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A Community Under Siege: The Crack Epidemic and Washington Heights



-- by Eric Stephen Bias --

New York is a city that constantly wrestles with a state of flux. With the rough and tumble
of city life, and of course, rising rents, businesses and institutions that seem to have been thriving
one year are often gone the next, with many beloved namesCBGBs, the Limelight, 5 Pointz
now only memories. When people recall the old New York, they often speak nostalgically of the
city before it became sanitized and corporate. The Bad Old Days, when New York was at its
rawest, when, as the nostalgic argue, one could find more character and creativity. The city
possessed an elusive energy, that, opposed to cookie cutter bank branches and chain stores, made
New York, New York. But people forget what made the Bad Old Days bad.

In the 1970s up to the early 90s, New York was not a place many would want to live. Violent
crime and homicide was at an exceptionally high level city-wide, not just in the outer boroughs.
1

Times Square was a seedy haven for prostitution and drug dealing.
2
Bryant Park and Tompkins
Square Park, now popular urban oases, were both known by: Needle Park. Other iconic
destinations like Grand Central Terminal and the grounds of the New York Public Library, were
decaying, open air drug markets.
3
The subways were often avoided for fear of violent street gangs.
4

But no area in the city was as affected by crime as the Northern Manhattan neighborhood of
Washington Heights. Beginning sometime in the the 1980s, Washington Heights became crippled by

1
Kelling, George L. How New York Became Safe: The Full Story. City Journal, n.d. http://www.city-
journal.org/2009/nytom_ny-crime-decline.html.
2
Ibid.
3
Ibid.
4
Ibid.

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the explosive growth of a new type of drug: crack cocaine. In a short time, Washington Heights
became both the murder capital of the city and the largest retail drug market in the United States.
5


In this paper, I will examine the crack epidemic as it relates to Washington Heights. I will
draw from personal interviews, newspaper articles and academic research to weave together a
portrait of the neighborhood, and the attitudes surrounding the crack epidemic in New York City,
with special attention given to media coverage, police tactics, and the effects of the drug trade on the
people who lived among it. How did the local community deal with the epidemic, and how did the
neighborhood emerge to become what it is today? What led to the crack epidemic in the first place?

Crack Cocaine: Demon Drug?
Cocaine has a long and interesting history in the United States. Its chemical name is
benzoylmethyl ecgonine, and it is a crystalline alkaloid derived from the South American-grown coca
plant.
6
Somewhat similar to caffeine and nicotine in composition and effects, it has in the past been
used medicinally as a local anesthetic.
7
In terms of consumption, it is most often sniffed up the nose
and absorbed in the mucus membranes of the nasal cavities, although it can be dissolved in water
and injected.
8
In the nineteenth century, cocaine was widely (and legally) available as an additive in
perishable, often alcoholic, liquidsCoca-Cola, most famously, is known to have originally included
cocaine as an ingredient when it was created in 1886.
9
Cocaine and other hard drugs did not have

5
Nix, Crystal. Tales Of Two Precincts - One Better, One Worse; The 34th: Murders Surge As Crack Spreads. The
New York Times, March 29, 1987, sec. Week in Review. http://www.nytimes.com/1987/03/29/weekinreview/tales-
two-precincts-one-better-one-worse-34th-murders-surge-crack-spreads.html.
6
Helmenstine, Dr. Anne Marie. Cocaine Facts - Information about Powdered Cocaine. About.com Chemistry.
Accessed May 2, 2014. http://chemistry.about.com/od/drugs/a/cocainefacts.htm.
7
Ibid.
8
Ibid.
9
Hamblin, James. Why We Took Cocaine Out of Soda. The Atlantic, January 31, 2013.
http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2013/01/why-we-took-cocaine-out-of-soda/272694/.

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the sort of stigma that they carry today (one could buy heroin and other drug-laced medicines from
the Sears-Roebuck catalog, and Pope Leo XIII reportedly loved Vin Mariani, a cocaine-laced wine),
but once cocaine became a lens through which whites could demonize racial minorities, particularly
poor blacks, a moral panic soon emerged that led to the criminalization of drugs.
10
This is the root
of the punitive paradigm surrounding drugs that dominates today.

