Davidson Deputies Work Interstate 85 Sheriff's deputies in Davidson County are closely watching the interstates these days, and they say that it's paying good money. Members of a six-man unit are taking classes in ways to find and seize drugs and cash on the interstate. Several deputies underwent training six weeks ago, and since then the sheriff's office said that it has seized about $400,000 and eight vehicles, including a 1999 Jeep Grand Cherokee. The biggest drug seizure by the drug-interdiction unit came Friday afternoon, when deputies found five kilograms of cocaine hidden inside a battery of a car that they stopped on Interstate 85. The cocaine has a street value of about $1 million, deputies said. [continues 614 words]
School Board Worries About Rights and Costs The Surry County school board has put on hold its discussion of a possible drug-testing program for student athletes and others involved in extracurricular activities. School officials say that the likelihood of such a program acting as a deterrent does not outweigh the risk that students' rights could be violated. "I'm not sure it's our mission," said Billy Sawyers, an assistant superintendent, at a board meeting Monday night. Board member Bobby Hanes said he felt uncomfortable targeting a specific group of students and said that the cost of the program, which had been estimated to be as much as $8,000 a year, was too great. [continues 250 words]
Uncertainty over disability request led him to sell marijuana, he says A former Winston-Salem police officer now imprisoned for selling drugs has filed a lawsuit against the city, claiming in part that uncertainty over his request for disability led to his criminal activities. Keith Gordon Brinegar, 32, was arrested in January 2000 on Jonestown Road after investigators found him with 4.5 ounces of marijuana, nearly $1,300 in cash and a .45-caliber Glock semiautomatic handgun. He pleaded guilty to federal drug and weapons charges in March 2000 and is now serving a five-year sentence in Rochester, Minn. [continues 377 words]
Firefighters and Law-Enforcement Officers Are Being Given Special Training to Prepare Them for Hazards During Raids BOONE - They knew it was coming. Investigators with the State Bureau of Investigation and local law-enforcement agencies could track the steady march of the methamphetamine problem as it moved east like a bad-weather system. States such as Missouri, Kansas and Michigan were overwhelmed by the spread of methamphetamine - and the small clandestine labs where it is produced - in the mid-1990s. Methamphetamine threatened to overwhelm law enforcement in some Midwestern states. In Missouri alone, officials had more than 2,700 meth-related cases in 2002. [continues 1728 words]
Hard Times May Be Behind Surge An unexpected increase in felony convictions - perhaps fueled by a bad economy - has put more inmates in the state's prisons, leading to an expected overpopulation by the end of next year. State criminal-justice officials count the addition of three 1,000-bed prisons in the estimates that project that the state's 77 prisons will be over capacity by nearly 1,300 inmates. The system will have nearly 7,700 more inmates than it can handle by 2012 if no additional prisons are built before then. [continues 403 words]
Hundreds of immigrant drug traffickers have flooded North Carolina in the past seven years, an increase linked to the growth of Hispanic immigrants in the state, authorities say. At the end of 1995, just 10 Hispanics were in state prisons for drug-trafficking convictions. As of October, that number had risen to 400, according to the N.C. Department of Correction. In Wake County, where Hispanics make up 5.4 percent of the total population, they accounted for 46 percent of drug trafficking arrests in 2002, the Wake County Sheriff's Office reported. [continues 393 words]
He Prescribed OxyContin To Man Who Pleaded Guilty To Selling It Federal prosecutors in northern Virginia have obtained 18 convictions against dealers and abusers of the prescription pain medicine OxyContin and are investigating a doctor they consider a co-conspirator in plans to illegally distribute thousands of the pills. The doctor at the center of the investigation, William E. Hurwitz of McLean, has shut down his practice and defiantly accused the government of interfering with the doctor-patient relationship. Court documents do not name Hurwitz, but he acknowledges that he is the unnamed McLean doctor who was a source of OxyContin to Timothy Dwayne Urbani, 32, of Manassas. Urbani pleaded guilty earlier this month to dealing between 23,000 and 74,000 OxyContin pills in Tennessee and Virginia. [continues 446 words]
We may well have made a pact with the devil. My fear now is that the devil is soon coming for his due. It was a bargain that lured Republicans and Democrats. In response to a dramatic rise in crime beginning in the early '80s, fueled in part by the crack epidemic, we demanded that elected officials set a get-tough policy that would lock up criminals and throw away the key. Three strikes, you're out. Do the crime, do the time. [continues 522 words]
