Word: cracking
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Youngsters are sometimes physically unable to return home. Detroit police frequently find juveniles locked in crack houses by older dealers. The teen dealers sit inside, selling drugs through slots in a wall. "There were bars on the windows, bars on the doors, and they had McDonald's food delivered in," says an Arkansas police chief about a group of local teens recruited to Detroit. "They were virtually held captive...
...perhaps the worst situations, crack dealing becomes a family operation. New York Crack Dealer Woodberry hired several relatives. The family members learned, however, that Jeff was a scrupulous bookkeeper and hard taskmaster. When one held back on a debt, Woodberry attacked him with a baseball bat. "This drug game," he says, "is nothing to play with...
...hardly surprising that much of the violence in the inner city is crack fueled. Dealers too young to boast a driver's license have ready access to state-of-the-art firearms: Uzi submachine guns, .357 Magnums and MAC 10s. "You don't see Saturday-night specials anymore," says New York Deputy Police Chief Raymond Kelly. "It's a thing of the past." Adolescent gunmen have itchier trigger fingers. Gang shootouts caused 387 deaths in Los Angeles last year; more than half the victims were innocent bystanders. "You put a gun in kids' hands, and they are more dangerous than...
Authorities have been stunned by the increasingly grotesque nature of the crimes. In Detroit, boys as young as 14 have been locked up for torturing their rivals. "They've ((electrically)) shocked people's arms or poured alcohol on open wounds," says Probation Officer Michael Sinnott. Teenage crack-house denizens have started videotaping their own X-rated shows. "A lot of it is group sex," says Sergeant Elmer Harris, a Detroit homicide officer, "or inducing girls to have sex with each other or with dogs...
Most of the adolescent crack dealers' clients are children. "A sophisticated marketing analysis couldn't have come up with a more perfect drug for kids," says Robert Stutman, special agent of the Drug Enforcement Administration in New York. "Five years ago, a kid had to spend $80 for cocaine. Now a kid can get a vial of crack for $3 to $5. The high is instantaneous, the addiction complete." Some of the latest abusers are barely out of babyhood. Renaissance West, a Detroit drug program, is preparing to treat children as young...