Posted on 01/16/2008 2:18:29 PM PST by MinorityRepublican
ALIQUIPPA, Pa. (AP) — Amid the bleak, run-down brick buildings, drug dealers drive around in shiny SUVs, Cadillacs and convertibles, the sun glinting off their chrome-plated spinning hubs.
Drugs and money are exchanged on street corners. Addicts crash in crack houses, some of them right downtown. Gunfights erupt between drug dealers jealously guarding their territory. Rival gangs — the L's and the G's — deal the crack that flows into this riverfront town from New Jersey, New York, Detroit and Washington.
In Rust Belt cities like Aliquippa, drugs moved in after steel moved out.
In 10 of 14 Rust Belt towns in six states surveyed by The Associated Press, all with populations of 30,000 or less, drug-related arrests more than doubled in the past 15 to 20 years, even as the number of residents declined in every community.
The closing of the mills and factories in the industrial Midwest and the layoff of thousands of workers created "a niche in the economy for drug dealing," said Rick Matthews, a professor of sociology and criminal justice at Carthage College in Kenosha, Wis. "The immediate response is, `I can make a lot more money swinging crack than working at Wal-Mart.'"
Aliquippa, about 30 miles from Pittsburgh, was once a steelmaking powerhouse. The big Jones & Laughlin Steel Co. mill was practically the only game in town, employing more than 10,000 people at its peak in the late 1960s and early '70s, after which it went into a long, painful slide. By the late 1980s, LTV Steel Mining Co., which had taken over the mill, had all but closed the plant. It now stands empty.
Aliquippa's population is now down to 11,000, half of what it was in 1970, and law enforcement officials estimate drug dealers did $30 million in business in Beaver County in 2006, with this woeful city at the center of the trade.
Similarly, in Sandusky, Ohio, where two auto plants downsized significantly in the mid-1980s, drug arrests are up nearly fivefold in the past two decades, to more than 1,000 last year. Assistant Police Chief Charlie Sams said the town was overrun with crack as unemployment shot up.
In Jamestown, N.Y., once a major furniture hub, drug arrests have quadrupled over roughly the same period, while in Granite City, Ill., the number has more than tripled.
Today in Aliquippa, the seven-mile riverfront stretch where the steel mill operated is desolate, a seemingly never-ending line of barren gray concrete. A drywall factory and a trucking company are among the few businesses in town. A $200 million ethanol plant is coming, but it will provide only about 70 full-time jobs.
More than 21 percent of Aliquippa residents live in poverty, almost double the national rate. The unemployment figures are deceptive; they show joblessness running only about 2 percentage points above the national average, now about 5 percent, but that doesn't take into account those who are so discouraged they have stopped looking for work.
Aliquippa police made 53 drug-related arrests in 2005, up from seven in 1990, and again authorities say the numbers don't tell the whole story. Many shootings and robberies are also connected to drugs.
William F. Alston, a former Aliquippa police chief, recalled that in the mid-1980s and into the '90s, he began arresting middle-age drug dealers, some even in their 60s and 70s, instead of the usual teenagers.
"That was a direct correlation to the decline of the steel industry," he said.
Many of the drug buyers are professionals from outside of Aliquippa, said Alston, a former police officer now in charge of Weed and Seed, a state and federally funded program to reduce violence. To pay for their drugs, addicts prostitute their bodies, sometimes for as little as $5, and burglaries have been on the rise.
"People were not going to accept not having a good lifestyle, so if they had to sell drugs, they sell drugs, if they have to sell their bodies, they sell their bodies, yes," said Timothy Hollins, who was one of the first to be laid off from the steel mill and has spent much of the past 25 years drunk or high on crack.
About seven years ago, John Stanley, an Episcopal missionary from Australia, moved to Aliquippa to help the poor. Much of his time is spent in his coffee shop, Uncommon Grounds, where addicts, recovering addicts and troubled youth can seek advice from Stanley and his co-workers, all of whom have undergone extensive training on how to help the down and out through Jesus' teachings.
