"I'm not a cruel man, persecuting poor people."

Seattle's Homeless have been in the news quite a bit lately. They - along with most of the West - have been dealing with a homeless problem that I don't see in Nashville much; those who partake of heroin and crank (methamphetamine). I didn't make it much to Seattle, although I have been there. But I sure do recognize the kinds of problems Mr. Thompson talks about below because they inundate California and the bigger cities of Nevada, as well. I I learned to avoid major cities when buying dope because I discovered something that few in the city ever find out and I'll explain in a sec. Furthermore, the dope in the cities was usually whacked hard and the people you had to deal with to get it were.....crazy. I spent most of my time in the towns of the big valley of California, because I discovered that the migrant camps that peppered those farmland areas often had the most potent heroin, crank and cocaine available - and it was usually cheap, too. The pickers in many of these camps were bringing small (when compared to the organized trade occurring in the cities) "personal" stashes straight into the country and bypassing the main dealer sources - and the whacks those sources placed on their drugs. They would sell their own batch of dope each time they returned to a particular camp and eventually use the proceeds to establish themselves in our country. If you knew the right folks, you could get raw dope coming in out of Mexico that put to shame anything you could find on the streets of the major cities. I vividly recall buying more drugs than I care to remember from "immigrants" who pulled out softball sized hunks of vinegar-stinking black tar heroin or gallon-sized Ziplocs of cocaine in big chunks or piss-smelling, mushy, yellow "peanut butter" crank and who's only command of the English language was "I got what you want," and "a hunnert dollahs." The reason I bring up this sordid memory from my past is because many of the problems associated with heroin - and especially crank - that are occurring in those western cities - like Seattle - haven't made it to Nashville yet and we ought to be damned thankful for that. If you knew what you were doing and where to go, you could roll into these migrant camps and within seconds be shooting, snorting and smoking dope in what can only be described as an open air super Walmart of illegal drug products. I'm reasonably sure Nashville has similar areas, but some of those places in the West were so well organized, fortified and "protected" that it was clear the camps had some sort of "arrangement" with local law enforcement. Dealers of all types; sniffling junkies, parents with infants, old men and women, would line the dirt roads into the living area, hawking their wares in plain view, offering samples, providing "spare change" hits to those short on paper money, and doing so without fear of arrest or robbery. To get into these markets, you never came in "uninvited." You had to have an escort to get in the first couple of times, or those who knew you might hear about your body being found in one of the fruit groves on the evening news - it's a regular occurrence. Most of the folks who took you into these markets were stone cold dope fiends. Many of them were Homeless. Dopewhores, crooks, preppies looking for kicks - they all came in and did their dope, but the Homeless that came were a much different breed when compared to the folks on the street here in Nashville. I know because I was one of them. Homeless junkies and cranksters have a lifestyle that is far different from what I see in the crackhead culture here in Nashville. Because crack doesn't have the wicked physical withdrawals associated with opiates, the drive to "cop and fix," although incredibly strong at times, isn't motivated by the unbelievable fear of getting "dope-sick" from opiates or the depression from coming down off crank. While I've seen some folks here strung out on opiates, it's usually as a result of pills as heroin doesn't seem to be nearly as prevalent here as it was in the West, thank the Gods. Those guys coming into the camps withdrawing and sick are some dangerous people, indeed and the smart person avoided us like the plague. Unlike the