End of the Line

Originally published in the Gloucester County Times on March 13, 2006 but lost in a website redesign.

By the time the bus pulled into Woodbury, Christopher Lee had stopped breathing.

At the intersection of Red Bank Avenue and Broad Street, near Underwood Memorial Hospital, the driver of a Glassboro-to-Philadelphia bus noticed that Lee was unconscious. Ten minutes later, Lee, 27, was pronounced dead at Underwood, blocks from his last known permanent address in Deptford Township.

A syringe and a bag stamped “Underground,” believed to contain heroin, was found with Lee’s body.

The bus where Christopher Lee died three weeks ago was traveling one of eight routes between Gloucester County and city of Camden.

Straddling Camden’s Broadway, the Walter Rand Transportation Center and the West Head House, used by both NJ Transit and PATCO, have attracted the attention of residents in surrounding counties looking for an easy route to inner city drug connections.

“It is very common,” said Bill Shralow, of the Camden County Prosecutor’s Office. “They come into the Rand Transportation Center or one of the other Camden transportation centers, and they make their way to the neighborhoods to purchase drugs.”

In 2005, Delaware River Port Authority (DRPA) Police arrested 101 people at the Rand on violations ranging from panhandling and drinking in public to drug and weapon offenses. In the same year, NJ Transit Police arrested 247 people at the Rand for similar charges. On average, six out of 10 narcotics arrests made in the city are of non-Camden residents, Shralow said.

Both transportation centers sit across the street from the vibrant Broadway corridor, a street that remains crowded even though Broadway merchants complain that business has been on a decline. It is a street where “Broadway Eddie’s 99 cent and Up” store shuttered its doors last summer, but where two methadone clinics continue to thrive. It’s a street of crowded corners and hard glances, where walking five blocks will attract the attention of men who walk by repeating drug names like some sidewalk mantra.

“They are always selling drugs; there is an open drug market there,” said Sheila Roberts, community activist and co-chair of Camden Weed and Seed. “You can get anything you want, right at the transportation center, the whole corridor.”

On heavy days, drug pushers direct interested buyers to idling cars, explained Roberts. From the corner of Martin Luther King Boulevard and Broadway, the mechanisms of the drug traffic are clearly visible. A man shouts “Yo” from the window of a car idling on Broadway, alerting another man standing around the corner to potential drug buyers. According to Roberts, the man then directs buyers either down the street or to the idling car.

“There is a system,” she said. “You see the guys standing on the corner. If the drug is not there on that street, they will take them in a car to get the drugs.”

Neighborhood residents struggle with the thriving open-air drug markets that litter the city. Dealers control corners in neighborhoods like Whitman Park, Gateway and North Camden, many close to major highways and public transportation stops.

“The reason why these drug corners are flourishing is the people from the outside,” Roberts said. “If they didn’t come in, these corners couldn’t last.”

Fed by a public transportation line, the neighborhood of Whitman Park — which is a short distance from the Ferry Avenue PATCO High Speed Line station — is one of the city’s heaviest drug markets, explained Wren Ingram, co-chair of Camden Weed and Seed.

Rider activity has not gone unnoticed by DRPA officials.

“PATCO and DRPA public safety officials have noticed some questionable behavior from riders,” said Danelle Hunter, DRPA and PATCO spokeswoman. “Our office has created some special details to curb that.”

In what has been labeled the nation’s most dangerous city, the Camden County prosecutor’s office estimates that up to 70 percent of Camden’s violent crimes are related to drugs. In 2005, the Philadelphia-Camden High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area Task Force arrested more than 1,000 people and seized $586,000 in currency and $679,000 in drugs. In an effort to arrest drug buyers, police posed as dealers during two 2006 reversals. They arrested 72 people, 52 of whom resided outside city limits.

“We frequently do a number of undercover ops in the neighborhoods, and most of the people that we arrest in those areas are not city residents,” Shralow said. The prosecutor’s spokesman added that it is a “well known phenomenon that the drug market in Camden is fueled by places like Gloucester County.”

In recent years, heroin has gained popularity in suburban communities, said Charles Morgan, medical director at Parkside Recovery, part of NHS Human Services.

“For the first time in my career, I see people who the first drug they experience is heroin,” he said. “It is mostly people between their teens and their early 20s.”

With suburban heroin demand climbing, locations adjacent to highways or transportation hubs become the beach-front property of the drug trade. One particular section of the city has become so valuable that three rival dealers have set up shop on one block, said Woodbury trial lawyer Louis D. Fletcher of a block he visited while preparing for a homicide trial.

“That piece of real estate is so popular,” he said. “The reason is, it is the first exit from Gloucester County. Three competing hostile drug dealers on one block, one at each end and one in the middle.”

The abundance of open-air drug markets has created an abundance of drug addicts within the city, Roberts explained.

Cooper Plaza Commons has become a popular meeting ground for drug users visiting the city.

Three blocks from the transportation center and a half block from Cooper-University Hospital, the park is littered with tiny discarded purple, green and blue packets, broken glass, beer cans and used syringes. Behind the park, boards shuttering an abandoned house have been torn open creating a shooting gallery and crack house.

Across the cobblestoned street sits the Kids’ World Child Development Center, a 60-student school for children preschool age to fourth grade, in plain view of the dilapidated park.

“During the night hours, it is really packed over here,” said Mukit Wali, family counselor at the school.

The park sees such neglect that school children are not allowed to play there during recess. Instead, the children play blocks away at the 7th & Clinton Street Park, a trip that presents problems of its own. A recent walk to the park was interrupted when a car blew a stop sign with police in tight pursuit.

“We don’t have to live like this,” said Roberts, the community activist. “It is sad. We are raising kids here, but we don’t see a future for them. The outsiders are coming in here and destroying our city. We want to take our city back — we want to stop these people from coming in and tearing down our city.”