The Chase

It's a Thursday night in November. Sgt. Danny Graves is cruising the narrow, hilly streets of an older, blue-collar neighborhood called Maple Park, near Worlds of Fun.

Graves grew up not far from here. He returned in late 2004, after spending 10 years on patrol in the urban core and working undercover narcotics with the Kansas City, Missouri, Police Department. He's back to fight the growing methamphetamine trade north of the river.

It's just after 9 p.m. when Graves and his six officers pull to a stop in the 5700 block of North Compton to check if a man they call Skip is there. (Graves has allowed the Pitch to watch his squad in action on the condition that the Pitch not print suspects' real names.)

Graves, 36, and his squad have spent months staking out the place. Over the past year, they've arrested nearly a dozen people seen leaving the house. Most carried small, recreational amounts of meth; others had only pipes and syringes.

They've never caught Skip with drugs, though, so he has never been arrested on drug charges. But in November, a codes inspector who found that heat and electricity had been turned off in the trash-filled house posted an order for the occupants to vacate the property.

Tonight, Skip, 39, answers the door, his eyes blinking at the seven uniformed cops. Tall, with a gaunt, torn face, he steps outside. He says he has a permit to be there until 10 each night until he finishes moving out all of his stuff.

The cops walk into the home anyway. The living room is a mountain of junk — plastic toys, teddy bears, action figures, old Western figurines, license plates, collectibles, yellowing newspapers, boxes on top of boxes. In one corner, a large stuffed Elmo doll hangs by its neck from a hook in the ceiling. A narrow path winds to the kitchen and a bedroom.

Skip yells at the cops to get out, but Graves tells him to relax. Nobody's getting into any trouble tonight.

Skip pauses. "Danny can stay," he says, looking at Graves.

Three officers walk back out into the windy night — but two slip into the kitchen, which is filled with more junk. Meanwhile Graves sits and talks with Skip.

Everything has changed in the past few months, Skip tells him. The people who used to party together from different neighborhoods are turning into liars and back-stabbers. "They're ripping each other off," Skip says.

This is good news for the sergeant, proof that his team has made progress.

Then a cop starts yelling in another room. "Get down on the ground! Get down!"

A tense minute later, one of the officers escorts a teenage girl up from the basement.

The girl, police will discover, has been missing since the spring; she's been living in this house for months. She was 15, already shooting meth, when she came here looking for a place to stay, Skip says. "I've always picked up strays. I can't help it," he says.

The girl is slender, with scraggly blond hair. Long earrings dangle at her cheeks. She's barefoot.

"I can't get her to wear shoes," Skip says. "She's like a wolf girl I found in the woods."

"Look at where you are now," Graves tells the girl, whose bloodshot eyes finally meet his. "You've been hanging out, living in a condemned house with needles sticking out of your arms for six months."

His voice is calm. "Don't you want to get your life together? You want to live here? You could end up dead."

The girl looks down at her feet and says she doesn't want to go home. She hates her mom. Her dad in Oklahoma is too strict.

Called into the kitchen to give a statement, the girl tells an officer that she's been having sex with Skip. She says she'll cooperate with police by giving them more information downtown.

Graves watches as one of his officers leads Skip toward a cruiser.

Meth is nothing new in the Northland. A strong police presence is.

Until July 2005, just 10 officers a shift patrolled the 150 square miles of Kansas City north of the Missouri River. (By contrast, about 40 officers work each shift covering the 19 square miles of the Central Patrol Division, which stretches from the river to the Plaza.) That left just four officers watching over Maple Park and its surrounding neighborhoods, 75 square miles with a population similar to the Central Patrol Division's.

City Councilwoman Deb Hermann, who lives in the Gracemoor neighborhood just east of Maple Park, has been trying to get more cops on Northland streets since the early 1990s. That's when residents noticed that longtime homeowners were moving away or dying off, replaced by landlords who often rented to trouble-making tenants. Fifties-era ranch homes were turning into dope houses, bringing a spike in burglaries and robberies. Yet the number of police was roughly the same as it had been in 1973.

In April 2002, after protests from the Northland Neighborhoods Inc. community organization and other angry residents, Hermann pushed for a sales tax to fund public safety. Voters passed the tax, earmarking $110 million for police services, including a new North Patrol station set to open this fall. Meanwhile, the KCPD is increasing its patrols to 20 officers east of North Oak Trafficway and another 20 to cover the neighborhoods west of the thoroughfare.