The drug known as crack is merely a different form of cocaine; chemically it is the same
substance.
11
Once powdered cocaine is dissolved in a solution of water and baking soda, the solution
is boiled, and the solid can be separated out and dried.
12
The resulting rock crystal substancecrack
cocaine is a purer drug, as the process with which to make it also separates the cut, or the
substances wholesalers use to dilute the product in order to gain more profit.
13
To consume the
drug, it is heated in a pipe or spoon until the substance melts and produces a vapor, which the user
then inhales.
14
Its name derives from the cracking sound the drug makes when its heated.
15
The
effect of the drug is an intense, euphoric, but short-lived high, lasting as much as five minutes and
far more intense than that of powder cocaine.
16
However, the differences in effect between cocaine
and crack are not a function of the drugs themselves but from the way they are consumed;

10
Ibid.
11
Watson, Stephanie. How Crack Cocaine Works. HowStuffWorks. Accessed May 13, 2014.
http://science.howstuffworks.com/crack.htm.
12
Ibid.
13
Ibid.
14
Helmenstine, Dr. Anne Marie. 8 Facts About Crack Cocaine. About.com Chemistry. Accessed May 2, 2014.
http://chemistry.about.com/od/drugs/a/crackcocainefaq.htm.
15
Ibid.
16
Reinarman, Craig, and Harry G. Levine, eds. Crack in America: Demon Drugs and Social Justice. University of
California Press, 1997. p. 136-138.

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transmission into the bloodstream and to the brain is much faster when inhaled through the lungs
than as absorbed through the mucus membranes in the nasal cavity.
17


In the 80s, with a glut in the South American cocaine market, distributors priced crack
cocaine extremely low to move supply. It was typically sold in single quantities for as cheap as $5 or
less.
18
For comparison, in 1984 an ounce of powdered cocaine could be had for around $200.
19
As a
result, crack became very accessible to every strata of society, from Wall Street financiers to the
inner city poor. It was uniquely positioned to take New York by storm.
20


Washington Heights: The Drug Dealers Dream
Having lived in Washington Heights for the past four years, in a short amount of time I have
witnessed a great deal of change. After many family-owned businesses closed their doors for the last
time, like Olympia Florist on the corner of Broadway and 158th, and the El Mundo discount store
on 159th and Ft. Washington, their storefronts are now under the glow of the corporate logos of
Starbucks and Planet Fitness. A new independent coffee shop recently opened up around the
corner, attracting young professionals that I would more typically see farther downtown. The signs
of gentrification can be seen and felt everywhere I go, so when I hear stories of how dangerous this
neighborhood was just 20 years ago I cant help but be fascinated. What let Washington Heights
become that bad?

Washington Heights is a neighborhood in Northern Manhattan, spanning from about
Dyckman Street to 155th Street north to south, and from east to west the entire width of Manhattan

17
Ibid.
18
Williams, Terry. The Cocaine Kids. Kindle Edition. Da Capo Press, n.d. Accessed May 2, 2014. p. 6.
19
Ibid.
20
Ibid.

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from the Harlem River to the Hudson. Its most prominent feature is the George Washington
Bridge, a major point of entry into New York City from New Jersey and the most trafficked highway
bridge in the world.
21
The area is heavily Dominican, although it is somewhat segregated both
racially and socioeconomically. Broadway serves as a dividing line bordering a small, traditionally
Jewish enclave on the west side dotted with upscale op-ops, gourmet restaurants and wine shops.
On the east side, the atmosphere is more culturally rich, but also noticeably grittier. Tiny, hole-in-
the-wall diners serving Dominican staples such as fried plantains and oxtail abound, and in balmy
summer evenings, bachata, the characteristic style of music from the Dominican Republic, can be
heard drifting from apartment windows down to the streets below. On Broadway, street hustlers line
up used boots, cell phone chargers, and bootleg DVDs to sell along the pavement outside of
McDonalds. Little old Spanish ladies cheerfully set bowls of kibble and milk for the stray cats
roaming the vacant lots at night. Livery cabs chirp their horns at passersby, trying to make a quick
fare.

