The cops say they’ve been handcuffed by a city government that won’t give them more men or more money — there have been times when they were told they couldn’t work at night because there was no money for overtime — and a court system that processes junkies through the front door and sends them out to the streets through the back. “They talk about a war on drugs,” says McLeod, “but I never heard of fighting a war without men or money.”
Still, McLeod says he fees like the cops now have a handle on the local junk dealers. After being busted four or five times, Ryan says, junkies are finally being sent to prison. And since the community became drug conscious, his phone’s been ringing off the hook with informants — during one period last summer, he and McLeod were picking cars off Route 128 as junkies were heading back from Lowell and Providence, one woman concealing a stash of heroin in her vagina.
And more manpower is on the way. Essex County DA Kevin Burke says between April and May he will assign to Gloucester two state troopers — plus one that has worked there off and on — from his Drug Task Force, which successfully smashed heroin street sales in Lynn (but has not fared so well in Lawrence.) And Burke has unleashed a potentially potent legal weapon in Gloucester. In February Louis Catalina, a 36-year-old fisherman, became the first person in the state ever indicted for involuntary manslaughter in connection with a drug overdose. Catalina was charged with supplying the heroin that caused the 1986 overdose death of Grace Gail Randazza, a 31-year-old Gloucester mother of three. (Many, though not those wired into the drug community, were shocked to read of Randazza’s death. Gloucester playwright Israel Horovitz dedicated his play North Shore Fish to Randazza, who served as a model for the character of Florence Rizzo.) A week later Frank Auditore, a 41-year-old Gloucester stevedore, was charged with involuntary manslaughter in connection with the January overdose death of his 33-year-old sister-in-law, Ann Marie Swanson. Auditore had been part of Gloucester’s 1968 Washington Street heroin crew. (One theory as to why there have been so many heroin ODs here is that some of the victims were done in by an unusually potent batch of smack from New York, where Asian gangs, lacking a strong street organization, hadn’t really stepped on the dope—diluted it enough with cornstarch or milk sugar.)
Down on the waterfront, some of the bars have concocted their own way of policing the premises. Take the Old Timers Tavern. It used to be a known hangout for junkies, a place where the police would walk in and see guys getting off at the tables. When Mike Favazza bought the bar in May of last year, he inherited from the previous owner a list of names culled from the Gloucester Daily Times police notes. If your name is on the list (which has grown to number more than 125)—because you’ve been charged with a drug offense—you are not allowed in the tavern, says Favazza, who has cousins who are barred from the bar. This policy has reportedly been adopted at other bars. But at least one bar customer had a different policy in mind. “I know four guys got busted in Chelsea from Gloucester, 44 bags of shit,” he was saying. “Where are they now? They’re not in jail. They’re on the street again. They’re relatives of mine. When they get busted over shit like that, they’re not my cousins anymore…If you stick a needle in your arm tomorrow, I don’t give a shit. It’s their choice.” The guy said that one time he and his buddies were so fed up with the drugs that they felt like grabbing some baseball bats, walking down the street, and beating in some junkie heads.
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“I’m sick and tired of being sick and tired,” the 37-year-old heroin addict, call him Bill, was saying in his living room a few weeks back. “I just don’t want to play anymore. I’m too old. The fun’s all gone.”
He was part of the original crew that hung around the ice-cream parlor back in 1968, maybe 40 or 50 of them. He had a car, a valuable commodity, would give guys rides while they got high on weed. He was an average beer drinker. Then, one time a guy passed him a joint, said “Hey, try this.” He did. “It’s not like—ooh—they’re trying to get you in their trap,” he says. “They didn’t realize they were in a trap. It was just fun.” He was dealing a little dope, doesn’t remember too many cops hanging around the ice-cream shop.
Bill would drive a friend of his up to the highway to pick up a package of heroin to be distributed in Gloucester. The friend would give Bill a bag for the ride, but Bill didn’t want it, would sell it for $5 or $10. The smack had been dropped off by the legendary guy in the white Lincoln. Maurice, a heavyset black guy from the city, the Boston-to-Gloucester connection.