(4 of 9)
Many young dealers also use crack profits to help their struggling families -- and the extra cash that appears on the kitchen table can persuade parents to look the other way while their children are heading into trouble. Denise Robinson, founder of the Detroit community-action group Saving Our Kids, even recalls a mother who dissuaded her son from returning to high school. "He had been a good student. He had good grades," says Robinson. "((But)) he was making $600 a week dealing crack. So his mother wanted him to keep dealing." The incentive is powerful: "The kids say, 'We don't have any food. Why should I watch my mother suffer?' " says Robinson. "They feel like they have to be the breadwinners. It is a manhood thing because there is no father in the house."
Parents who are not bought off can be intimidated. A Washington-area woman called her minister for help when she discovered $40,000 and two semiautomatic weapons under her son's bed. In New York City, a recovering drug addict intervened when his mother found 400 crack vials in her younger son's coat pockets: "I told her if she throwed it away, she'd find her son dead."
In some instances, the youngsters simply disappear, slipping into the drug underworld for months at a time. Says Michael Sinnott, a Wayne County, Mich., juvenile-probation officer: "People have been walking in saying their kids ran away. But the kids are in the community. In effect, the parents are being told by the children, 'I can't tell you what I'm doing or where I am because if I do, your life may be in jeopardy.' These are eleven-and twelve- and 13- year-olds."
Youngsters are sometimes physically unable to return home. Detroit police frequently find juveniles locked in crack houses by older dealers. The teen dealers sit inside, selling drugs through slots in a wall. "There were bars on the windows, bars on the doors, and they had McDonald's food delivered in," says an Arkansas police chief about a group of local teens recruited to Detroit. "They were virtually held captive."
In perhaps the worst situations, crack dealing becomes a family operation. New York Crack Dealer Woodberry hired several relatives. The family members learned, however, that Jeff was a scrupulous bookkeeper and hard taskmaster. When one held back on a debt, Woodberry attacked him with a baseball bat. "This drug game," he says, "is nothing to play with."
It is hardly surprising that much of the violence in the inner city is crack fueled. Dealers too young to boast a driver's license have ready access to state-of-the-art firearms: Uzi submachine guns, .357 Magnums and MAC 10s. "You don't see Saturday-night specials anymore," says New York Deputy Police Chief Raymond Kelly. "It's a thing of the past." Adolescent gunmen have itchier trigger fingers. Gang shootouts caused 387 deaths in Los Angeles last year; more than half the victims were innocent bystanders. "You put a gun in kids' hands, and they are more dangerous than adults," says Janice Warder of the district attorney's office in Dallas County, Texas. "They just don't realize the value of life or how easy it is to kill somebody." Says Assistant Wayne County Prosecutor Augustus Hutting: "Crack cocaine, guns and youth are an extremely lethal mixture."