Some info for anyone involved in politics in the City of Coatesville

Politics can be a noble pursuit. It can also be riddled with nastiness. That nasty part of politics takes a quantum leap in the City of Coatesville, PA. Politics here can be riddled with bullets.

If you are involved in the “War on Drugs”, no matter where you fit in, or what side you are on, it is a world where paranoia is napping with one eye open in somewhere in your mind.

You will find drug users and drug user-sellers anywhere in Chester County. Drug use is a National pandemic disease in the USA and Chester County, PA is infected.

Coatesville is ground zero for drug trafficking in Chester County. Coatesville or a location very near to Coatesville is the depot where most of the drugs used in Chester County usually make their first appearance in Chester County. The large “packages” get opened here and redistributed around the County. The big traffickers are well dug in and have been politically connected for decades.

Some of the same reasons that Bart Blatstein, Carl Chetty and Don Pulver see Coatesville as a natural place for development make it a natural place for drug trafficking. Coatesville is a central hub for several kinds of transportation; easy quick transportation from any large port city in the Middle Atlantic States.

Coatesville is where most of the violence over the extremely large profits in selling illegal drugs is contained. I think that the violence is contained here by design. And that public officials participated in that design.

Bart Blatstein’s, Carl Chetty’s and Don Pulver’s redevelopment plans for Coatesville are incompatible with drug distribution in Coatesville. I believe that some public officials involved and profiting from drug trafficking in Chester County want to make sure that redevelopment does not happen in Coatesville. That is, the redevelopment foreseen by Blatstein, Chetty, Pulver, former City Manager Paul Janssen and the people at the University of Miami.

Beware of politicians that talk about supermarkets, jobs, filling police ranks with long time Coatesville residents, moving more poor and disadvantaged people into Coatesville and the perils of gentrification.

There is room, there is infrastructure already in place in the City of Coatesville for 9,000 new Coatesville residents; 20,000 residents in total. No gentrification with poor people moved out to make room for middle class or upper class residents needs to happen for Coatesville to be redeveloped. A city made up of one type or class of people is a lifeless city. The dream of Bart Blatstein and Paul Janssen was a vibrant cosmopolitan city.

Too many murders here happen right in front of several people who “didn’t see anything”. The drug trafficker/public officials in Chester County are down with more section 8, more slumlords and more poor people moving in here. On the other hand, middle class; white, black or whatever people don’t easily put up with drug traffickers. And, for the most part, the traffickers don’t know the family members of the new residents that have moved into Coatesville and can’t threaten them.

The reign of terror the drug traffickers have over many citizens of Coatesville will be over if we get real redevelopment with additional residents moving in. I mean new residents without the long time family roots that most Coatesville residents have. The USDoJ understands that fact very well. As former Assistant United States Attorney Tom Hogan told me, “Coatesville was ready to turn over, and then these new guys came in”.

It is very hard, maybe impossible, to be involved in politics in the City of Coatesville and stay outside of the “War on Drugs”. If you do not understand that fact or play it down you will be working with blinders and ear plugs on. If you do not understand drug trafficking and how public officials work with it and profit from it you can be used by the traffickers and not know it.

If you do know and do understand the playing field here, paranoia is napping with one eye open in the back of your brain. If you have an automatic response to it you will be eaten up by the paranoia and you not last in Coatesville’s political world. It is a world where trust is earned and you “check out” everyone in a quasi-scientific way.

You have to trust someone. You work with people you trust and you trust them because you thoroughly checked them out. But there is always that paranoia bug that sleeps with one eye open and can wake up with a warning at any moment. It has to be there waiting and watching, because in Coatesville you life could depend in it.

A very
good and easy read primer on Politics and Corruption in Pennsylvania is one written by former Pennsylvania State Police Commissioner Frank McKetta:

Police, politics, corruption : the mixture dangerous to freedom and justice / Frank McKetta.
McKetta, Frank.
Camp Hill, Pa. : Polis Publishing, c2000.

It is in all of our libraries.