Anti-drug campaign succeeds in U.S. city

Press, Volume CXI, Issue 32703, 4 September 1971, Page 13

Anti-drug campaign succeeds in U.S. city

(Newsweek Feature Service)

The police informer has never been a character honest citizens wanted anything to do with. By tradition, he is a sleazy if useful smalltimer, plying his odious trade in back alleys and cheap hotels.

Yet in Tampa, Florida, these days, the police, the business community, the Chamber of Commerce and the Rotary Club have all joined forces not only to encourage informing but to urge their fellow citizens to get into the game. Using posters and television and radio advertisements, they are exhorting the good people of Tampa to turn in drug-pushers for a bounty of up to $5OO apiece. What’s more, it’s worked. The Tampa police have received 3000 anonymous tips in less than a year, the courts are jammed with cases that have resulted, the pushers seem to be scared, and untold numbers of ordinary citizens have taken part in a campaign with al! the trappings of a spy mission, complete with code names and surreptitious pay-offs. The unusual programme is aptly named T.I.P. (for “turn in a pusher”) and it is the idea of a 34-year-old former F.BJ. agent, James Cusack, now a businessman. In the last few years, Tampa’s drug population has leaped from 50 known addicts to an estimated 4000 (out of a population of about 300,000). Confronted with this epidemic, the Chamber of Commerce last year asked a special task force, headed by Mr Cusack, to make recommendations.

“Comparatively, our problem is not as bad as in other cities,” Mr Cusack says, “but I don’t take much solace in that, do you? We put our heads together and I came up with the concept of paid informers from my law enforcement background." Perhaps more remarkably, the good folks of Tampa

greeted the idea warmly. In just two meetings with Tampa business executives, the Chamber raised an $BOOO kitty with the pitch, “Would you buy a ticket to Raiford (the state prison) for a worthy pusher?” When the first payments were made, the Rotary Club, unsolicited, contributed another $lOOO. The response from the community at large has been overwhelming. About half the calls, in fact, have come from teen-agers. “We have more information than we can run down,” Sheriff Malcolm Beard says. The city’s overworked court system, moreover, is now struggling to handle 280 cases that have stemmed directly from anonymous tips. Only five convictions have resulted so far, but many more are expected when the courts catch up.

Perhaps most importantly, the change in the atmosphere of the drug world, police say, has been dramatic. “The pushers are getting paranoid,” Sheriff Beard claims. “They really don’t know who’s going to squeal on them, maybe their best buddy. We’ve heard that some have already cleared out. After all, a town with a price on a pusher’s head is simply not a good place to push in.”

The public appeals, not surprisingly, have also harvested a fair number of crank and prank calls. The police got no fewer than 20 calls about one alleged pusher, and were flabbergasted to discover that he was the headmaster of a local boy’s school. They quickly realised that the calls were from a ring of practical jokers in the school.

In a more serious incident, a caller planted some heroin on a man’s doorstep, then told the police it was there. The victim was arrested and even charged, but established his innocence. Through his information, the caller was tracked * down and accused of making a false criminal report. There have also- been a

few complaints about the morality of T.l.P.’s suggestion that people inform on their neighbours, but the programme has generally been popular. It has also successfully protected the anonymity of its tipsters. “The project •is run more like a C.I.A. operation than the Chamber of Commerce campaign that it really is,” a Chamber brochure says proudly, and the claim, is justified. The secrecy starts with the advertisements. “This is the'- T.I.P. line,” one television advertisement proclaims. “Do not give your name,” A radio advertisement warns: “T.I.P. does not want to know you. T.I.P. wants to know what you know about pushers.” When somebody follows up on this appeal, he is immediately assigned a code name chosen from the phone book of a distant city—complete with middle initial. To find out whether his call produces results, he must, folio*' the newspapers.

If a conviction does result, the payment of the bounty is straight out of the great movie tradition. The size of the bounty is figured, Mr Cusak says, “on the type of fish we catch.” The pay-off is then left “in a place that would ordinarily handle messages for itinerants,” such as the bus station or a seedy downtown hotel. The Tampa police force has already received 75 inquiries about T.I.P. from other police departments, but many of those connected with the programme think its special value lies in the fact that it is more than a purely police matter. Despite the complaints about the morality of the bounty system, the Chamber members believe that public participation is its greatest asset.

“Law and order is not like a game of cops and robbers,” a Chamber official says, “where the public plays me part of the. trees.”