By Marlon A. Walker
The News & Observer
RALEIGH, N.C. — The frail man with wiry gray hair approached the driver’s side window of the waiting car, confident he would make a drug sale. For years, his objective had been to sell drugs to get drugs. It had always gone smoothly.
But this time, in the fall of 2006, it was different. His customer had a hidden camera recording it all. Two months later, that video would come back to haunt Burlee Kersey.
He and 15 others from a Southeast Raleigh neighborhood targeted by police would be taken to the Chavis Park community center.
They would be presented with the evidence against them and given a choice: Go straight or go to jail. That choice began their journey to extract themselves from the life they had lived for years.
Raleigh police have been frustrated for years by street-level drug markets, which diminish neighborhoods and lower confidence in law enforcement. Mass sweeps are only temporary fixes. Drug users drift back to old locations and continue to make dealing their livelihood. It’s a grim cycle for the neighborhood and for the desperate figures who work the streets.
In High Point, police found a way to break the cycle. They watched a drug-ridden neighborhood and collected evidence before initiating a sweep to arrest the major dealers. Then they rounded up the small-time dealers -- some selling just to support their own addictions -- and gave them a chance to forgo prison by rehabilitating their lives. The operation significantly reduced crime in the targeted area.
Officials in Raleigh were intrigued. Then-Police Chief Jane Perlov dispatched a crew to High Point to see whether the program might work in the Capital City.
“A lot of people came back and said, ‘This looks like it’s worth giving a try,’ ” she said at a community meeting announcing the project in December 2006.
The program would target Southeast Raleigh’s South Park, a community five blocks long and wide, from Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard down to Hoke Street and from South Wilmington Street over to Garner Road. South Park consists mostly of old homes with elderly residents, but several deteriorating houses stand out. They are crack houses, where people sometimes disappear for days at a time while getting high. Prostitutes linger on streets nearby.
Amid these worn homes and forlorn corners, Raleigh police would try a new approach. This would be where Creating Hope and Opportunities in Communities Everywhere, better known as The CHOICE Project, was born.
Compelling invitation
Burlee Kersey and the 15 others gathered at Chavis Park more than a year ago because of an invitation from the police they found hard to turn down:
“I have proof that you are involved in selling drugs. I am inviting you to a meeting ... at [the] Chavis Park Community Center. You will not be arrested.”
Their loved ones had also been invited to help them make the decision to accept the rehabilitation program being offered.
On one of the room’s walls, a projection screen lit up. The image on the screen was an old man with wiry salt-and-pepper hair, selling drugs to an undercover investigator.
“That’s you, isn’t it?” a police officer said to Kersey.
Kersey didn’t answer. He could only look at the screen.
Kersey, then 71, had spent 50 years doing drugs. He had stolen, robbed and sold drugs to get his next high. Sometimes, he said, it hurt to think about all he had lost to his habit. He sacrificed relationships with his children. There were grandchildren he never met.
After all these years, Kersey was tired. He wasn’t sure how the program was going to help him, but he chose that day to give it a chance.
Age 9, started in crime
Braderick Peak was only 9 years old when he was given a package containing heroin and told to take it down the street. He wasn’t given money for the delivery.
Instead, he said, “I was paid in fun.”
That meant a night of pizza, soft drinks and usually a trip to a miniature golf course or a local arcade -- much more important to a 9-year-old than cash.
Eventually, the deliveries became sales.
He has been in and out of police custody throughout his life, and his criminal history includes more than two dozen arrests since 1993. When Peak found himself in the community room at Chavis Park, he pondered the offer before him. Now 31, he has children and a girlfriend who depend on him. Making $40 every so often on a drug deal isn’t what he wants for them -- or himself.
He had never had somebody offer to help him change his life. He wasn’t immediately willing to trust.
But the alternative was jail.
“I wanted what they were offering,” he said. “But I didn’t know how they were going to do it.”
Nerves aside, he was in.
Looking for success
What happened next would be new for everyone involved.
The Raleigh Police Department, equipped with statistics and testimonials from residents and law enforcement officials in High Point, was setting out to emulate what had been a success for another city.
Neighborhood residents, many of whom thought they had used up their options to clean up their streets, were giving it one more try. Their job would be to work together as a community and report crime as they saw it happen.
The 16 people chosen for the diversion program were just hoping to stay out of jail -- and to build some semblance of a normal life.
But there were no guarantees, as they all would soon find out.
News researcher Lamara Williams contributed to this report.
THE CHOICE PROJECT, BY THE NUMBERS
40 PERCENT: The drop in reported Part I violent crime -- homicide, rape, robbery and aggravated assault -- during The CHOICE Project, down to 43 incidents from 72 the previous year.
28 PERCENT: The drop in all reported Part I crime -- homicide, rape, robbery, burglary, larceny, arson, motor-vehicle theft and aggravated assault -- during CHOICE, down to 121 from 168 the previous year.
91 PERCENT: The increase in larcenies, with 44 incidents reported during The CHOICE Project, up from 23 the previous year. Police attribute the increase in reported incidents to additional patrol units in the area.
25: The number of drug dealers initially arrested as the program began.
0 PERCENT: There was no change in the number of drug-related arrests. Throughout the project, investigators were to engage potential buyers coming into the area, regularly resulting in charges.
16: The number of participants inducted into the My Brother’s Keeper program for rehabilitation.
14: The number who successfully graduated from My Brother’s Keeper.
Copyright 2008 The News & Observer