Pubdate: Sun, 07 Dec 2003
Source: Lexington Herald-Leader (KY)
Copyright: 2003 Lexington Herald-Leader
Contact:  http://www.kentucky.com/mld/heraldleader/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/240
Author: Tom Lasseter, David Stephenson
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/coke.htm (Cocaine)
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Mccreary County, September 2003

'IT DIDN'T STOP THE COCAINE'

In The End

Sitting on his front porch, a few weeks after sentencing, David Perkins was 
barefoot and shirtless, wearing his University of Kentucky ball cap and an 
old pair of shorts.

He was holding 6-month-old David, his son with his new wife, Ashley. The 
boy now and then looked at Perkins' wrist and the black home-incarceration 
bracelet he wore.

Perkins was trying to think of the right way to answer a question.

What would be the effect of the DEA's roundup of Perkins and 12 other 
people who took part in the drug network?

Well, Perkins said, it "didn't stop the cocaine in here."

During the sentencing of one of Perkins' co-defendants, the judge asked 
Assistant U.S. Attorney Roger West whether the defendant had identified any 
of the Chicago dealers.

"He has. In what I believe to be candor on his part, he did identify who 
those individuals were," West said.

But the prosecutor added, "The amount of cocaine, as we understand for the 
Chicago area, will not rise to a federal case. And I'm trying to say that 
delicately, as this is public record."

The shipments that Perkins, Valentin and the rest were involved with had 
come in ounces and 1 or 2 kilograms at a time -- hardly the stuff of big 
Chicago drug busts.

West continued: "The interest of investigators in that area was not as 
profound as interest would be for investigators in the Eastern District of 
Kentucky."

Because the dealers in Chicago never traveled to McCreary County, West 
wrote in a court document, a decision was made not to try to prosecute them 
in Kentucky.

As was the case with every facet of the prosecution of Perkins and the 
other 12 defendants, the U.S. attorney's office for Eastern Kentucky had no 
comment about the Chicago dealers.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Randall Samborn in Chicago would not say whether 
his office pursued the people who sold cocaine to the McCreary County 
group. He also declined to discuss, in general, guidelines used by the 
office to decide which cases to prosecute.

A court filing in Kentucky gives the name of one of the Chicago men who 
allegedly sent cocaine to McCreary. A review of records at the federal 
district court in Chicago showed that no charges have been filed against 
him; the same was true in state court.

"A prosecutor in Chicago, their threshold can be higher than ours," said 
Kentucky State Police Detective Greg Pace, who worked with the DEA on the 
Perkins case. "In Mexico, down there, they're used to seeing 2 tons come 
through, and here, if we get a kilo of cocaine it's a big deal."

And if the big-city dealers of the world want to keep sending drugs to 
rural counties such as McCreary, they probably won't have trouble finding 
local partners.

Pace gave a surprisingly similar answer to the question Perkins pondered on 
his front porch -- whether putting Perkins' group in prison would make a 
change.

"You would want to think you're making a difference, but you don't know," 
Pace said. "Somebody else may be stepping up."in the end."
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MAP posted-by: Beth Wehrman