They've been used before, I know. Ten years ago, to be exact. And now, as then, the stereotype glosses over the real cause of Pioneer Park's problems: drug users.

I certainly shouldn't point to the businessmen in Lexuses who drive by for a hit, the meth moms trying to lose a little weight, the teenagers experimenting, or the chronic addicts who have lost home and family and hygiene.

No, it's much simpler to blame the guys who sleep off alcoholic hangovers in the park, the mentally ill who can't hold down a job, the transients who jump at the chance to make some real money running errands for the gangs that control Utah's drug trade.

Pioneer Park reached crisis again last week when a raging homeless man fatally stabbed Christian Draayer.

"That could happen anywhere," says Babs De Lay, a nine-year resident of the Dakota Lofts and owner of Urban Homes and Estates.

But suddenly, everyone in the state was aware of a new cycle of violence downtown residents and cops have been watching escalate for the past year.

Using a complex system of whistles and lookouts with binoculars, drug dealers have turned the park into a one-stop shop. The homeless are shields and sometime-couriers. In the past six months, police have added a new bike patrol and doubled the number of officers stationed in and around the park. They've arrested 500 - a statistic Salt Lake City Police Chief Chris Burbank calls "astronomical." Jailers turn around and release them shortly after they're locked up; the jail is too full.

And the cycle turns.

Residents who have tried to document the drug activity on camera have been stalked and threatened on their doorsteps. One pusher menaced a young mother at Artspace by masturbating with a knife in his hand.

Some blame Burbank and Mayor Rocky Anderson, wondering how things could have gotten so bad so fast.

"People are selling there because people are buying. The dealers do a good business," says Kate Skelton, an Artspace resident. "They know what the cops can and cannot do. They own the streets."

Newspaper and television station online message boards are full of armchair analysts, looking at cop calls plotted on a map, and conclude they've found the real source of the crime, the Road Home homeless shelter.

The last time the rest of the state became aware of Salt Lake City's oldest and most troubled park - the last time the homeless were smeared - was in 1997. Former Mayor Deedee Corradini literally shut down the block for a month for maintenance, posted a fence and hired rent-a-cops to roust the homeless 24/7.

Some suggested a permanent solution: moving the homeless shelter and soup kitchens that serve Utah's indigent - perhaps to some industrial park.

The fence only dispersed the homeless and drug dealers throughout the city. The rent-a-cops eventually were replaced by real ones. Only the Salvation Army moved; the soup kitchen, shelter and mission remain. Hotels, lofts, subsidized housing and a shopping mall moved into the neighborhood.

Both Anderson and council members pledged years ago not to force the homeless out. Instead, like Corradini, current city leaders are focused on the surface, installing new lights, sidewalks, an off-leash park for dogs and a jogging track. They cross their fingers that the Farmer's Market and summer concerts will drive the criminals away.

In an election year, the candidates posture for the toughest-on-crime title: Dave Buhler wants to install cameras. Ralph Becker's initial resistance to the idea faded as events overtook him. Meantime, residents are organizing a neighborhood watch.

Matt Caputo wonders what all the alarm is about. It's bad at the park, he acknowledges, but nowhere near as bad as when his father opened the deli on the corner of 300 South and 300 West right after Corradini's house-cleaning.

"People thought we were crazy. It was bad down here. We knew that going in. But we took the good with the bad," Caputo says. "It's a city. There are homeless people and they have a right to be here.

"It was much worse when we moved in."

Still, it's just a matter of time before someone starts talking again about loading up the homeless. Surely, the thinking goes, the drug dealers will follow.

Crossroads Urban Center Director Glenn Bailey says some unfairly tag the homeless to drug dealers, others are motivated by greed - the homeless shelters and soup kitchen are located on valuable downtown property. Either way, the "move the homeless" chant starts up again every few years.

"It comes up in a cyclical way," Bailey says.

And Draayer's murder is the perfect excuse.

walsh@sltrib.com