If you walk along 160th Street, past the renovated public library, towards the Morris Jumel
Mansion (the oldest house in Manhattan and where George Washington briefly based his command
during the Revolution), you might notice among the brownstones and co-ops that are characteristic
in this area one window a bit different from the others. Take a peek through, and found inside is a
conspicuously arranged collection of books and memorabilia. This is the home of Kurt Thometz.
Thometz is a private librarian and historical curator who moved into the area in the 1970s. He found
himself allured by the deep roots that jazz held here; the neighborhood boasted such notables as
Duke Ellington and Count Basie.
22
Driven by this passion and a love of literature, he amassed an

21
History. Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, n.d. http://www.panynj.gov/bridges-tunnels/gwb-
history.html.
22
Kurt Thometz, interview by Eric Stephen Bias, New York, NY, April 26, 2014.

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eclectic collection of rare books on topics especially unique to the area, from black culture, to jazz,
to inevitably, narcotics. He invited me into his home to discuss the neighborhood as it was before I
came to know it, one that I could not recognize. Just a few decades ago, livestock grazed in the
vacant lots and people could grill on their fire escapes, if they didnt keep live chickens on them.
23

Many blocks had more than a few abandoned tenements. The Heights were still a part of busy
Manhattan, but it felt a like a world apart.

The George Washington Bridge, in addition to five other bridges and three highways, led
easy routes into the city from New Jersey, Upstate New York, Connecticut, and elsewhere, snaking
deep into the island like roots of a tree.
24
Furthermore, the large influx of poor, undereducated
Dominican immigrants into the neighborhood contributed to a large resident minority desperate to
enter the economy, entrepreneurs with nothing to sell and little capital to open a business.
25

Tenements in impoverished ghettos like Washington Heights were perfect candidates to both
produce and sell drugs, due to a higher tendency for both tenants and landlords to be apathetic to
drug activity.
26
Combined with an overstretched police precinct, the 34th, which at the time was
responsible for the entire northern end of the island from Inwood 50 blocks down to 155th, and the
Heights was a perfect location to operate as a major drug distribution hub, not just for New York
but for the entire Northeast region.
27


Standing on my very own street corner, with myriad stories about the crack epidemic in
mind, I look about with a sense of disbelief. But the grip that drugs had on the neighborhood was

23
Ibid.
24
Halbfinger, David M. In Washington Heights, Drug War Survivors Reclaim Their Stoops. The New York Times,
May 18, 1998. http://academics.wellesley.edu/Chemistry/Chem101/war/html%20pages/ny-heights-crime.html.
25
Ibid.
26
Williams, Terry. The Cocaine Kids. Kindle Edition. Da Capo Press, n.d. Accessed May 2, 2014. p. 52.
27
Kurt Thometz, interview by Eric Stephen Bias, New York, NY, April 26, 2014.

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absolute. Factors mentioned above led the entire neighborhood to become an open air drug market.
Scores of competing dealers looking to make a sale would swarm customers in all hours of the day
without fear of the police. Cars from out of state drove in over the George Washington Bridge and
would double and even triple park to buy drugs.
28
Street gangs like the Wild Cowboys and the
Diablos would own whole blocks, intimidating any and all around them who would threaten their
supremacy, keeping hold of their market with ruthless force.
29
Discarded crack vials littered the
pavement like cigarette butts.
30
Dealers would often employ teenagers as runners and lookouts, since
the Rockefeller drug laws mandated harsh penalties for anyone over eighteen in possession of illegal
narcotics.
31
Murder and violence in the streets was a common occurrence; one resident even
reported seeing from her window a man shot in the head in the middle of the street in broad
daylight.
32