Ex-Davidson Officer Says in Affidavit Man Was Framed, Threatened Greensboro More than 30 drug defendants have had charges dismissed or convictions overturned since the officers investigating their cases were charged in December with distributing drugs. But a request by Terrence Maurice Barriet breaks new ground in the case of the former Davidson County narcotics officers. Included with the motion is an affidavit from one of the officers, admitting that the crack cocaine used as evidence against Barriet was planted. "Terrence Maurice Barriet did not have drugs on his person or property on May 22, 1999," former officer David Scott Woodall said in the affidavit. [continues 361 words]
The Surry County school board is considering a drug-testing policy for its students. Readers may be interested to learn about the pioneer efforts of the Winston-Salem/ Forsyth County schools. In 1998, STEP ONE helped develop and implement one of the first five policies in our nation. Several of the comments made in 1998 have been confirmed through my experience testing more than 2,500 students a year. Drug testing is not the answer to the drug problem in schools but is a part of a comprehensive solution. Students should not be tested unless parents give permission, know about it, are notified of the results and are involved in assessment and treatment. [continues 144 words]
Final Defendant In Davidson Drug Ring Gets 4-Year Sentence GREENSBORO - Elizabeth Ann Harward, the final defendant in the drug ring that involved three vice and narcotics deputies in Davidson County, was sentenced yesterday to almost four years in prison on charges related to distributing steroids. Harward was first considered only a witness in the case, but her actions eventually led to federal drug charges against her, to which she pleaded guilty. Harward, 25, was the girlfriend of Wyatt Earl Kepley, who was sentenced to more than three years in prison in July for his part in dealing steroids. [continues 425 words]
Three-Term Sheriff Challenged By Dairy Farmer In Alleghany SPARTA - Alleghany County has a relatively low crime rate, and both candidates for sheriff want to keep it that way. Sheriff Mike Caudill, a Democrat, and Republican challenger David Higgins both say that keeping illegal drugs and the crime that comes with them out of the county is a leading issue in the sheriff's race. Caudill, 48, of Sparta, is running for his fourth, four-year term. He has been the sheriff since 1990 and also served one term as the county's register of deeds from 1985 to 1988. [continues 366 words]
An overhauled version of the much-maligned DARE anti-drug program shows promising results in early trials, researchers said, suggesting that lessons once reserved for fifth-graders could be reborn someday for pupils in elementary school through high school. Researchers found that seventh-graders in six cities who took part in the new curriculum were more likely to find using drugs socially inappropriate than a control group, were better at refusing drugs and had fewer misconceptions about how many of their peers use drugs. They were also less likely to say they would use inhalants. [continues 342 words]
Members to Look At Other Systems' Policies Surry County's student athletes and others involved in extracurricular activities could be required to take random drug tests as a requirement for participation. The Surry County Board of Education is discussing the possibility of a program that would test basketball and football players, as well as those who sing in chorus or play trombone for the band. The board will review the policies of surrounding school systems at its next meeting, Nov. 4. [continues 376 words]
WASHINGTON - Noelle Bush, the 25-year-old daughter of the governor of Florida and niece of the president of the United States, was already in a drug rehab program when she was found with a one-gram rock of crack cocaine in her shoe. The judge who sent her to rehab in the first place found her in contempt of court for the latest offense. Contempt of court? At a time when America's prisons are bursting with drug offenders who are less well-connected? When crack abusers in particular are languishing under mandatory sentences? I say we ought to make an example of this young woman. [continues 581 words]
RALEIGH (AP) - The N.C. House and Senate unanimously approved legislation yesterday to close businesses that sell urine. The bill, which now goes to Gov. Mike Easley to be signed into law, was designed to end a business run by a Hendersonville man convicted of violating a similar law in South Carolina. The law would make it a crime to distribute urine for the purposes of altering drug-test results. Selling additives that could be used to spike urine would also be illegal, as would using them to alter test results. [end]
