POTEST
Brevity in letters it requested and the
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Dear Editor,
Hyde Park, a public
discussion in the Union lounge,
was not held last Thursday.
Hopefully it will be held this
coming Thursday.
The reason it was not held
was that Bill Beamer, the
moderator, had his bicycle
stolen by the counter-revolu
tionary CIA agents who
wanted to prevent him from
functioning. Another reason,
more plausible, is that Bill
made a mistake. On the whole,
he has been very good in his
function as moderator of Hyde
Park.
Last year Hyde Park
attracted as speakers students
and anti-war libera's of the left.
It also attracted black brothers
and longhairs (Anson, Hansen,
etc.) who along with the
liberals of the ministry and the
administration have effectively
furthered the radicalizatin of
antiwar sentiments in the
community.
C. M. Dalrymple
Bounty hunters slow pushers
by Eleanor Clift
Newsweek Feature Service
TAMPA, Fla.--The police
informer has never been a
character honest citizens
wanted anything to do with.
By tradition, he is a sleazy if
useful small-timer, plying his
odious trade in back alleys and
cheap hotels.
Yet in Tampa 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
ads, they are exhorting the
good people of Tampa to turn
in drug pushers for a bounty of
up to $500 apiece.
What's more, it's worked.
The Tampa police have gotten
3,000 anonymous tips in less
than a year, the courts are
jammed with cases that have
resulted, the pushers seem to
be dealing scared and untold
numbers of ordinary citizens
have taken part in a campaign
with all the trappings of a spy
mission complete to code
names and surreptitious
pay-offs.
The unusual program is
aptly named TIP (for "turn in
a pusher") and it is the
brainchild of a 34-year-old FBI
agent turned businessman
named James Cusack. In the
last few years, Tampa's drug
population has leaped from 50
known addicts to an estimated
4,000 (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 Cusack, to come up
with recommendations.
"Compariti vely , our
problem is not as bad as in
other cities," 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 $8,000
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,
kicked in another $1,000.
The response from the
community at large has been
literally overwhelming. About
half the calls, in fact, have
come from teenagers. "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,"
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 boys' school. They
quickly realized 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 turning in a false
criminal report.
There have also been a few
complaints about the morality
of TIP's suggestion that people
inform on their neighbors, but
the program has generally been
popular.
It has also successfully
protected the anonymity of its
tipsters. 'The project is run
more like a CIA 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
ads. "This is the TIP line, one
TV ad proclaims. "Do not give
your name." A radio ad warns:
"TIP doesn't want to know
you. TIP 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 follow 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, Cusak says,
"on the type of fish we catch."
The pay-off is then left "in a
place that would .ordinarily
handles messages for
itinerants," such as the bus
station or a seedy downtown
hotel.
The Tampa police force has
already received 75 inquiries
about TIP from other police
departments, but many of
those connected with the
program 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 the part of the
trees."
DDjuL Jolt
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THE DAILY NEBRASKAN
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