By Jane Prendergast
Enquirer staff writer

OVER-THE-RHINE - "The suspect just took the bag of marijuana out of the trunk of the old white Malibu with big shiny rims," the undercover officer says to other officers over the radio. "The suspect put the pot in the LaRosa's box," the officer continues.

That's the message uniformed officers needed to hear. They find the pizza box under a T-shirt in a trash can on Vine Street. They handcuff the owner of the Malibu and take him to jail. The officer also finds more marijuana in a Nike shoe box in the car's trunk.

This scene was brought to you by the Over-the-Rhine Chamber of Commerce.

Cops and drugs aren't traditional tools for chambers of commerce - agencies that generally try to boost business and operate as a community's cheerleader. But in Over-the-Rhine, the chamber often doubles as crime fighter, in part to help foster rehabilitation of the crime-ridden area in order to promote business.

"In our case, we can't be a traditional Chamber of Commerce,'' said Tom Besanceney, president of the Over-the-Rhine chamber. "The problem with safety is acute. Being the No. 1 issue, we've had to devote a whole lot of resources to it."

So the chamber operates a safety program, part of which is the Drug Elimination Detail. It's a program that pays Cincinnati police officers to work overtime on fighting street-level drug dealing in the neighborhood that abuts downtown Cincinnati. Teams of three or four officers usually work several days a week, about four hours each shift.

Arrests made on those drug-fighting details totaled 697 for April through July this year. During that same time, officers also found 21 guns and more than $12,000 in cash and confiscated drugs. The most common drugs seized, in order of quantity: marijuana, crack cocaine, powder cocaine and heroin.

Officers working the detail scored their biggest single bust ever last month at 15th and Elm streets - a pound of powder cocaine, with a street value up to $100,000.

Capt. James Whalen, commander of District 1, which includes Over-the-Rhine, said the project is a big help.

The program works in part because one of the people who coordinates it is a retired police officer.

Consistency is also key: A lot of officers working the details do the same work in the same neighborhood when they're on duty, so they know the locations, the tricks and the players.

"They let us decide where to spend the resources," Whalen said of the chamber. "That's a big part of it. We work very closely together."

It's more of the same work done by the Police Department, but paid for by the chamber.

The problem for Besanceney is - the more arrests officers make, the more often they have to go to court. And every court appearance costs the chamber more money.

"There's so much good news about this," he said. "But that's the bad news - we're spending a lot of money on court time."

The detail was shut down this year in January, February and for most of March. It took until spring for some of the expected grant money to arrive. The detail was also out of business for a time in 2002, after money ran out.

So Besanceney also has to be a fund-raiser. He estimated his total fund for the detail this year at about $300,000 - $100,000 from the city of Cincinnati's fund to promote clean and safe neighborhoods. He raised about $65,000 this year from private donations and hopes for about $40,000 more that way. Hamilton County also contributed.

He has plans to apply to at least one local foundation for financial help. But if spending continues at its current rate without more income, he predicts the extra enforcement will be out of money by next month.

"That's just the reality," he said. "You'd like to think that this is a transitional phase and we'll eventually get to a better place. But how long that's going to take, I don't know."

E-mail jprendergast@enquirer.com