W.A.N.T. Rounds Up Junkies, A2 Pushers Go Free

By Joe Davis

WARNING: Ann Arbor's Republican politicians, some of them wearing police uniforms, and all of them waving flags, have declared open season on heroin users here.

ADVERTISEMENT: Well-armed dealers in large quantities of high-grade heroin may find attractive business opportunities in Ann Arbor, where massive drug raids have driven up profits. No major heroin dealers have been arrested in this city for two years, according to the Washtenaw County Sherrif.

These two messages were clearly broadcast October 17 as police in Ann Arbor began rounding up as many as 48 persons accused of delivery of narcotics. It was the fourth sweep of such proportions this year.

The October 17 operation, like two others this year, was conducted by the Washtenaw Area Narcotics Team (WANT). The unit has been fighting for its political and economic life since March 17, when Republicans barely headed off a City Council resolution to end the city's participation in WANT.

The WANT unit is run by the Michigan State Police Intelligence Division (also notorious for its "Red Squad") and receives its orders from MSP headquarters in Detroit and Lansing. The Ann Arbor Ypsilanti Police Departments each contribute two full-time officers to the unit, which also draws on support from Ypsilanti Township, Livingston County, and Wayne Count Sherrif's Police.

In March of 1975, Ann Arbor's Democratic and Human Rights Party Council members argued for pulling the city's two officers out of the WANT Squad because they felt it had been ineffective in drying up the supply and abuse of hard drugs.

Statistics for 1973 showed that over 80 percent of WANT's arrests were made for drugs other than heroin. Of 141 arrests during 1974, only 38 were for the sale, delivery, or possession of heroin. Most of the rest were for marijuana, LSD, cocaine, and PCP. 

Having narrowly missed being kicked out of Ann Arbor, WANT abruptly changed its tactics early this year. Although final statistics are not yet available, WANT is, for the first time in its four year history, concentrating the majority of its arrests on heroin. 

But appearances can be deceiving -- especially with undercover cops who frequently refuse to identify their agency during arrests, and whose leaders hold "press conferences" to which only sympathetic media are invited.

Democrats have charged - and arrest statistics confirm - that WANT's 75 or more heroin arrests this year have largely been confined to nickel-and-dime addicts willing or desperate enough to sell a spoon or two of heroin to pay for their habits.

The arrest pattern in WANT's latest roundup is similar to the pattern in its earlier roundups in January and May of this year. This time, undercover agents spent less than $20,000 to make some 75 buys. That works out to an average expenditure of $266 per buy. Police officials have said they ranged from $50 to $350.

But the actual size of the purchases is likely to remain clouded until court proceedings have ended more than a year from now.The exact information will only dribble out quietly in dozens of separate cases -- years after the original police claims were made in headline-grabbing press conferences.

"There isn't a creditable bit of law enforcement in this whole operation," Washtenaw County Sheriff Frederick J. Postill, an elected Democrat, said after the October 17 WANT bust.

Postill makes no secret of his low opinion of WANT's effectiveness. He backed up that opinion by pulling the Washtenaw County Sherrif's Police out of the operation more than two years ago. Postill has described WANT's latest sweep, in which some 50 officers from various police agencies took part, as "Mickey Mouse grandstanding."

The argument made by Posthill and many other Democrats is that WANT officers are less interested in solving Ann Arbor's heroin problem than they are in generating the sort of quick and easy arrest statistics which will win them continued funding and allow them to keep their license in Ann Arbor.

On the other hand, Ann Arbor Police Chief Walter S. Krasny, with the enthusiastic applause of City Council Republicans, is lending WANT all the support he can. The city budget allows for only two officers to participate full-time in WANT undercover operations, but Krasny allows far larger numbers of uniformed city officers to back up the massive arrest sweeps.

Krasny lent his endorsement to a September 24 series of hashish and cocaine arrests in the Detroit-Ann Arbor area by the federal Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA). The DEA said that "scores" of uniformed Ann Arbor police performed support functions in that raid.

At that time, Krasny responded to charges of political grandstanding by saying, "That's a bunch of crap -- and you can quote me on that."

Two days later, Democratic City Councilperson Carol Jones told Council she had information from several sources that Krasny or his representatives were seeking funds and the Republican Party support for the 1976 Washtenaw County Sheriff's race against incumbent Postill. Since city laws similar to Civil Service regulations forbid city employees to run for office, Jones called for Krasny's resignation. Krasny, however, insisted he was not yet committed to the Sheriff's race.

By the time the headlines fade and the political gunsmoke clears, however, only a few public officials (like Postill, Jones, Ann Arbor City Councilperson Elizabeth Keough, and State Representative Perry Bullard) are asking the hard questions about the problem of heroin addiction.

Postill's approach has stressed the rehabilitation of addicts through methadone maintenance, work programs, and other social treatment measures. At the same time, he has called for a focus of police manpower on major dealers in wholesale quantities of heroin.

Many experts feel that the "heroin problem" is actually worsened by laws which place criminal penalties against possession, use, or sale of heroin -- likening the problem to alcohol prohibition. They argue that criminal laws making heroin hard to get drive up heroin prices, thereby making the sale of heroin profitable enough for criminal operators to offset heavy risks. High heroin prices make it necessary for addicts to steal or deal to maintain their habits.

Ann Arbor's State Representative, Perry Bullard, has recently begun a study of the English approach to the problem -- decriminalizing heroin and supply it to addicts in government-regulated clinics, thereby putting big-time pushers out of business. The number of addicts per capita in Englan is a tiny fraction of that in the United States, and the property crimes which attend heroin addiction here are almost unknown there.

Chief Krasny, however, is neither convinced by the facts nor interested in studying them. He is on record as saying that the English system doesn't work.

Few local police or political leaders have risked questioning the methods of the WANT squad. WANT relies heavily on the cloak-and-dagger technology originally developed for all-out war against foreign enemies and organized crime: the "intelligence" rubric, "safe houses," codenames, disguises, "undercover" agents, marked money, hidden "bugs," miniature transmitters and tape recorders, and methodical efforts to intimidate and mislead the media. WANT turns this no-holds-barred philosophy of law enforcement against small-time addicts.

Given this kind of technology, rounding up downed-out junkies --as WANT did in Ann Arbor on October 17 -- is like dynamiting fish in a pond.