[8/1/03]Attempting to rid one neighborhood at a time of drug dealers is among the state narcotics bureau’s plans, its director told prosecutors meeting here Thursday.

Frank Melton, the television executive and commentator who took command of the Mississippi Bureau of Narcotics in December 2002, addressed about 30 county prosecutors and district attorneys from around the state at a conference at the Vicksburg Inn.

“We’ll stay in one neighborhood” until it has been as cleaned up as possible, Melton told his audience. Such efforts would involve “50 or 60 agents and a couple of helicopters,” he added.

A pilot project in a Jackson neighborhood has begun, and other neighborhoods in Jackson, Greenville, Greenwood, Tunica, Clarksdale and on the Gulf Coast are in line to be targeted, Melton said.

He also said major drug dealers would be banished. “Once we arrest them, we’re not going to let them live back in the neighborhoods,” Melton said.

Gov. Ronnie Musgrove appointed Melton to head the MBN, resulting in controversy because Melton a vocal advocate of safe neighborhoods had no prior law-enforcement experience. Melton has since completed Drug Enforcement Agency training at Quantico, Va.

Melton commented on a variety of other law-enforcement and related topics during his speech. He told the prosecutors that better cooperation between them and the MBN was necessary.

Melton said it is clear that the drug problem cannot be solved without education and prevention. “If we locked up every drug dealer in Mississippi, we wouldn’t have anywhere to put them,” he said.

Of today’s schoolchildren, “98 percent are good and decent kids,” Melton said, but others have major problems. One school in central Mississippi, he said, has “open-hall drug sales.” He thinks the principal needs to be removed, he said.

He also said drug abuse is not limited by race or wealth. The director said he had seen students from private as well as public schools discarding drugs they were carrying when they were made aware MBN agents were nearby.

“Turn any corner,” and one can find drugs or drug dealers in Mississippi, Melton said, adding, “I’m not going to have open-street drug sales. I’m just not going to have it.”

At the same time, Melton said officials should focus more on the quality than the quantity of criminal cases produced.

For major drug-distribution operations, “the money is so good, some lawyers are now investing in the business, and I’m going to lead them to your door,” he told prosecutors.

The MBN was created in 1971. Its mission is to confiscate drugs and other contraband and arrest suspected drug violators. It often works in collaboration with law enforcement at the county and city levels.

Prosecutors attending the conference, which was to continue this morning, were also to hear presentations from a special assistant attorney general on new federal health-care privacy regulations, an agent of the former Immigration and Naturalization Service on combating terrorism, an attorney for the federal Department of Human Services on federal funds, a field services coordinator on an organized-crime information center and the commissioner of the state Department of Corrections.