department said Wednesday that most Cape Girardeans don't even know the lane exists.

But police have had their eye on the area for years, and in 1995, the U.S. Department of Justice targeted major crack cocaine dealers with Operation Crack-up. The program focused on crack dealers in the Good Hope area.

As a result, Willie Lee Smith was sentenced last year to life in prison for trafficking crack cocaine. He was considered the head of a drug organization spanning from Crack Alley to California.

Smith was one of several Cape Girardeau-based dealers to receive stiff federal sentences. John Henry Turner Jr. and Kevin Lee Rowett received 31 and 20 years in 1995 and 1996, respectively.

Stepped-up police efforts have had an effect on Crack Alley's drug trade. No longer do dealers sell blatantly out of their vehicles. But drug deals, prostitution and violence are still prevalent enough that Zone 4 patrolmen visit the alley regularly. Zone 4 covers the southeast part of the city.

Life around the alley

On a Friday afternoon in October, Crack Alley had three sentries on the Good Hope side: three men drinking soda and smoking cigarettes. It's just past lunchtime and the young men are checking cellular telephones and peering at passing cars, sometimes climbing in for a brief ride around the block.

They expect more clients later in the day, but for now, they're willing to chat with a reporter. They are polite but refuse to reveal their names.

"Your paper just wants to print that I'm a thug," complains one. He said the only black faces in the news are on the sports pages or in the crime reports.

The three look too young to be out of school. The most talkative one claims to be 17, saying he graduated early to go into business for himself. An ensuing conversation with him reveals a general sense of disdain for the world: for police, for those who criticize his lifestyle, and for his helplessly addicted clientele.

They know the dope's bad for them, he said. "They know if they giving away the baby's diaper money to me, then stealing checks, they going to jail. They been there before. Who they goin' to see first when they get out? Not their baby."

He has his own baby, a little girl who lives with her 20-year-old mother. "My baby girl is OK, I take care of her," he said. He said he's been through juvenile court for small crimes, but never for selling or possessing drugs. He's smoked a variety of things, but said he's never done any drug that involves a needle.

Cape Girardeau police and the media are racist, he says, and points to the recent focus on the closing of the black-owned Taste Lounge as evidence.

"Businesses close all the time. I don't see you staring when a white bar closes down."

But the Taste Lounge wasn't just any bar. Closed at the urging of police, the nightclub had a reputation as a violent gathering place, even though most incidents occurred outside its doors.

One incident near the bar during the early morning hours of June 11, 1999, significantly strained the relationship between Taste patrons and police. An altercation between a white officer and a black motorist resulted in a near riot in which several officers were pelted with bricks and debris and a number of arrests were made. Despite efforts to control the problems in the area surrounding the Taste, the bar was closed for good on June 30.

In September, the Southeast Missourian spent a Friday night shift with Cape Girardeau patrolman Paul Zajicek, who spent the majority of his time in Zone 4.

Two women got into a fight near the corner of Lorimier and William streets. A crowd gathered and police were called.

One of the combatants claimed to have been stabbed. Paramedics patched up the wound to her arm and patrolmen scoured the site for a weapon. None was found.

Zajicek said he thought the weapon may have actually been one of the other woman's wicked-looking acrylic fingernails.

Playing in Indian Park

Across the street, Indian Park was still. Earlier in the day teens played basketball, cards and dominoes.

A year earlier, 19-year-old Jesus Sides was shot and killed in the street after he was mistaken for someone else.

Almost as shocking as the murder itself was the fact that police recovered three guns from the park that night, said prosecutor Morley Swingle.

"At least three teen-agers were carrying guns in the park that day," Swingle said.

The shooting brought to mind other violent incidents in that neighborhood. In 1993, a 15-year-old girl was shot and killed by her 16-year-old boyfriend behind his house on Lorimier Street. Witnesses said the boyfriend often carried a gun.

In 1995, outside the Taste Lounge, a 29-year-old man who had been pestering people in the crowd for drugs was shot and killed by a drunken patron who said he was just trying to scare the victim away.

After he fired the .22-caliber handgun, friends took the weapon away and added it to a pile of other guns in the grass outside the Taste that had been confiscated from people who had been drinking that evening.

That collection included a Tec-9, a .45 and a .38.

Tracking drug problems

Kevin Glaser, coordinator for Southeast Missouri Drug Task Force said Cape Girardeau's drug problems are not limited to crack alley.

"You can go to virtually any community in Southeast Missouri and you have drug problems," said Glaser.

He cites university students caught with marijuana and ecstasy and the generally rural methamphetamine problem that constantly keeps narcotics officers on their toes.

And with Cape Girardeau's population 90 percent white and 8 percent black, any focus on the city's only neighborhood where black faces outnumber whites' may seem unjustified.

After all, Southeast Missouri's highest percentage of drug-related crimes involves methamphetamine, a drug sold and used almost exclusively by whites, according to drug investigators.

In this area, crack, a cheaper derivative of cocaine, is used primarily, but not exclusively by blacks.

But a recent top-to-bottom evaluation of Cape Girardeau police operations reported the highest call volume and the most difficult calls are in Zone 4, geographically the smallest zone in the patrol.

But exceptions exist. In February two officers were badly injured when they were shot during a meth lab bust at the Super 8 motel in the city's northwest corner.

One explanation may be that the 400 block of Good Hope has been an established area for drug commerce for more than two decades, and police know where to look.

Fall street party

In the 400 block of Good Hope Street in late September, flames leaped from two barbecue grills set on the flatbed of a truck. A crowd of about 50 to 75 gathered to eat, drink and socialize about 100 yards from the now-closed Taste Lounge.

Bass notes throbbed from the truck's stereo and young black men and women bounced to the beat. It's was a party, kind of a farewell to summer. But since the crowd seemed to be calm, police let it be.

The next morning, the night's debris would be evident: Crushed cans, cigarette butts and flattened Styrofoam cups were scattered through Crack Alley and adjacent vacant lots.

After the police car's fifth pass by the smoking truck, a young man hollered out to Zajicek, offering a plate of food. The officer hesitated, but declined, smiling his thanks.

His response was telling. The trust between the police and the crowds who gather on Good Hope is still tentative.

But the fact that the offer was made, and was considered, could signal a step in the right direction.

abuchanan@semissourian.com

335-6611, extension 160