First Violations in Activities Test Group Increased Last Year The Winston-Salem/Forsyth County school system took a controversial step in 1998 by requiring high-school students who want to play sports or join clubs to submit to random drug testing. After four years, the success of the program, which also allows students who don't participate in activities to volunteer to be tested for drugs, has been limited, according to an annual report released last night during a school-board meeting. [continues 545 words]
Last week's observations of the anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on America will be remembered by Toni Henderson, a disabled former nurse who has recently embarked on her own private war against the drug dealers who terrorize her East Greensboro neighborhood. For several weeks, Henderson, 53, has been walking up to drug dealers and giving them an easy-to-understand notice. Her message and mission, on a white piece of paper, read modestly and unpretentiously: "Crack selling will not be tolerated in this community." [continues 648 words]
Conviction Was Based On Deputies Now Jailed For Trafficking Offenses LEXINGTON -- A man who was jailed based on testimony from Davidson County sheriff's deputies, who were later convicted of drug charges, could be free soon. The N.C. Court of Appeals has granted a new trial to George Lee Branham Jr., who is serving a 16-year sentence for drug trafficking. The case hinged on the testimony of former Lt. David Scott Woodall, Lt. Douglas Westmoreland and Sgt. William Rankin of the Davidson County Sheriff's Office. [continues 401 words]
Some Counties Slow To Make Room For Female Inmates MOCKSVILLE - As a detention officer announced from behind a slit in the jail wall that lunch was being served, Melissa Gordon grabbed the hand of a fellow inmate and held an empty hand out for another woman to hold. Like a chain of paper dolls cut out of a single orange sheet, six women in prison-issue jumpsuits formed a circle and bowed their heads. Gordon recited thanks for the meal of beans and hot dogs. [continues 1912 words]
Operation in U.S. Midwest Helped Finance Hezbollah, Authorities Say Federal authorities have amassed evidence for the first time that an illegal drug operation in the United States was funneling proceeds to such Middle East terrorist groups as Hezbollah. Evidence gathered by the Drug Enforcement Administration since a series of raids in January indicates that a methamphetamine drug operation in the Midwest involving men of Middle Eastern descent has been shipping money back to terrorist groups, officials said. "There is increasing intelligence information from the investigation that for the first time alleged drug sales in the United States are going in part to support terrorist organizations in the Middle East," DEA administrator Asa Hutchinson said. [continues 637 words]
Maybe the recent story in The Economist will be the prod that causes some long, hard introspection in America regarding its prison system. The land of liberty is a cruel joke for a too-large percentage of the U.S. citizenry. Consider some statistics: For almost 50 years, from 1925 to 1973, an average of 110 Americans for every 100,000 were in federal and state prisons. By 2000, the incarceration rate had risen to 478 per 100,000. Add in the local jail population, and almost 700 of every 100,000 Americans is behind bars. [continues 482 words]
I am writing this letter in support of Sheriff Ron Barker. Sheriff Barker and his deputies have done a great job at what we elected Barker to do, law enforcement. Since he took office 12 years ago, his deputies have taken more than $34 million in drugs and money from drug traffickers in Forsyth County. They have made more than 2,400 drug arrests. I believe that illegal drugs are the biggest cause of crime in any city. Sheriff Barker's main objective has been to dramatically decrease the flow of drugs in Forsyth County. He has accomplished this, and as a result, violent crimes, especially robberies, are down in Forsyth County. I feel safer knowing that we have a sheriff who aggressively fights all crimes, especially illegal drugs. Let's allow him to continue his fight. On Sept. 10, let's re-elect Sheriff Ron Barker. Winston-Salem. Pejorative Speaking [end]
A recent Journal article on habitual felons quoted Velma Thomas, the wife of habitual felon Victor Thomas. Mrs. Thomas said that her husband was the victim of racism. The truth: Acting on a tip provided by a "snitch," officers arrested Victor Thomas for having cocaine in his vehicle. Officers later searched his house and found a handgun and 20 bags of cocaine packaged for resale. Thomas had seven previous drug-related felony convictions and 13 misdemeanor convictions. Thomas admitted the gun and drugs were his. [continues 152 words]
