Pubdate: Sun, 04 Jan 2004
Source: Augusta Chronicle, The (GA)
Copyright: 2004 The Augusta Chronicle
Contact:  http://www.augustachronicle.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/31
Author: Stephen Gurr

DRUG FIGHT SHIFTS TO OUTSIDE CITIES

AIKEN - In his seven years of seizing drugs and arresting dealers, Lt.
Mike Jones, an investigator for the Aiken County Sheriff's Office, has
seen the city and the country sides of the drug trade.

In some parts of Columbia, where he worked as an operative for the
federal Drug Enforcement Administration early in his career, he could
find a dealer on nearly every street corner peddling crack cocaine.

"It was so congested you had drug dealers stacked on top of each other
fighting for business," Lt. Jones said.

But in mostly rural Aiken County, with 140,000 people spread over
1,100 square miles, drug dealing can be a more isolated, clandestine
operation.

"It's so stretched out, there are dealers on one side of the county
that don't know the others exist," he said. "That's when networking
with informants comes in handy for us."

According to a recent study by the National Center on Addiction and
Substance Abuse, drug use among teens in rural America has become a
bigger problem than in urban centers. High school students in rural
areas are twice as likely as their urban counterparts to try
methamphetamine and 83 percent more likely to try crack cocaine,
according to the study.

It's a problem not as visible on the dirt roads of the country as it
is on the decaying street corners of urban America. But drugs are
clearly no longer just a city problem.

"I remember when crack cocaine hit Barnwell 15 or 20 years ago," said
Lt. Jones, 32, a Barnwell native. "I didn't think too much of it at
the time. Now you have grade-school kids there who know how to make
crack."

The U.S. Census classifies an urban environment as any geographical
area with at least 500 people living within a square mile. Under that
definition, most of Aiken County, and much of the country, is rural.

Rural areas often lack law enforcement resources, with tiny
municipalities fortunate to have a police force at all. Most rely
heavily on county sheriffs or state agencies to work drug cases.

In Aiken County, the resources are thin to begin with. Unlike
neighboring Richmond County, with a largely urban center and 18
officers dedicated to narcotics, Aiken's sheriff's office has five.

"For the size of Aiken County, we don't have nearly enough narcotics
investigators to get to everything, but we get to what we need to,"
Lt. Jones said.

In 2002, Aiken sheriff's authorities filed 330 drug charges; there
were 357 near the end of 2003. Those numbers don't include the drug
charges brought by Aiken Public Safety officials within the city
limits, where about 20 percent of the county's population lives.

Richmond County, with a population of 200,000 and a much more
congested urban base, worked 1,366 drug cases and made 1,588 arrests
in 2002, according to the sheriff's office.

Law enforcement officials readily acknowledge that "working dope" in
the country is very different from investigations in the city.

In Augusta, investigators can conduct long-term surveillance, cruise
the streets to make undercover purchases, hit up confidential
informants for information and employ a wide range of other resources
and equipment, said Lt. Robert Partain, the commander of Richmond
County's narcotics unit.

"We have a lot of open-air markets," he said.

In a rural environment, where one trailer home might sit a mile from
the closest neighbor, many of those tactics are useless, Lt. Jones
says.

"When you get out in the county, surveillance is pretty much
nonexistent," Lt. Jones says. "If one person spots something out of
place, you're done."

Instead, county investigators rely heavily on confidential informants,
undercover work and the hope that when they serve a search warrant on
a isolated home, they come knocking at the right time.

"Many of the arrests in the county are hit and miss," he
said.

Some of the largest cocaine seizures Lt. Jones has seen were in rural
areas such as Petticoat Junction, near Jackson, or the Springfield
area of Windsor.

"Some dealers find it's more convenient to set up operations in the
county because they don't draw as much attention," he said. "Traffic
in and out isn't as much of a concern."

As drugs have spread to the county, some neighbors have grown wise to
meth producers burning trash cans full of evidence and other
suspicious behavior.

"Community eyes are one thing that help us out a lot," Lt. Jones
said.

But with the increase in rural drug use, new dealers will move in as
old dealers are closed down.

"As long as there is a demand, there will be a supply," he
said.

GETTING HELP

The American Journal of Drug and Alcohol Abuse reports that people
from rural areas are less likely than their urban counterparts to seek
treatment for drug addiction. Also, the National Center on Addiction
and Substance Abuse reports that rural teens are more likely to try
hard drugs than urban teens.

SOUTH CAROLINA

Year x number of people treated for addiction

2000 x 28,773

2001 x 31,558

2002 x 29,443

GEORGIA

Year x number of people treated for addiction

2000 x 30,283

2001 x 36,773

2002 x 33,339*

* 16.4 percent of clients reported that smoked cocaine was their
primary substance of abuse

Source: Office of National Drug Control Policy
- ---
MAP posted-by: Larry Seguin