"the House Is on Fire"

By Jacob V. Lamar Jr.

The argument began, police say, when Beverli Black accused her boyfriend of spending their last $15 on crack. She stormed out of their one-room apartment in Freeport, L.I., late one night last week to try to borrow some food stamps. Daren Jenkins, 23, an unemployed cabinetmaker, stalked over to the bed where Black's son Batik was sleeping. High on crack, an extremely potent and addictive form of cocaine, Jenkins allegedly beat the little boy to death. Batik would have been three years old this month.

"Crack it up, crack it up," the drug dealers murmur from the leafy parks of the suburbs to New York City's meanest streets. The pushers are highly visible and undiscriminating. Three weeks ago, New York's Republican Senator Alfonse D'Amato and Rudolph Giuliani, the U.S. Attorney in Manhattan, both in disguise, had no trouble purchasing vials of crack from peddlers in the city's Washington Heights section. Many New York law-enforcement authorities believe that a substantial increase in crime this year might be attributed to the crack epidemic. In May of this year cocaine arrests were up 68% over the figures for May 1985, while arrests for heroin, marijuana and other drugs had dropped. Crack has all but consumed parts of neighborhoods such as Harlem, Bedford-Stuyvesant and the South Bronx that are primarily made up of poor blacks. Says the Rev. Wendell Foster, a Bronx city councilman: "It's a new form of genocide."

Last week New York's United Black Church Appeal launched a valiant campaign against the drug. Some 200 ministers, celebrities and antidrug activists participated in street-corner rallies and 24-hour vigils in areas where crack is sold. "The house is on fire," said Actor Ossie Davis at a rally in Harlem. "Those of us who care have to ring the alarm bell." While calling for greater community action, organizers of the campaign mocked the Federal Government's efforts to stop drug trafficking, including the raids in Bolivia. "I'll never understand why, if they're serious about a drug bust, they decide to announce it to the world a week before they make it," said Comedian and Liberal Activist Dick Gregory. "And then they're surprised when they can't find any of the people they're looking for."

The Catholic Archdiocese of New York may join the crusade. John Cardinal O'Connor, Archbishop of New York, said last week that he is considering organizing a giant antidrug youth rally, possibly in Yankee Stadium. The Cardinal is also contemplating increasing the ranks of drug counselors at the city's Catholic schools and holding a series of prayer vigils.

In Washington last week, House Speaker Tip O'Neill announced plans for a sweeping antidrug bill that would include provisions for more federal funds for expanded narcotics-interdiction efforts, addict treatment and public education. The new legislation could end up costing the government $5 billion a year. "If it breaks Gramm-Rudman," said O'Neill, "I'll ask the Rules Committee to waive the targets." Not to be left behind by the Democrats, a Reagan Administration Cabinet council met late last week to discuss a new White House initiative in the drug war.

Back in New York, shortly after the rallies and speeches ended, the crack hustlers were out again, casually hawking their wares. "They should have been here long ago," said a disillusioned Harlem resident of the antidrug crusaders. "It's too late now."

With reporting by David Beckwith/Washington and Edmund Newton/New York