Shortage Of Facilities Puts Strain On Local Systems Despite Fees Paid By State More prisoners might have to stay in county jails because of overcrowding at the state's prisons, according to one state official. Some county officials said yesterday that the state's plan would stretch their limited resources and probably lead to overcrowding in their jails. Boyd Bennett, the director of the N.C. Division of Prisons, said in a letter dated July 18 to county sheriffs that officials might have to keep state prisoners in county jails until more prison beds are available. [continues 550 words]
With the possibility of habitual criminals being people with drug habits, let's not let that crime be the final strike for habitual-offender purposes. Unless the person is committing a crime against another person, then let's not put him away. Our system cannot continue to incarcerate people whose only victims are themselves. Odie Skidmore Winston-Salem. [end]
I don't want to come across as prejudiced, but I feel it's time to speak out. It seems the state or the city gets accused of racial bias every time "statistics" show that our law-enforcement agents or court systems act prejudicially ("Habitual-offender law racially biased, blacks charge," July 22). This is the same song we heard when the state Highway Patrol was accused of singling out minorities in traffic violations. A study proved definitively that this was not the case. [continues 177 words]
Whether the habitual-offender sentencing law is racially biased is one of those questions that frustrate simple yes or no answers. For most people, the answer says more about their personal perspective than it does about the question and its correct answer. Two points are worth some public dialogue. First, the charge that sentencing for drug violations is racially biased deserves some attention. The punishment for crack offenses seems harsher than for other cocaine violations, and crack has been the drug of choice for many of those blacks who are involved in drugs. [continues 491 words]
Numbers Are The Proof, They Say; Not So, Say Prosecutors, Others Velma Thomas turned her anger into action last year after her husband, arrested on a drug-possession charge, was convicted as a habitual felon and sentenced to nine to 12 years in prison. She began to research state statistics since 1995 about the racial makeup of defendants convicted as habitual felons in the Triad and North Carolina. The numbers she gathered show that as of April 30, 81 percent of defendants convicted as habitual felons in Forsyth County were black, and 17 percent were white. In Guilford County, 80 percent of the defendants convicted under the law were black and 18 percent were white. [continues 1572 words]
Major Was Also Leader in the Civil Air Boone police are mourning the loss of a beloved 24-year veteran killed in an airplane crash Wednesday afternoon as he and two other officers patrolled for marijuana plants in Chowan County. Maj. Robert C. Kennedy, 46, was a trained spotter in the Civil Air Patrol's counternarcotics program. He led the Civil Air Patrol in Boone as squadron commander and was in Edenton to assist a pilot and communications officer on a patrol flight above Chowan County's rural landscape. [continues 505 words]
2-year Drug Inquiry Done By Navy, State And Local Authorities Authorities in North Carolina have seized $1.4 million worth of narcotics and have convicted more than 80 Marines and sailors of using or distributing designer drugs, officials said yesterday. It was one of the biggest drug investigations involving the military in recent years. Although narcotics cases in the military are not rare, they usually involve smaller numbers of people. A recent drug scandal at the Air Force Academy, for example, implicated 38 cadets. [continues 296 words]
Sheriff Ron Barker feels in the mood. He ditches the cheddar cheese cubes and Club crackers he was going to eat at his desk for lunch and drives over to the Healy Drive K&W Cafeteria. Sporting his brown dress uniform and black leather boots, Barker hardly gets through the cafeteria door before the handshakes and hellos from the mostly silver-haired crowd begin. The women behind the counter call him "sir" as they fork beef liver and plop mashed potatoes with gravy on his plate. [continues 2237 words]
$11 Million In Reductions Would Increase Number Of Inmates, State Warned The proposed $11 million in state budget cuts to court programs will likely increase the caseload for prosecutors and the number of offenders who are sent to North Carolina prisons, officials said yesterday. Gov. Mike Easley and court officials have proposed to eliminate state money to the sentencing-services program, drug-treatment courts and dispute-settlement centers - services that, supporters say, save money by reducing the numbers of people sentenced to prison. [continues 553 words]
Democracy is two wolves and a sheep voting. Liberty is a well-armed sheep contesting the vote. I wish the public understood the true nature of the two major political parties in this country. A plain and clear picture is really quite simple. For the word Democrat, substitute the words socialism and communism, and for the word Republican, substitute the words fascism and Nazism. I prefer the latter to the former, but like neither, since I consider the Jeffersonian and Libertarian ideologies far superior. [continues 173 words]
