Pubdate: Mon, 25 Sep 2000 Source: Huntsville Times (AL) Copyright: 2000 The Huntsville Times Contact: P.O. Box 1487, Huntsville, AL 35807 Fax: (256) 532-4213 Website: http://www.al.com/huntsville/news.html Forum: http://www.al.com/forums/huntsville/ Author: Kay Campbell Bookmark: MAP's link to Tennessee articles is: http://www.mapinc.org/states/tn FIGHTING DRUG WAR IS TOUGH AND TEDIOUS Officers on multicounty force say work involves a lot of 'waiting and watching' FAYETTEVILLE, Tenn. - Of all the scenes that James Whitsett, now a detective at the Lewisburg, Tenn., Police Department, remembers from his 18 months in the area Drug Task Force, of all those arrests and stakeouts, chases and undercover buys, the one that still haunts him didn't involve guns or drugs. Whitsett went to a house to arrest a man and a woman on charges of drug trafficking. In a bedroom lay an asthmatic child on a bed rigged with a plastic tent to help her breathe. When Whitsett pulled back the blanket to check on the toddler, a roach ran out from under the child. "The mama and daddy were messed up on cocaine," Whitsett said as he and Detective Shane Dougherty recounted their work for the task force from their office in Lewisburg. "And they didn't care. Whitsett cares. So does Dougherty, who spent five years on the Task Force as a representative from the Fayetteville Police Department. So does Tim Lane, director of the 17th Judicial Drug Task Force. "The average citizen doesn't have a clue to what the Drug Task Force does," Lane said last month from his Shelbyville office. "There are still drugs out there, but we've done some really great things for the people of Fayetteville and Lincoln County. "Used to be 15 or 20 crack dealers in Fayetteville would rush the car when we drove through the projects, trying to sell," said Lane. "Now we have to drive through five times before we can make a buy. We have made a difference." Multicounty Drug Task Force The Task Force, organized in the 1980s, combines officers from most of the city and county law enforcement offices in Lincoln, Bedford, Moore and Marshall counties to investigate drug cases. About a third of the force's money comes from a federal grant, Lane said. The remaining money for equipment, cars and gasoline, pagers and weapons must come from fines, forfeitures, donations and seizures of property used during a crime. "Unfortunately, we have to be an income-producing agency," Lane said. Some police or sheriff's departments choose not to participate, claiming that one county or another is getting more attention than theirs. Lincoln County did not participate under Sheriff Ray Rhoton, but current Sheriff Jimmy Mullins put a deputy back on the force. The Fayetteville Police Department, one of the original sponsors of the Task Force, expects eventually to name a replacement officer for Shane Dougherty, who resigned from the Task Force for the Lewisburg detective position this month, Fayetteville Police Chief Doug Carver said last week. Participating departments pay the salary for their officer. Those officers then report to work with Lane, and in the course of an average day could help with operations in a couple of counties. The investigations are among the most difficult and unpredictable in police work, Dougherty says. "A lot of people don't understand drug work," Dougherty said, discussing the work he did undercover. "For example on a street-level buy, where you ride through an area and make a buy, it takes hours of preparation and organization." "It may take 15 minutes to buy the drugs, but two hours to do the paper work for the fund tracking - where that money went - and to catalog the evidence," Dougherty said. "And if the seller is not identified, that's extra hours to try to get the ID. And for midlevel dealers, it takes even more manpower. Sometimes I've been sitting for days waiting and watching." "And the drug dealers are not very cooperative," Whitsett said sarcastically. "Sometimes they don't show up when they're supposed to." "They don't wear watches," Dougherty said. And even if one case goes on schedule, one arrest could bring a tip to another dealer or supplier who needs to be tracked down immediately. And officers on undercover duty always have a backup officer nearby, so each operation involves a minimum of two or three officers from the five or six-member team. "Some days I'd go to work, tell my wife 'See you tonight' - and show up three days later," Whitsett said. Sometimes those three days would have been spent tracking down a drug dealer and ended in an arrest. Most times, those three days would just become part of a longer project. Officers in the Task Force, with help from Fayetteville police, spent more than two years gathering evidence and building a case against drug dealers who worked together here from a base they called the Dogg Pound. The 16 men arrested in that case were tried this spring in federal court, where standards for evidence are a little higher and sentences longer than in state courts. The resulting convictions of all those arrested put the 16 in federal prison with average sentences of 11 years apiece. The convictions gave Lincoln County the dubious distinction last year of providing 26 percent of the state's federal convictions for cocaine trafficking, according to a report by Donal Campbell, commissioner of corrections. "And then the Task Force went on up the pipeline and took down some big guys in Nashville, too," Chief Carver said from his office last week. "Since then, it's been very quiet here. We see signs of some activity starting up again, but our real problem now is illegal sales of prescription pain killers." That drug dealing will start up again is about the only thing certain in his work, Lane said. "If we could rid society of the addict population, I could assure you that the dealers won't be there," Lane said, scooping some artificial crack cocaine he'd pulled out for a demonstration back into a tiny glass vial. "But if we don't have people out there, we will never help society get better. We need the war on drugs - and we could use 10 times as many people as we have in drug enforcement." - --- MAP posted-by: Eric Ernst