fiending crackhead, who's cravings wane over the course of 24 hours, the junkie's cravings continue to increase over a three and four day period. Although they are usually unable to do much when in the middle of a strong "sick," they can be wildly unpredictable and certainly as untrustworthy as the worst crack addict in the early stages. Worse yet however, were the cranksters. These folks made junkies look like stalwart citizens by comparison. These guys are up for weeks - weeks - at a time. They have been awake so long they aren't even in the same galaxy as we are. They are positively fiendish and make even the most hardened crackhead look like a two-bit pot smoker. I hated having to deal with them - they are the most dangerous and unpredictable sunsabitches I've ever had the displeasure of having to interact with and that damned crank was everywhere. People had highly explosive, extremely corrosive, unbelievably toxic mini labs bubbling in all sorts of contraptions and places - like in converted soda bottles on the kitchen counter next to what little food might be there for their kids - and the crap was dirt cheap and stinking like male cat piss. It rotted the minds of the folks right along with their teeth and their bodies and when cranksters "nutted up" the best thing you could do was to haul ass to someplace where they were not. I'm relieved beyond words that we don't have this kind of problem in any real significance here in Nashville. If we do, I've missed it, but it's a positive sign that I don't see them coming into the shelters sick, withdrawing, or suffering wild hallucinations that would put the most severe schizophrenic to shame. It indicates to me Nashville has probably escaped the wrath of Morpheus and idiot bathtub crank chemists- at least for now. As for using the Homeless to peddle dope, it's like any other segment of the population. It doesn't take a brain surgeon to figure out that if you strip away the ability of a person to earn an honest day's wages by stacking petty criminal charges like trespassing, loitering and unlawful assembly on the poor sod until no one in their right mind is going to hire him/her, then you remove just about every conceivable resource needed to get by on a daily basis, people become desperate and hopeless. Major drug dealers peddle false hope along with their "good times." The lure of fast cash is damned hard to resist for those who don't have a plugged nickel or a pot to piss in. And if you're thinking that offering someone a night in the Mission and a meal in a soup line is going to cut it, you'd better think again. This is the land of opportunity and wealth and it is shoved into the faces of these folks every day. It is just out of reach but tantalizingly close and it gets damned hard to see the "haves" living in the lap of luxury every day while you sleep under a bridge with a salvation army blanket. Sometimes too, even a night in the greybar hotel is better than sleeping in freezing sleet, so what do they really have to lose if they're caught selling dope? Makes the problem of controlling the drug trade a little more complex, doesn't it? Mr. Thompson can dismantle all the camps he wants. They will just spring up in another location. People have to survive. Dismantling a camp is not dismantling the problem, it's merely moving it from one's backyard. I'm not against Mr. Thompson's effort, mind you; I recognize the need for our communities to be safe and protected. But band aid solutions aren't going to get the results that Mr. Thompson is looking for. It's clear he knows this, by the way, but we've got to begin looking at ways to mitigate the impact of previous stupid choices and decisions made by people so that they aren't haunted forever by a bad act made years ago. We then need to examine how to get a livable wage into their hands. It's got to be livable, understand, not the chump change fast-food pays, in order to really keep them in that job. Finally, we've got to get some truly affordable housing in place. There's no doubt that I have grossly oversimplified this here, but I'm telling you, we're going to have to do these things in some form or another, folks, or camps like the ones Mr. Thompson and I describe will become more prevalent, not less.