He Gets Leniency For Helping To Catch The Other Suspects A former Thomasville police officer who helped authorities break a drug ring involving three area law-enforcement agencies was sentenced in federal court yesterday for his part in the conspiracy. Russell McHenry received a 25-month active sentence in a federal prison for possession of marijuana, cocaine and Ecstasy. McHenry was arrested in November on state drug-trafficking charges and immediately agreed to help authorities investigate drug activity involving an officer in the Archdale Police Department and three deputies from the Davidson County Sheriff's Office. [continues 352 words]
Money May Not Be Enough To Keep Program Open The U.S. Justice Department has given more than $900,000 to North Carolina's drug-treatment courts, but an official said that the money may not be enough to keep the courts running because it's earmarked for only three treatment programs. Attorney General John Ashcroft said Thursday that the Justice Department had awarded about $950,000 in grants to youth-treatment courts in Forsyth and Durham counties and a statewide youth- and family-treatment court. Forsyth County received a three-year grant of $333,818. [continues 443 words]
District Attorney Says Action Taken During Early Morning Confrontation Within Law The Forsyth County district attorney will release a report today saying that the two sheriff's deputies who beat Nakia Glenn during a traffic stop, which turned violent, acted properly because Glenn resisted arrest and posed a threat to the officers' safety. Glenn, 22, was in a coma for several weeks after the incident Aug. 19 on East 21st Street and Cleveland Avenue. He is now in a rehabilitation center and has severe brain damage. [continues 1328 words]
The Forsyth Initiative for Residential Self-help Treatment (FIRST) has had a history of difficulty since it opened in Winston-Salem in 1991. The problems continue, as its founder and president, Mary Hogden, has been fired, and now a report of inappropriate spending at FIRST has surfaced. What should not be lost in all this turmoil is the fact that the program does not receive public money and has, despite it all, been highly successful in helping recovering drug and alcohol abusers to learn trades and lead productive lives. FIRST now has operations in Winston-Salem, Black Mountain, Wilmington and Whiteville. [continues 56 words]
GREENSBORO - Three people linked to the area law-enforcement officers convicted of distributing drugs pleaded guilty in U.S. District Court earlier this week to drug violations . Chad Douglas Wilson, Jonathan Eric Apt and Elizabeth Ann Harward, who were arrested in late March, appeared in court Monday and Tuesday. Wilson pleaded guilty to distributing Ecstasy. Court documents said that he distributed drugs around Davidson and Guilford counties and supplied Ecstasy to former Thomasville police Sgt. Russell McHenry through a middleman. Apt pleaded guilty to conspiracy to distribute marijuana and steroids, and Harward pleaded guilty to conspiracy to distribute steroids. [continues 119 words]
Charges Against Two May Be First In State For Legal Substance Two people accused of providing a "club drug" to a Reynolds High School student were charged yesterday with five felonies, the Forsyth County Sheriff's Office said. The charges came after a 15-year-old girl became sick Jan. 29 and was taken from class to Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center. Tests showed she had marijuana and GHB in her system, said Forsyth Sheriff Ron Barker. GHB, known as "Liquid Ecstasy," is increasing in popularity with young people, officials said. [continues 394 words]
It's amazing how local, state and federal government cannot manage a budget without "digging" into hardworking taxpayers' pockets. The Winston-Salem aldermen and mayor are no exception. The recent proposed vehicle tax is a farce. Let me make some suggestions for increased revenue. Increase all fines for traffic violations, especially repeat offenders. Drastically increase fines for drug and alcohol convictions, mostly on drug dealers. Charge a fee for all immigrants seeking residence in the United States (charge the individual, not some in-state agency). Look at some possibilities for cutting back on political expenses (charity begins at home). Quit trying to invent costly projects and trying to keep up with the Joneses. Seek and encourage hardworking and honest taxpayers to make suggestions. Stop paying out funds to freeloaders who are able to work. I encourage anyone reading this to make his local, state and federal elected officials know how he feels about this situation. If enough people speak out, maybe we might get the attention we deserve. Lexington. [end]
