Pubdate: Mon, 18 Dec 2006
Source: Asheville Citizen-Times (NC)
Copyright: 2006 Asheville Citizen-Times
Contact:  http://www.citizen-times.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/863
Author: Jordan Schrader

LOCAL PRODUCTION DOWN, BUT IMPORTS DRIVE ILLEGAL INDUSTRY

NEWLAND - Kevin Frye takes a call on his ninth day as Avery County's 
sheriff from someone reporting a neighbor as a drug dealer.

Frye asks the caller what the drugs look like, what price they fetch, 
where the dealer goes when he travels down the mountain for new supplies.

He wants his deputies to have the same kind of conversations.

"The drug dealers and the thugs out here, they have their community 
networks," the sheriff said. " . We need the good citizens out there 
to be our eyes and ears."

Most of the sheriffs in Western North Carolina were replaced in the 
Nov. 7 election, and most of the region's 10 new top lawmen come in 
with new ideas for disrupting the drug trade.

They take office at a time when rural law enforcement's nemesis, the 
methamphetamine industry, is also under new management.

Frye and his fellow sheriffs echo a federal assessment of Southeast 
trends when they say that new laws are shutting down the meth labs 
that flourished only two years ago.

At the same time, they agree, addicts have found that imports from 
Mexico of what's known as crystal meth or ice feed their habits as 
well as the homemade, powdered variety. On the highways

Aggressive marketing and declining price have made the purer crystal 
meth more attractive.

The drugs come in on the highways, where some new sheriffs are 
focusing their efforts.

Rutherford County's Jack Conner said he plans within a month to have 
a new drug interdiction team in place that will patrol the roads and 
highways looking for shipments.

"You look for tinted windows, out of state vehicles, anything that 
would draw your attention a little bit," the sheriff said.

Four deputies will make up the team, while four others will continue 
to take on drug dealers by more conventional means such as undercover 
drug purchases.

Like Conner, Buncombe County Sheriff Van Duncan said he would 
dedicate officers to patrolling the highways looking for drugs.

The state has tentatively approved a grant that will pay for one 
Henderson County sheriff's deputy to focus solely on making traffic 
stops, Sheriff Rick Davis said.

Henderson County has for several years been a hub for meth coming in 
from Mexico, a trend highlighted by the county's involvement in four 
major recent federal investigations targeting meth.

Grand juries indicted 85 people after the investigations, which were 
announced last month.

Some have been convicted, including Reymundo Rodriguez, 24, sentenced 
to more than 22 years in federal prison. He was found guilty of 
several crimes in Henderson County, including conspiracy to 
distribute meth and possession of a firearm by an illegal alien. 
Regional cooperation

The new sheriffs are beefing up their drug enforcement in other ways 
besides highway interdiction.

Transylvania County has devoted a second detective to drugs. Now the 
department can pursue more than one investigation at a time, Sheriff 
David Mahoney said.

The county also is seeking a grant to train dogs to sniff out drugs.

Mahoney said he made a campaign promise to devote more resources to 
anti-drug efforts.

While attending a week of training for new sheriffs in Raleigh, he 
sat down with Duncan and Davis to talk about working more closely. He 
said that includes their efforts to deal with drug dealers, who pay 
no attention to the county line.

"We have an opportunity here to take a huge step forward in how we 
deal with drugs and crime regionally," Mahoney said.
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