The streets of Washington Heights are not paved with gold--they teem with drugs and violence. But certain young men in the Dominican Republic, 1, miles away, will risk their lives to come here. Their vision of the immigrant American Dream is to amass a fortune by selling drugs, primarily cocaine.
Their violent ways overshadow the lives of thousands of Dominicans who hold legitimate jobs. They send a message back down to the D. Over the last decade, Dominicans have established a thriving cocaine trade worth hundreds of millions of dollars annually, according to federal law enforcement officials.
After Dominicans expanded into heroin two years ago, the FBI formed a special investigative squad targeting Washington Heights. The drugs up there have destroyed whole neighborhoods and created so much fear. In , there were fewer than , Dominicans in Washington Heights; now there are more than , Crime has risen sharply, especially since crack cocaine hit in In , there were also the highest in New York. Since , more than young Dominicans from one town--San Francisco de Macoris--have been killed in the United States, most in drug-related murders in New York.
To say nothing of the lives that have been ruined. She walked up the steps of a once elegant brownstone and knocked at an apartment at the end of a dank hallway. The door swung open. The silhouettes of three people could be seen slumped on couches in almost total darkness. A lamp with a bare bulb was hauled out to illuminate a tiny living room with a battered coffee table littered with crack paraphernalia. It was a little after p. As Maria heated the crack in a tiny metal pitcher, the two women and a man seated on shabby sofas watched in a polite stupor, as if she were preparing afternoon tea.
The room was quiet except for the hissing sound as Maria lit her pipe and passed it around. Most other like her turn to prostitution, she said, but not her--she cleans rooms for drug dealers in exchange for drugs. Drug dealers have taken over whole blocks, particularly at the southern and northern tips of the area, scaring people away from even using pay telephones.