Last updated December 7, 2007 6:08 p.m. PT

SEATTLE, WA

Homeless camp sweeps needed

Nab criminals linked to drugs, reclaim the woods

By CRAIG THOMPSON

Before me is a view of Elliott Bay lost for a decade. Above Interstate 90, it was taken over by drug addicts, dealers, prostitutes, pimps and a homeless encampment.

It's good to see that camp gone.

It's one of nine abandoned camps I've helped take apart this year. That autumn Saturday, 25 30-gallon bags of garbage were removed from a network of campsites cut into an 8 foot tall, 40 foot wide, 130 foot long bramble. Neighbors and service workers hauled the garbage out, most from a 3 foot deep, 8 foot wide midden of rotten food, mud, worms and human debris. A World War I trench would smell like that. In the muck, I discovered a filleting knife, the seventh weapon I've found in the woods.

Seattle city government recently suspended sweeps of greenbelts after an incident on Queen Anne. Camp residents weren't notified before a cleanup and lost personal items. People should know you're coming -- unless they're criminals. The sweeps should go on.

I'm not a cruel man, persecuting poor people. I support SHARE/WHEEL's roving Tent Cities. The Downtown Emergency Service Center's monitored apartments on Dearborn and in Columbia City should be built. Solid Ground's 200-unit "transition-in-place" project with Sand Point Community Housing at Magnuson Park deserves support. City government, though, blows chances to create affordable housing, like at the old INS building in Chinatown/International District, or up in Magnolia. Private agencies may be Seattle's best hope to reduce homelessness.

For four years, I've helped plan and execute reforestation and public safety projects in "the Jungle," the East Duwamish Greenbelt south of I-90, along Interstate 5. In 2003, I became the community liaison for an interagency task force tackling a crisis born by the drug trade.

A violent, well-organized, Asian heroin gang took over the forest on the west side of Beacon Hill. They beat up most homeless people they found, especially women, and set up shop. Their command and control center was a camouflaged bunker made of concrete blocks, a wooden frame and a door that could have stopped a round from a service revolver. It was a hobbit hole for junkies, with a killer view of the mouth of the Duwamish.

They found friends in a mob south of Holgate Street, run by "the Colonel." He was a veteran and a crack addict. His territory lay under I-5. His base was on private property; an absentee landowner didn't care. The Colonel ran a generator down there.

Thuggery made life hell for homeless people who just wanted a place to sleep. Crime boiled into neighborhoods. It took almost a year to nab dozens of criminals and reclaim the woods, but we did.

Seattle's current strategy toward the forest tracks a path made in the Jungle. It will work.

Most tales about people in the woods are tall.

The first is they can sustain themselves by mutual support. An encampment is not a guy sleeping on cardboard beneath a tree, covered by a mission blanket. Several live close by. The camp attracts drugs. It may start out a non-violent place but it will not stay one. Nearly all homeless camps I've stood in have signs of drug use -- crack pipes, syringes. They contain weapons, usually knives.

Our forest is not full of King County's registered homeless sex offenders. Some do live in Seattle's woods, but also on the Eastside, up north, down south. They live in vehicles, stay with friends, relatives. Some don't report homes. Some hold down jobs.

The most damning myth is people in the urban forest are victimized by government. If they are, it's no more than the rest of us. They're far more victimized by organized crime.

They live on the margins of two societies, in a gray area between civil and criminal. Away from social services, they are easy prey -- the bottom link of the great drug trade chain of being.

When all hell broke loose in 2003, Jim Compton, then a City Council member and public safety committee chairman, spoke with me about the history of heroin in Seattle. As a journalist, he investigated the trade. Some 30 years ago, North American organized crime syndicates -- U.S., Canadian, Mexican -- and their counterparts in Hong Kong struck a deal for the Pacific Northwest. South of Canada, you'd get tar heroin from poppy plantations outside Guadalajara. China white -- from Afghanistan and the Golden Triangle -- hit the streets of Vancouver, B.C.

That deal was broken in 2003.

Compton said, "If China white heroin is being sold, it's a dangerous development for Seattle."

Today, Seattle is awash in heroin. The mix of crack and meth turns our streets mean.

If sweeps end, camps will be as violent as they were in the Jungle in 2003, but on Queen Anne, the slopes of West Seattle and Magnolia, in Ballard and Ravenna Park. Criminals linked to hardcore drugs will take over -- this is already happening along Dearborn, around Chinatown, downtown uphill from 5th Avenue.

Where will residents go when camps are busted?

That's another question, a difficult one in a city that favors developers like Greg Smith, Paul Allen and Daryl Vange over affordable housing. Some churches step forward in good faith; most do not. Leaving the camps makes the situation worse for their occupants.

If Seattle doesn't find a strategy soon, homeless people will be brutalized by a drug-based underground gone particularly bad.

Craig Thompson is a professional writer who lives on Beacon Hill.