Crack

An admitted Southwest Philadelphia drug dealer told a federal jury yesterday that he routinely purchased three to five kilograms of cocaine a month from reputed drug kingpin Alton "Ace Capone" Coles from early in 2003 until summer 2005. Desmond Faison said three of those kilograms usually were converted into small doses of crack cocaine sold by a network of dealers working for him around the Paschall Homes in Southwest Philadelphia. The remainder, he said, was resold to dealers from other parts of the city or from New Jersey.

Our Jan. 11 entry about a hairline crack in a countertop brought some expert advice and more questions, proving once more that one should never take anything for granite. The hairline crack under discussion was about 22 inches long, and was in front of the sink. The countertops are five years old, and the installer is out of business. Marty Jensen of Blue Bell spent 44 years in the granite business, and, though retired, troubleshoots for trade organizations. He said the crack may be the result of a natural fissure or could be a pressure crack caused by the method of installation.

I SAT CUFFED on the couch with tube socks over my hands as the shrinks fired questions at me. "Do you know why you're here, Mr. Jones?" said the one with the phony smile. I ignored him, just like I'd done the others. I wasn't going to spill my guts just because of one little meltdown on Market Street. "Mr. Jones, we're trying to help you," said a female doctor who seemed genuinely concerned. "Don't you want to be helped?" My tough exterior started to crack. I nodded slowly.

The Willingboro School Board will decide next week whether to hire a Cherry Hill architectural firm to investigate a 6-inch-wide crack that has been spreading along the foundation of the Hawthorne Park Elementary School. The district has been patching the crack in the school's concrete foundation for a number of years, Assistant School Superintendent Marcel Gilbert said Monday night during a board meeting. "We thought the crack was just from settling," he said. "But now we're concerned, because the school has been settling for 20 years.

Drug kingpin Derrick A. Grandison yesterday was jailed for 20 years without chance of parole for selling more than 30 pounds of crack and regular cocaine throughout the city. Grandison, 43, also was fined $100,000. He will be under court supervision for the rest of his life after his release from prison, said Assistant U.S. Attorney Odell Guyton. U.S. District Judge Edmund V. Ludwig, who handed down the jail term, called it a "very lenient sentence" and suggested it would have been more harsh had not the Jamaican-born Grandison pleaded guilty and become an informant against his suppliers and accomplices.

A reputed North Philadelphia drug boss allegedly used his teenage sons for several months in 1991 to deliver crack cocaine to a "select group" of customers who lived in Center City, a federal grand jury has charged. The grand jury said Antonio Santell's other customers had to go to the rear of his home on Orthodox Street near Tackawana, which was open for business around the clock. There, they could put money in a can and wait while the can was pulled to an upper floor, where the money was counted, before they their drugs were returned in the can. At times between January and May 1991 the drug network was grossing about $4,000 a day in crack sales, the grand jury charged.

The prosecution wanted to put on a scale all the drug packets the cops scooped up while arresting Derrick Johnson last Dec. 13. If the weight was more than two grams, Johnson, 28, faced a mandatory year in prison. But the packets never got to the scale. Common Pleas Judge William J. Mazzola agreed with Johnson's lawyer that there was no sound evidence that the packets had belonged to Johnson. After all, it was dark, and there were plenty of other drug dealers around Myrtlewood and Jefferson streets, tossing bags when police showed up,argued George H. Newman.

I THINK Signe Wilkinson's "World Parenting Styles" cartoon shows that the artist and the Daily News are extremely ignorant on the problems faced by our young people in the city. I am a principal of an alternative high school in North Philadelphia, and I see children and young adults facing the drug problem every day. Here we have a seven-year-old girl bringing 12 bags of crack to school, and it is turned into a joke. The children of our impoverished neighborhoods face real issues that they have no control of. They face murder and drug trafficking every day, and they have no choice but to live in this horrifying condition.

HOW LOW can we go? I'm talking, of course, about today's waistbands. If you thought the belly-baring thing was bad enough, take a look at the sartorial depths to which fashion has now sunk. The L.A. Times has declared it "the summer of the pelvic bone. " Last year's already obscene low-riders have gone the way of high-water polyester pants. Today's hip-huggers have almost nothing but hope to hang onto anymore. The "normal" inseam-to-waist rise of 8 to 9 inches is shrinking faster than Britney Spears' record sales.