To be fair, many of these problems were not endemic to Washington Heights, but were
unfortunately common in cash-strapped cities nationwide. This was well-covered by the media to
the point of exaggeration at least, outright fear mongering at worst. A prominent example is the
1986 CBS documentary, 48 Hours on Crack Street, which resorted to half-truths and
sensationalism at the expense of honest journalism. There are scenes of poor, predominantly
African-American young men lighting up in the streets in broad daylight, despite statistics that the

28
Halbfinger, David M. In Washington Heights, Drug War Survivors Reclaim Their Stoops. The New York
Times, May 18, 1998. http://academics.wellesley.edu/Chemistry/Chem101/war/html%20pages/ny-heights-
crime.html.
29
Kurt Thometz, interview by Eric Stephen Bias, New York, NY, April 26, 2014.
30
Ibid.
31
Williams, Terry. The Cocaine Kids. Kindle Edition. Da Capo Press, n.d. Accessed May 2, 2014. p. 8.
32
Halbfinger, David M. In Washington Heights, Drug War Survivors Reclaim Their Stoops. The New York Times,
May 18, 1998. http://academics.wellesley.edu/Chemistry/Chem101/war/html%20pages/ny-heights-crime.html.

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majority of drug users were middle class and white.
3334
A pre-Fox News Bernie Goldberg is shown
trolling around the ghetto in his car, asking random, sketchy characters for crack, even though there
is no indication that they could have been dealers. In another scene, a dealer is brazen enough to try
to make a sale with him even in the presence of a news camera.
35
There are various hospital scenes
in which teenagers apparently under the influence appear violently delirious, pulling at their
restraints, lashing out at doctors. Some are shown gazing into space as incredulous doctors,
policemen and journalists disapprovingly stare.
36
There are even more scenes of indignant whites
complaining that their neighborhoods are overrun with depravity, but there are few if any scenes of
similar residents in black or Latino neighborhoods like Washington Heights.
37
A drug user
complains that she had been strung out for three days without sleep, despite the fact that the effects
of crack use are very short lived, usually only a few minutes.
38
The violence associated with drug use,
highlighted of course in the documentary, actually resulted from the illegal nature of the trade, not as
an effect of the drugs themselves.
39
Even the enduring myth of so-called crack babieschildren
supposedly born addicted to crack due to heavy use by the motheris just that, fiction. A recent
long-term study concluded that the characteristics associated with crack babies, such as smaller
heads and weaker muscle tone, were found to be an effect of poverty rather than cocaine use.
40



33
Gwynne, Kristen, and AlterNet. 4 Biggest Myths About Crack. Accessed May 3, 2014.
http://www.salon.com/2013/08/10/busting_the_crack_propaganda_myths_partner/.
34
48 Hours on Crack Street. 48 Hours. CBS. Accessed May 2, 2014. http://www.cbsnews.com/videos/48-hours-
on-crack-street/.
35
Ibid.
36
Ibid.
37
Ibid.
38
Gwynne, Kristen, and AlterNet. 4 Biggest Myths About Crack. Accessed May 3, 2014.
http://www.salon.com/2013/08/10/busting_the_crack_propaganda_myths_partner/.
39
Reinarman, Craig, and Harry G. Levine, eds. Crack in America: Demon Drugs and Social Justice. University of
California Press, 1997.
40
McDonough, Katie. Long-Term Study Debunks the Myth of the Crack Baby. Salon, July 23, 2013.
http://www.salon.com/2013/07/23/longterm_study_debunks_myth_of_the_crack_baby/.

Bias 9
A Light at the End of the Tunnel
In light of all this, what initiatives were undertaken by the authorities and the city to reduce
the level of drug dealing and use in Washington Heights? In April of 1986, the NYPD instituted
Operation Clean Heights, an interagency initiative to crack down on drug crime in the
neighborhood with greater manpower and resources.
41
Unfortunately, it did not have a significant
effect. On one day in November, for instance, 300 police officers and federal drug enforcement
agents descended upon 160th Street, seizing two buildings, 35 apartments, five pounds of cocaine,
and arresting 31 dealers.
42
The next morning, however, the dealers were back out on the streets,
selling to limos which had driven in from Virginia.
43
Residents were still terrified of stray bullets
flying through their windows.

