Startled Police Find Girl, 3, Running Texas Crack House : Drugs: Mother and grandmother arrested. Young dealer was also tending 3 siblings in vermin-infested site.

The little girl stood in the yard of the rundown house as the undercover cop and the informant approached.

“What do you need?” she asked.

The cop didn’t get it at first.

“Is your mama home?”

“Yes, but what do you need?” she replied.

Slowly, it began to dawn on the officer that this wasn’t idle talk from a child. This was a question about how much crack he wanted to buy. The girl, not yet 4 years old, was taking orders.

The cop said be needed two dimes, street parlance for $20 worth of crack.

The girl went to the front door of the house and came back quickly to say that she needed to see the money first. When the officer produced it, the girl handed him the drugs.

The cop and the informant drove away, going to a spot where other policemen were waiting.

“You’re not going to believe what just happened,” he told them. “I just bought some dope from a little girl.”

Later Tuesday evening, the police descended on the neighborhood where the girl lived. And, as word of what they found has spread through Houston over the last two days, there has been something of a collective shiver in this city, even from hardened policemen who spend most of their working hours with life’s underside.

Sgt. James Thompson was among the policemen who arrived with a search warrant. They went to the house across the street from the house where the undercover cop had made his buy. There, Thompson said, they arrested the girl’s mother, Yvonne Jackson, 22, whose pockets were filled with wads of money, as was her purse. Thompson said they found traces of crack in her possession.

They also arrested the grandmother, Maggie Bailey, 58, who had roughly 40 rocks of crack in a red drawstring bag, Thompson said. Both were charged with possession of a controlled substance.

Then the officers went back across the street.

The little girl who had taken the order was there. So were three younger siblings, including an infant born only last month.

“The infant was lying on a bed that was soaked in urine,” Thompson said.

The other things Thompson saw made his stomach turn. There was no running water. Human waste was in every room, and the toilet was backed up and overflowing. The house was infested with roaches and there was rotten food everywhere.

He said police found a letter from Jackson’s imprisoned husband telling in detail how to run the crack operation, including whom to sell to and how to avoid being caught.

Thompson said he started a conversation with the little girl, who was clearly in charge, taking care of the other children in the house. A 6-year old brother was absent at the time. Thompson said he showed her a matchbox of crack and asked her what it was.

“Rock,” she replied. “We sell it.”

“And what do you do with the money?” Thompson asked.

“Give it to my mama,” was the reply, according to Thompson.

“She had no earthly idea she was doing anything wrong,” Thompson said. “She was just minding her mama and her grandma.”

The children were then turned over to the children’s protective service, which arranged for emergency foster care.

Gene Daniel, the regional program administrator, said the children all are being routinely tested to make sure they have not ingested drugs.

“It’s clear to us that she is a bright little girl,” Daniel said of the 3-year-old. “She had learned well what her parents had taught her.”