In the cold logic of urban evolution, can gourmet restaurants and art galleries rout crack? That's the six-figure issue for residents of Spring Garden, a gentrifying neighborhood of stately trees and grand six-figure Victorian homes - but also a neighborhood with a flourishing crack trade on its streets. It was just four years ago that one of the leaders in the gentrification movement predicted that simple economics guaranteed change for the rectangular neighborhood northwest of Center City.

TORONTO - Police conducted a series of early morning raids Thursday targeting an apartment complex linked to a video purportedly showing the mayor of Toronto smoking crack cocaine. Toronto Police Chief Bill Blair said 43 arrests have been made targeting a gang called the Dixon City Bloods or Dixon Goonies. Police seized 40 guns, $3 million worth of drugs, and $570,000 in cash. The raid included a building complex where reporters claim drug dealers showed them a cellphone video of Mayor Rob Ford smoking crack cocaine.

THE DRUG ENFORCEMENT Administration had Griffin T. Campbell dead-to-rights. It was the middle of the summer in 2000, and a confidential informant bought 56 grams of crack cocaine from Griffin for $1,800 at the Happy Hollow Playground on Wayne Avenue in Germantown - all while DEA agents watched, according to court documents. Six months later, the same informant returned to Germantown - again under DEA surveillance - and allegedly purchased 54 grams of crack from Campbell, whose construction company was in charge of demolishing a four-story Center City property that collapsed Wednesday, killing six people and injuring 13 others.

Is there a more appropriately named summer resort than Wildwood? Few beachcombers visit this Cape May County boardwalk haven, which last summer celebrated its centennial, for the peace and quiet. But enough is enough. Now, Mayor Ernie Troiano wants to make Wildwood a little less wild. In two weeks, he is confident that he and his two fellow commissioners will pass a boardwalk ordinance banning sagging pants and going shirtless after sunset, or shoeless anytime. Violators could pay $25; repeat offenders, possibly more.

Brittany Lofton spots them all the time: teens and college students clutching their beat-up cellphones, with cracks spider-webbed across the screens. Sure, the screen's razory shards make reading a text and posting Instagram photos blurry, not to mention possibly painful. But that's part of the appeal. Introducing the cracked cellphone screen, which raises the bar by lowering it. Think of it as the tech generation's ripped jeans or unwashed hair. Unshaven faces. Low-riding jeans.

TORONTO - A video purportedly of Toronto Mayor Rob Ford smoking crack has caused an uproar in Canada. Ford on Friday called the allegations "ridiculous. " The video has not been released publicly, and there is no way to verify whether it is authentic. Reports by gossip website Gawker and the Toronto Star said it was taken by a man who claimed he had sold crack to Ford. The Associated Press hasn't seen the video. The conservative mayor of Canada's largest city refused to take questions Friday.

ENFORCEMENT BY THE Philadelphia Police Department against violators on wheels and on heels increased last year, fulfilling a pledge made by city officials and Police Commissioner Charles Ramsey to better enforce the law. I'm not sure if the improvement is a result the city's (invisible) "give respect, get respect" campaign, or the hectoring by a singularly "crabby" "dinosaur" who uses his column to "yell at clouds" (to quote some of my bikehead critics). If the latter, the clouds are listening.

FONTANA, Calif. - Kyle Busch earned his first victory of the season at Fontana on Sunday after rivals Denny Hamlin and Joey Logano wrecked on the final lap in a thrilling NASCAR finish. Hamlin and Logano made contact while they raced side-by-side in the final lap of their first race since the drivers confronted each other last week at Bristol. Logano hit the outside wall and Hamlin hit the inside wall, with Hamlin getting attention in an ambulance and eventually being airlifted to a hospital.

In the 13 years since her debut album - the sparkling R&B-lite Can't Take Me Home - Pink has consistently crafted new ways of presenting herself. She insists on it, eschewing as she has any notion of ditzy celebrity and Mickey-Mouse pop. Rather than stay on hedonistic pop topics, she co-penned tunes that took on drug addiction ("Just Like a Pill") and dysfunctional parents ("Family Portrait") without losing hit-selling status. One could call the Doylestown-raised Pink - a.k.a. Alecia Moore, and now as she prefers it, P!

RALEIGH, N.C. - Federal investigators have unraveled a huge scheme among dozens of insurance agents, claims adjusters, brokers, and farmers in eastern North Carolina to steal at least $100 million from the government-backed program that insures crops. Authorities say the ongoing investigation is already the largest such ring uncovered in the country. Forty-one defendants have either pleaded guilty or reached plea agreements after profiting from false insurance claims for losses of tobacco, soybeans, wheat, and corn.