Some, like Kurt Thometz, argue that the reduction in drug crime was simply a result of time;
generations of youngsters saw what had happened to their older peers and decided to stay away
from the violence and disease that the drug trade had brought on their communities. Others
attribute the improvement to Mayor Rudy Giulianis efforts to clean up New York. The reality
though was a bit of botha combination of police and community efforts were instrumental in
taking back the streets. The local residents, weary of living in fear, were now proactively attempting
to drive out drug dealers. The tenants of one building, for instance, pooled their resources, bought a
neighboring building that had been populated with dealers and addicts, and then promptly evicted
them.
44
Similarly, members of local community groups and associations like the Jewish Community

41
Kriegel, Mark. Cocaine Capital Residents Live In Fear On 160th Street, The Worst Retail Drug Block In New
York City. Sun Sentinel, November 24, 1989. http://articles.sun-sentinel.com/1989-11-
24/news/8902110548_1_narcotics-officers-dominican-republic-drug-experts.
42
Ibid.
43
Ibid.
44
Halbfinger, David M. In Washington Heights, Drug War Survivors Reclaim Their Stoops. The New York Times,
May 18, 1998. http://academics.wellesley.edu/Chemistry/Chem101/war/html%20pages/ny-heights-crime.html.

Bias 10
Council and the Guardian Angels made nightly security patrols and neighborhood watches around
high crime streets.
45
Residents were beginning to stand up to the menace on their doorsteps before it
began to infect everyones lives.

There were some police initiatives post-Operation Clean Heights that had an effect in
curbing the drug markets control of the streets as well. In 1996, the 34th precinct was split in two,
so that police could better concentrate their efforts.
46
The drug dealers that were driven inside by the
increased presence were further hounded when police began to negotiate with landlords to be
allowed to patrol inside buildings.
47
The city, state, and federal governments began to share their
information more fully, which led to more efficient police actions.
48
Furthermore, with the advent of
CompStat, a system which allowed the NYPD to map out specific areas where crimes occur and to
gain valuable statistical data on their efforts, police commanders could hold precincts accountable
based on the number and type of crimes in a given area.
49
Another factor in the decline of the crack
epidemic was the so-called broken windows theory of policing. Pioneered by Mayor Rudy Giuliani
and Police Commissioner Bill Bratton (who is serving a second time as of this writing under Mayor
Bill De Blasio), broken windows theory surmises that if smaller crimes, like public drinking and
panhandling, are dealt with first by issuing summonses and administering fines, the larger problems,
like assault and murder, will be less likely to erupt.
50
These efforts proved to be highly successful;

45
Nix, Crystal. Tales Of Two Precincts - One Better, One Worse; The 34th: Murders Surge As Crack Spreads.
The New York Times, March 29, 1987, sec. Week in Review.
http://www.nytimes.com/1987/03/29/weekinreview/tales-two-precincts-one-better-one-worse-34th-murders-surge-
crack-spreads.html.
46
Halbfinger, David M. In Washington Heights, Drug War Survivors Reclaim Their Stoops. The New York Times,
May 18, 1998. http://academics.wellesley.edu/Chemistry/Chem101/war/html%20pages/ny-heights-crime.html.
47
Ibid.
48
Ibid.
49
Kelling, George L. How New York Became Safe: The Full Story. City Journal, n.d. http://www.city-
journal.org/2009/nytom_ny-crime-decline.html.
50
Traub, James. New York Story. The New Republic, January 27, 1997.

Bias 11
after a high of 119 murders north of 155th Street in 1991, that number was reduced in 1998 to only
5.
51
Today, Washington Heights is one of New Yorks safest areas.