"This whole city struggles with a mental illness that comes out of unresolved grief," Stanley said, likening the closing of the mills to the death of a loved one.
Mayor Anthony Battalini said he does not believe the town will ever fully recover "unless some miracle thing happened here." He is encouraged, however, by a complex of 39 homes being built, mostly for residents who work in Pittsburgh or at its airport.
Hollins supports his drug-and-alcohol habit with occasional jobs painting homes and moving furniture. On a recent midmorning, he was sober enough to be coherent, and was having coffee at Uncommon Grounds.
Hollins said Stanley has inspired him to try to remain drug-free. But the obstacles are great: He hasn't been able to find any work except for odd jobs. Just visiting the former mill site is depressing, and downtown is boarded up and desolate, too.
"The American dream ain't here anymore," Hollins said.
Come on - Detroit is an example of a city where the drugs have flowed freely for years - long before the decline of the auto manufacturers. Michigan is an example of what leads to criminal decline. With Jennifer Granholm at the helm, Michigan lost 30,000 people in the last year alone (working, tax-paying, contributing citizens). However, her policies make Michigan’s welfare all that much sweeter, thus ensuring that the drug-dealing, drug-using, body-selling, welfare collecting population not only doesn’t leave but continues to create even more welfare-check inducing children. This article is on thin ice in terms of cause and effect.
Not only are they selling drugs, but now they are threatening the environment! When will it ever end!? /s
I left Wheeling, WV in 1975 - and not a moment too soon, either. It is in about the same shape from what I’ve been told. Sad.
At least with the Fair Tax, these thugs would for pay something. I see it far too often, people paying for groceries with "Access" cards and food stamps then walk out to the parking lot and drive off in their Escalade or Lexus. They buy food on your dollar and their luxury rides with drug money, all the while contributing nothing to society but decay.
Beaver County, PA is an armpit. And I’m being kind.
Nonsense. We’re promoting the use of drugs here in the Rustbelt to attract the creative class.
Lots of the towns in the tri-state area were towns with steel mills that shriveled up and died when the mills closed, but none of them look ANYTHING like Aliquippa.
Nope. Haven’t been to Wheeling in 4 or 5 years, but trust me, it looks NOTHING like Aliquippa does. Doesn’t look anything like the town I was born and grew up in, but Aliquippa is the only town around here that looks like it was the center of a war.
Other generations in the past would move to where they could find jobs if their area lost a big company or plant.
I don’t get why they would stay where there are no jobs.
I moved out of my native state for a job opportunity. I don’t see why people would stick around and do nothing in the Rust Belt when they could be working in the Sun Belt.
Ah good point, technically the drug dealers have no “income” so they’re not having to pay for anything. It will be interesting to see the percentage of drug dealers eventually arrested by the authorities. Of course it’s impossible to determine the exact statistics.
It’s an unusual mentality some people have where they believe jobs are required to come up to their door and knock.
In my grand parent’s generation, people traveled constantly (moved) to be near work.
It’s an “entitlement” mentality. Thanks to LBJ’s Great Society programs, we now believe that the government owes us.
It makes no sense to me, but so many people are suffering from the disaster of having their bad parents.
So many ways to screw people up unfortunately.
Blame it on Walmart, everyone knows they destroy downtowns.
With welfare, it’s no longer important to have the father bring home the bacon. So many kids nowadays are growing up without fathers. In Rust Belt cities, drugs are the most attractive industry for young men to join. The self-destructive pattern feeds on itself. Eventually the towns will consist nothing more than prostitutes, drug dealers and crack addicts.
Do you advocate the local government to modify zoning laws in order to restrict “big box” stores like Wal-Mart? That’s what Montgomery County did in Maryland.
I remember on a visit to Hawaii where a worker said, “Now with the WalMart here we can both eat and pay the rent”.
I would love to know why planned parenthood has 5 times the number of abortion clinics in minority communities to kill more of their kids though?
The founder of planned parenthood has quite the racist background against minorities from what I read.
Someone has to be making the money to pay for the drugs though.
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