Pubdate: Sun, 17 Aug 2003 Source: Richmond Times-Dispatch (VA) Copyright: 2003 Richmond Newspapers Inc. Contact: http://www.timesdispatch.com/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/365 Author: Calvin R. Trice COUNTRY LIFE NOT SO SIMPLE Drug Traffic From City Keeps Easing Its Way In MOUNT JACKSON - The Shenandoah Valley's rural setting and proximity to illicit drug supplies in Washington have increasingly been attracting the wrong kind of business. Two weeks ago, authorities with the Northwest Virginia Regional Drug Task Force arrested 12 Winchester transplants on charges related to cocaine trafficking. Last month, federal agents rounded up 15 members and associates of an outlaw motorcycle club as part of a six-state bust on drug and firearms charges. The drug traffic - particularly methamphetamine - is luring more organized crime to otherwise peaceful rural areas. The scope of investigations often expands even beyond the reach of regional investigations like those conducted by the Northwest Task Force. The partnership of state and local police covers Winchester and six counties in the northern valley. Investigators say traffickers who set up in the region range from loosely organized cabals to long-standing gangs such as the Warlock Motorcycle Club, whose members were included in the Shenandoah County bust. In Mount Jackson, the gang case jarred people who live and work in the northern Shenandoah Valley town of about 1,400. Ringed by farms and shadowed by Massanutten Mountain to the west, the town seems the unlikeliest place for a crossroads of interstate drug-peddling. "It's scary," Brenda Getz said recently while leaving a downtown business. "You wouldn't think something like that would happen at a little place like this." The suspects allegedly set up an illegal bar and strip club on the south end of Mount Jackson and sold drugs from at least one legitimate business in the area, Carter said. Local United Methodist minister Jeff Roberts thought he'd left such things behind when he moved here from Washington three years ago. "I'm a city boy," said Roberts, who lived in Chicago before living in Washington. "Folks like me who come to a place like this have a sense that it's a different kind of place - that it's safer." Roberts and several other people making their way about town last week were unaware of any gangs in the area until they learned about the case. Earlier this month, state Attorney General Jerry W. Kilgore held the first meeting of an anti-gang task force assembled to study the phenomenon throughout Virginia. Kilgore organized the task force of lawmakers and police in part to help rural localities get a better grasp of the phenomenon, said Tim Murtaugh, his spokesman. "The smallest, most picturesque communities may in fact have gangs locally," Murtaugh said. "They may be loosely organized, and may not have the hierarchy everybody's thinking of, but if you have three kids that are running out and systematically breaking into houses, that's a gang." The Shenandoah County case typifies why gangs and other forms of organized crime drawn to the drug trade require far-reaching law-enforcement cooperation. Three years ago, investigators with the Northwest Drug Task Force were looking into methamphetamine distribution in the area, said Capt. Tim Carter of the Shenandoah County Sheriff's Office. Authorities learned that Warlocks members were behind much of the trafficking, and tried unsuccessfully to penetrate the group, he said. The Warlocks are a national motorcycle organization associated with the free-spirited bike gangs such as the Hell's Angels. Such gangs are often referred to as "one percenters" - or, the 1 percent of cycling groups whose members sometimes engage in outlaw activities. Carter said the members in the region were an exceptionally close-knit, even paranoid group with ties to the local community. "Our task force guys tried to work it as a traditional drug organization case. We just couldn't get anything to work for us," Carter said. In November 2001, authorities sought and received the help of agents with the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. ATF agents were eventually able to infiltrate the group by joining the club, Carter said. On July 24, authorities arrested local members and associates on state and federal drug and firearms charges. The 15 local suspects were part of a round-up of 34 gang members or associates in West Virginia, Maryland, New York, Florida and South Carolina, Carter said. In the valley's northern reaches, the Winchester area and Warren County have become increasingly popular drug dealing bases for out-of-state traffickers. The Interstate 81 and Interstate 66 corridors give big-city dealers easy access to a ready market virtually free of competition, said Dan Woloszynowski, an ATF spokesman. The thin supply of drugs allows them to hike prices to four or five times the rates in the cities, Woloszynowski said. "The money is there, but there's no competition," he said. "They can move in, and they don't have to fight anybody for any turf." On Aug. 8, Task Force members arrested five Winchester residents on charges of trafficking cocaine during the last 18 months. Many were Mexican nationals, and another seven of their associates were detained on charges of being in the country illegally, said Lt. Phil Crisman, a task force investigator. The group had dealt drugs in other states before arriving in the valley, Crisman said. "Winchester was just the last place they stopped," he said. In May, a high-ranking New York member of the L.A. Bloods received a 30-year federal prison term for firearms and drug trafficking in Winchester, Woloszynowski said. Nearby Warren County has also had its share of major drug conspiracies. Last year, a federal grand jury in Charlottesville indicted 26 members of a loosely organized drug gang from Washington on charges of distributing cocaine in Front Royal for nearly a decade. That case was also a Northwest Task Force case that grew. Police seized about 250 grams of cocaine and $17,500 in cash, Woloszynowski said. With its proximity to Washington, Warren Sheriff's Office Investigator Jerome Robinson thinks it's inevitable that some of the metropolitan area's ills might be sprawling outward in advance of development. "My opinion is that the city is slowly moving this way," Robinson said. - --- MAP posted-by: Larry Stevens