Crack

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.

Township police have charged two people with manufacturing crack cocaine after 375 vials of it were found in the suspects' apartment at the Creekside apartment complex. Gerald R. Scott, 24, and Radeen Fleming, 18, were arrested at home after the 7:30 a.m. search of their apartment Sunday. With the vials, police said they found empty bags that had contained new crack cocaine vials in the kitchen trash can. Police had gone to the apartment after receiving a tip that the two were manufacturing crack cocaine.

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.

At the Martin Luther King Plaza housing project, four towering tenements festering with drugs, the second-graders can tell you where the crack houses are. "I know where the Jamaicans at," said a 7-year-old girl who lives in the South Philadelphia project. She then ticked off three other places to buy crack in her building. The children know how the drug takes its toll. "You can tell when somebody's on the pipe," said an 11-year-old. "They look all dried up. Like a prune.

Julian Shelton's most recent crime rampage unfolded this spring, police say. On March 15, he was arrested on charges of swiping $21 worth of merchandise from a store at 21st Street and Lehigh Avenue in North Philadelphia. Shelton immediately skipped court, only to be picked up the next month. This time, police accused him of taking $20 from a new victim at knifepoint. In the past, alleged robbers such as Shelton typically faced no consequences for ducking court. Even when arrested for a new crime, they were simply given a new court date and set free.

City Councilman Bobby Henon plans to haul allegedly negligent landlords into City Hall to answer for why they have let properties deteriorate, going so far as to single out eight people during Council's session Thursday. If they refuse to agree to testify before Council, Henon said, he will subpoena them under a resolution he introduced in March to compel witnesses to come forward and provide documents. "We need to start thinking about how and why our buildings fall into disarray, about why they become abandoned in the first place, about the way that we respond when the first call comes in from a resident about short-dumping, about a broken window, about trash on a lawn, and any other property-maintenance issue," Henon said Thursday.

A street-level drug dealer who worked for two narcotics networks that distributed large amounts of cocaine and heroin in South Jersey was sentenced today to eight years in prison. Carlton Riley Jr., 21, of Camden, admitted he served as a "trapper," selling crack cocaine for two rings that were later targeted by investigations code-named Operation City Wide and Operation Jumpstart. Operation City Wide broke up a South Camden-based gang that authorities said was headed by Kyle Ogletree of Cherry Hill, a reputed five-star general in the G-Shine Bloods.

In the blink of an eye on Feb. 18, Pavel Kubina's chances of hoisting the Stanley Cup for a second time went from impossible to interesting when he was traded from Tampa Bay to Philadelphia. In one day, he went from the league's 24th-place team to the seventh-place squad. And so what if he changed a few latitudes along the way? "That doesn't bother me as much," Kubina said. "Where I'm from in the Czech Republic, we have weather similar to Philadelphia. " On Monday night, Kubina played against his former team for the first time since the trade, when he more or less left on bad terms.

Philadelphia is cracking down on its problem with unlicensed dogs, giving owners more opportunities to register their animals - along with higher penalties if they don't. The changes affect both owners and providers of services for dogs, including veterinarians, who are bristling at requirements they say conflict with their medical ethics. The city's newly amended animal code went into effect in mid-February. It expanded the outlets for registering dogs to include veterinarians, groomers, pet shops, even dog walkers in an effort to get more dogs licensed.

A national crackdown on tax-related identity theft last week targeted more than 100 people and led to 58 arrests, according to the IRS and other federal officials. The IRS said it was also stepping up internal reviews to spot false tax returns, and working to help victims of identity theft refund schemes. IRS Commissioner Doug Shulman said the crackdown "sends a strong, unmistakable message to anyone considering participating in a refund fraud scheme this tax season. We are aggressively pursuing cases across the nation with the Justice Department, and people will be going to jail.

IT'S HARDLY the dream-fulfilled of pick-your-own (or "a la carte") channel bundling, which some TV viewers have been craving. But Cox Cable's plan to go national with its bargain-priced ($25 to start, $35 after six months) TV Economy service, eliminating the mighty ESPN and other pricey channels, certainly represents a crack in the cable industry's wall of wills.

WASHINGTON - What projected as a season of mediocrity for the Rangers might have descended into a campaign of disaster. Under pressure after middle-of-the-pack finishes the past two seasons, their defense torn asunder by injury, the Rangers nonetheless exited their latest game, on Wednesday, with 48 points, second in the Eastern Conference. It is a tenuous position. When they play well, these Rangers chew nails in their cud and spit cinders, a reflection of coach and captain.

ATLANTIC CITY - Officials say plans are being made to repair cracks on the Boardwalk Empire facade on the Boardwalk. The Atlantic City Press reported that some cracks have appeared there in the past few weeks, emerging in the vinyl along the edges of the facade's panels. Officials say the problem should be corrected "in the very near future. " The 180-foot facade, in front of Boardwalk Hall near Florida Avenue, was erected in July. The majority of the mural is still visible and unblemished.

BEIJING - A veteran Chinese activist has been charged with subversion, a human rights group said Saturday, after another dissident was jailed for nine years in a crackdown aimed at preventing Arab Spring-style democratic uprisings. Chen Xi, 57, was arrested Nov. 29 and charged Friday in the southern province of Guizhou, the Information Center for Human Rights and Democracy said. The Hong Kong-based center said Chen, who left prison in 2005 after serving a 10-year sentence, was accused of writing 30 essays that incited subversion.