Once a jewel, now just a hunk of coal

This week the news came of the shattering of the biggest cocaine operation in our area in 10 years. It wasn't a surprise to me. My surprise is that we don't hear about more drug busts than we do.

That's not to say our local law enforcement officials aren't on the case(s). I know they are, and this one just points up how, when you're sitting across the table from someone, such as Joe Zikuski, Binghamton's chief of police, you really can't be sure what he has on his mind. I suppose it goes with the territory. After all, you're on a "need to know" basis, and frankly, who could trust you and your blabbermouth? (Well, not you. But we all know someone like that. We probably spoke with them just yesterday.)

This months-long investigation is a testament to the deep-roots digging law enforcement types do on a daily basis. They're doing it right now, too. We just don't know the specifics.

Not long ago, Zikuski sat in the meeting room at a credit union on Main Street in Binghamton. That meeting room's windows look back out onto Edwards Street. If you don't know about Edwards Street, in sum, it's rough.

Zikuski being at this meeting was prompted by a group of that neighborhood's citizens who call themselves the Safe Streets Association. They've been around for quite a while, in one iteration or another, but a small handful of common denominators have always been steering. A core membership of SSA has kept a lifeline to City Hall, repeatedly asking for help in fighting a seemingly constant flow of n'ere-do-well dregs and more recently, gang activity and the mayhem that accompanies such a fractured scene.

Also at the credit union table that day was a guy named Jim Slocum. The folks of SSA had mentioned Slocum to me last fall, saying he was investing on Edwards Street, and more recently, that he had purchased one troubled property in particular at the end of Edwards nearest a corner store called Lilliana's. By all counts, as they spoke to me, Slocum was a young speculator with good intent. A decent character.

The lore of Edwards Street said that Slocum had booted members of the street gang called The Bloods from one of his properties, after which they'd paid him back with a smattering of graffiti on the building. He was soon thereafter cited by the city for code violations and ordered to clean the graffiti. I digress.

As a friend of Safe Streets, I've remained in touch with a few of its leaders, getting occasional e-mail and telephone updates. I was encouraged by one leader to contact Slocum to witness how he'd helped the situation on Edwards. Just a few weeks ago, I called him and he talked for a long time about how he'd transformed one of the Edwards buildings he'd purchased into what he called "the nicest apartment you'll find" in the city.

I'm a skeptic, so I accepted his offer for a tour, at some point. I also was interested to hear his strangely juxtaposed story about the day college graduate students moved into his building, as they watched bullet-proof vested Binghamton Police officers execute what was later said to be a search warrant "regarding a dog issue" across the street, a stone's toss from Lilliana's and police-installed surveillance cameras that prompted The Bloods to dub this 'hood "Hollywood."

Meeting with Slocum was midway down my to-do list when I read his name as one of several people arrested in this cocaine bust. My only reaction was to shake my head and laugh. I mean, what else can you do, really? Slocum apparently duped the folks on Edwards who had looked at him as a potentially strong spoke helping turn a sometimes flattened tire. While Slocum gave those around him the appearance of frustration over battling the street gangs, he was allegedly an engaged party in a pretty big coke ring. Beautiful.

I worked for Mayor Rich Bucci back in the late 1990s when the owner of a Main Street, Binghamton, property called to request that the mayor attend a ribbon-cutting ceremony. Bucci was always willing to help promote a new venture, as any pol will do. It's part of the landscape. But as this property owner, calling on behalf of his tenant (the new business owner), continued to press for a media opportunity, Bucci held off. I bore the brunt of the caller's frustration, and as it occurred, I wasn't quite sure why my boss balked. It wasn't the usual. It went on for weeks.

Then I saw the news story about a Main Street, Binghamton, business owner who'd been arrested in a pretty large sting. Maybe it was drugs, perhaps money laundering. I can't recall all the specifics. But I remember seeing photos of a big brick home, cars, ATVs, lots of cash. I finally understood why Bucci stayed away. He couldn't tell me why, at the time, but I got it.

Looking back at the recent meeting in the credit union conference room, I had to laugh. Zikuski and Slocum sat there together, with the appearance of allies in a fight against neighborhood crime. And as was reported to me by a few who attended that meeting, Zikuski and his boss, Mayor Matt Ryan, seemed to downplay the perceived drug traffic on Edwards. Who could blame them, knowing what they knew? They presumably had an X drawn on Slocum, and they at least had a feeling they knew what he was up to. And now we all know.

"What are we going to do now?" said one Safe Streets leader this week in a phone conversation.
Who knows? What happens to Slocum's properties and his tenants who have leases? And what were Slocum's true motivations? Did he think involvement in a cocaine ring might be acceptable, yet street gangs selling weed in store-bought cigars was a blight he just had to battle? Was he engaging in the SSA's activities to "keep his friends close, but his enemies closer?" No telling what he was thinking. So cross Jim Slocum off a fairly short list of positives for this neighborhood teetering on the edge of disaster.

The good news remains, however, that SSA and its members and their associates are tired, but they're gritty as hell. They continue to fight The Bloods and the accompanying "culture" that has wrapped itself like one giant vine coiled around their ankles, uninvited and, most times, unabated.

It may not be immediately apparent that progress is being made there, but as some members of Safe Streets will tell you, with their collective glass half full held high as they can, things have been better over the past month or so.

Of course, everything's relative. "Better than a war zone" isn't exactly what they'd prefer. But the members of SSA see that their street is now more than a footnote, and they fight on.

And now, for something quite the same.