In 1986, on the corner of 160th and Amsterdam Avenue, at the time the center of the drug
trade in not only Washington Heights but the entire city, then-US Attorney Rudy Giuliani and
Senator Alfonse DAmato, both in disguise and accompanied by a television crew, personally bought
crack cocaine on the street in plain view. Today, Washington Heights is the fourth safest
neighborhood in New York City.
52
Few indication of the areas violent past is long gone. Now, the
block is dominated by a recently-built elementary school, P.S. 4, also known as the Duke Ellington
School, underscoring the neighborhoods jazz roots. Old men in Yankees caps play dominos and
drink Coronas on the corner in the summer afternoons. The crack demon is a distant memory, but
the scars are still there. On the side of a building above a parking lot, is a mural warning kids to just
say no.

Bibliography
48 Hours on Crack Street. 48 Hours. CBS. Accessed May 2, 2014.
http://www.cbsnews.com/videos/48-hours-on-crack-street/.

Gwynne, Kristen. 4 Biggest Myths About Crack. Accessed May 3, 2014.
http://www.salon.com/2013/08/10/busting_the_crack_propaganda_myths_partner/.


51
Halbfinger, David M. In Washington Heights, Drug War Survivors Reclaim Their Stoops. The New York
Times, May 18, 1998. http://academics.wellesley.edu/Chemistry/Chem101/war/html%20pages/ny-heights-
crime.html.
52
Kriegel, Mark. Cocaine Capital Residents Live In Fear On 160th Street, The Worst Retail Drug Block In New
York City. Sun Sentinel, November 24, 1989. http://articles.sun-sentinel.com/1989-11-
24/news/8902110548_1_narcotics-officers-dominican-republic-drug-experts.

Bias 12
Halbfinger, David M. In Washington Heights, Drug War Survivors Reclaim Their Stoops. The
New York Times, May 18, 1998.
http://academics.wellesley.edu/Chemistry/Chem101/war/html%20pages/ny-heights-crime.html.

Hamblin, James. Why We Took Cocaine Out of Soda. The Atlantic, January 31, 2013.
http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2013/01/why-we-took-cocaine-out-of-soda/272694/.

Helmenstine, Dr. Anne Marie. 8 Facts About Crack Cocaine. About.com Chemistry. Accessed May 2,
2014. http://chemistry.about.com/od/drugs/a/crackcocainefaq.htm.

. Cocaine Facts - Information about Powdered Cocaine. About.com Chemistry. Accessed
May 2, 2014. http://chemistry.about.com/od/drugs/a/cocainefacts.htm.

History. Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, n.d. http://www.panynj.gov/bridges-
tunnels/gwb-history.html.

Kelling, George L. How New York Became Safe: The Full Story. City Journal, n.d.
http://www.city-journal.org/2009/nytom_ny-crime-decline.html.

Kriegel, Mark. Cocaine Capital Residents Live In Fear On 160th Street, The Worst Retail Drug
Block In New York City. Sun Sentinel, November 24, 1989. http://articles.sun-sentinel.com/1989-
11-24/news/8902110548_1_narcotics-officers-dominican-republic-drug-experts.

Nix, Crystal. DRUG INFLUX A STRAIN ON THE BEAT. The New York Times, September 26,
1986, sec. N.Y. / Region. http://www.nytimes.com/1986/09/26/nyregion/drug-influx-a-strain-on-
the-beat.html.

. Tales Of Two Precincts - One Better, One Worse; The 34th: Murders Surge As Crack
Spreads. The New York Times, March 29, 1987, sec. Week in Review.
http://www.nytimes.com/1987/03/29/weekinreview/tales-two-precincts-one-better-one-worse-
34th-murders-surge-crack-spreads.html.

Traub, James. New York Story. The New Republic, January 27, 1997.

Reinarman, Craig, and Harry G. Levine, eds. Crack in America: Demon Drugs and Social Justice.
University of California Press, 1997.

Bias 13

Watson, Stephanie. How Crack Cocaine Works. HowStuffWorks. Accessed May 13, 2014.
http://science.howstuffworks.com/crack.htm.

Williams, Terry. The Cocaine Kids. Kindle Edition. Da Capo Press, n.d. Accessed May 2, 2014.

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