It is true that crime and drugs are a major problem in this country's public housing communities. However, I feel that the "one-strike" policy is not a good way to solve the problem ("Use a one-strike rule, but enforce it sensibly," William Raspberry, April 2). In my opinion the problem should be solved by first identifying the root of the problem. The root of the drug problem in this country is not the local pusher or the neighborhood kingpin but the government. [continues 163 words]
The late Kurt Cobain, the leader of Nirvana, has been on my mind. Much of it has to do with his suicide, eight years ago this week. He was just 27 - blonde and beautiful, talented and sensitive, a star - when, as the old bluesmen used to write, Cobain took a shotgun and "disconnected his brain." What a waste. Certainly, the slavery and trappings of show business played a major role in Cobain's decision to take his life. But suicide was also something he had long talked about and, on several occasions, had tried, only to fail. [continues 924 words]
LEWISVILLE -- An old message got a fresh new look at Youthnited, an anti-drug rally in Shallowford Square on Saturday. More than 200 teens and parents turned out for fun with a purpose. Organizers staged the event to let teens-agers see what they say is the ugly truth about substance use and abuse. "Who here wants to go to prison?" asked speaker David Holland, a former addict and current inmate at the Cherry Street Correctional Center in Winston-Salem. "Nobody wants to go to prison. Drugs will get a hold of you and will not let go." [continues 363 words]
President Bush speaks of breathing freedom, but failed to tell us where to go to do that, because you won't do it in this country. Actually, what he means is freedom for the federal government rather than freedom for the individual. People speak of rights. The only rights anyone has are the rights he can enforce for himself. If you can't enforce a right, you don't have it. The state's main goal for years has been to deny the public and the individual any enforcement capabilities. As the saying goes, if you want a helping hand, look at the end of your wrist. [continues 133 words]
Defense attorneys hear it all the time. "Someone planted those drugs, honest. I didn't do it." So it's no surprise that Darick Owens, a 34-year-old welder, had a tough time convincing his attorney that the pound of marijuana and the 10 tablets of Ecstasy found in his 1989 Chevy weren't his. "Like everyone else, he didn't believe me," Owens said. Owens was living with his sister in southern Davidson County in September 2000. One Saturday some deputies came to the house looking for a stash of drugs. They said they had received a tip from CrimeStoppers. So Owens said he handed over two joints. [continues 506 words]
RALEIGH -- A doctor accused in 23 drug-overdose deaths defended himself yesterday as an unconventional practitioner bucking the medical and regulatory establishment. Dr. Joseph Talley has already lost his federal license to prescribe narcotics and now finds himself fighting state regulators who want to strip his license to practice medicine. Bob Clay, an attorney representing the Cleveland County doctor in a hearing that began yesterday before the North Carolina Medical Board, portrayed his client as a believer in using prescription painkillers to treat long-term, chronic pain. [continues 177 words]
Conviction Is The First One Tossed In Deputies' Case LEXINGTON - A Superior Court judge yesterday dismissed drug charges against a Davidson County man who spent 50 days in jail and more than a year on supervised probation because a former sheriff's deputy helped frame him. Judge Kimberly Taylor overturned the felony possession of Ecstasy and marijuana convictions against Darick Owens, 34, after one of three former Davidson County deputies convicted on drug-conspiracy and extortion charges admitted to investigators that he helped plant evidence on Owens. [continues 649 words]
3 Davidson Ex-Deputies, Others Accept U.S. Prosecutors' Deal Greensboro Three former Davidson County deputies, a former Archdale police officer and two other men pleaded guilty yesterday in U.S. District Court in Greensboro to drug-conspiracy charges as part of a plea agreement with federal prosecuters. The men, who had all pleaded not guilty when they were arrested in December, changed their pleas after receiving concessions from the U.S. Attorney's Office, including an agreement to dismiss some charges. [continues 710 words]
Davidson District Attorney Says Accused Deputy May Have Planted the Evidence LEXINGTON -- Garry Frank, the district attorney for Davidson County, said yesterday that he intends to ask a judge to overturn drug convictions against a man who may have been set up by at least one former deputy now charged with distributing drugs. Based on conversations and correspondence Frank had with the U.S. Attorney's Office, and state and federal investigators, he said that there is evidence that drugs were planted on Darick Owens, 34, before he was arrested more than a year ago. [continues 742 words]