Photo by: Lizzie Ford-Madrid
Special Agent John Gilbride, seen holding a bad containing seized cocaine, runs the New York office of the Drug Enforcement Administration.
"This is crack cocaine seized a few days ago by drug enforcement agents in a park just across the street from the White House. It's as innocent-looking as candy, but it's turning our cities into battle zones, and it's murdering our children. Let there be no mistake: This stuff is poison." —President George H.W. Bush, Sept. 5, 1989
A U.S. News & World Report story in August 1991 made the claim that William Hopkins was the first official to spot crack in New York City. Hopkins, a former Bronx narcotics officer, was heading a state research unit that monitored drug trends on the street level and reported its findings to police. The article has Hopkins overhearing a mention of crack during a ride through the Tremont section of the Bronx in 1983:
They said it was "rock cocaine." It was almost another year before Hopkins got a firsthand look at a man who was smoking it. "I learned for the first time it was done with baking soda, not ether," says Hopkins. "And I examined what he had, and it was in vials. I knew we had something new on the market." Within a year, crack had saturated the city.
That same article—entitled "The Men Who Created Crack"—largely attributes the introduction of crack in New York to "a canny street tough named Santiago Luis Polanco-Rodriguez."
Polanco-Rodriguez grew up in Washington Heights and, by the age of 20, was involved in a pretty successful cocaine business, selling the powder in small glassine envelopes he stamped with "Coke Is It," a tongue-in-cheek adaptation of the Coca-Cola slogan. Sometime in early 1985, "Yayo," as PolancoRodriguez was called, started hustling crack. A Nov. 29, 1985, article was the first time that the New York Times wrote about this new drug.
"A new form of cocaine is for sale on the streets of New York, alarming law enforcement officials and rehabilitation experts because of its tendency to accelerate abuse of the drug, particularly among adolescents," the article read. "The substance, known as crack, is already processed into the purified form that enables cocaine users to smoke—or ‘free-base'—the powerful stimulant of the central nervous system."
News articles only speculate how Polanco-Rodriguez was introduced to crack. One theory held that the Jamaican gangs he was involved with in the cocaine business introduced him to crack soon after it first arrived in Los Angeles in the summer of 1985. "Another," the Times wrote, "is that the Medell