'POT' BUSTS MUSHROOM IN CRACKDOWN ON DRUGS

Busting drug pushers and users is like fishing, explains Monroe County
Sheriff Billy Ray Morris. "You may go fishing one day and not get
anything," he says. "But if you keep after it, you'll catch something."

The numbers make it appear that lots of police have been fishing this
decade. And the catch has been good.

Drug arrests statewide in 1998 nearly doubled the total for 1992, the year
crack cocaine started appearing in large amounts in the Natural State. More
people were arrested for drugs in 1998 than for murder, rape, robbery,
aggravated assault, burglary, car theft and arson combined.

While crack cocaine and now methamphetamine have received the most
attention during the 1990s, marijuana arrests have almost tripled.

But the explosion of marijuana arrests may be a somewhat unintended
consequence of a war on more serious drugs, police say.

Police and sheriff's deputies across the state say that much of their focus
has been on crack houses and methamphetamine laboratories. But every time
law officers go after crack dealers and methamphetamine makers or increase
street crime patrols, they also find marijuana, for which criminal
penalties were reduced when laws were changed in the early 1970s as part of
a nationwide trend.

Jeff Walker, a professor of criminal justice at the University of Arkansas
at Little Rock, said the number of "pot" busts jumped because politicians
called for crackdowns on drugs like crack in the early 1990s and
methamphetamine in the late 1990s. Since marijuana is the most popular
drug, Walker said, when police go looking for drugs -- any drugs -- they
find marijuana most often.

"You certainly have to separate the political arena from the enforcement
arena," he said. "What police chiefs and sheriffs say doesn't necessarily
transfer to the street."

To a street cop, Walker said, "a drug arrest is a drug arrest is a drug
arrest."

But the political rhetoric, as well as unprecedented increases in police
manpower, has led to the creation of drug task forces, substantially larger
drug investigation units and other enforcement efforts dedicated
exclusively to going after drugs.

"When you do that, drug arrests go up, and since marijuana is the most
popular drug, you'll see more marijuana," he said.

Many law enforcement officers and commanders said that adding officers has
played a major role in increasing drug arrests. In urban departments some
of the new officers went to drug enforcement units. For instance, the
Little Rock Police Department had a half-dozen drug investigators in the
late 1980s. Today there are more than 30.

Since 1992, law enforcement agencies in Arkansas have grown 39 percent,
adding 1,476 sworn police officers in seven years, Arkansas Crime
Information Center statistics show.

From 1992 to 1998, marijuana possession arrests have gone up 173 percent
when all drug arrests have gone up 97 percent. And at the same time,
marijuana possession arrests make up a larger share of the drug arrest total.

More than half of all drug arrests were for marijuana possession in 1998,
compared with just more than one-third in 1992. In 1998, marijuana
possession made up 52 percent of all drug busts -- 7,423 of 14,236 arrests.
In 1992, 38 percent of all drug arrests were for marijuana possession, or
2,722 of 7,230 arrests.

Nationally, marijuana arrests are down slightly from 1997 and make up 44
percent of all drug arrests, according to the FBI.

But while drug arrests in Arkansas have been going up, crime rates have
been going down.

In the seven years since 1992, state statistics show a 5.1 percent decrease
in what are known as the index crimes: murders, rapes, robberies,
aggravated assaults, burglaries, thefts and car thefts.

Statewide, individual police officers are handling an average of 9.47 fewer
index crimes in 1998 than in 1992, a 32 percent decline. In 1998, officers
in Arkansas dealt with 20.48 index crimes each, compared with 29.95 in 1992.

That, police say, means more officers have more time to go after problems,
like drugs in a neighborhood, before the problems grow and cause other crimes.

Capt. John Morrow, assistant division commander in the criminal
investigation division at the Arkansas State Police troop in Little Rock,
has investigated drugs for the better part of 15 years.

For good reason, he said, the emphasis in many rural departments falls on
methamphetamine cases. Morrow said that dealers are increasing, and the
methamphetamine lab itself is a public health hazard. Where a marijuana
field is basically a field of weeds, a methamphetamine lab can be a mobile
hazardous waste site because of the toxic chemicals used to create the drug.

And, Morrow said, the drug affects users more severely by causing them to
neglect children and commit crimes to get more methamphetamine.

"Look at what it does to [abusers] physically," he said. "It leads them
down the road to destruction. There's no question."

Benton County sheriff's spokesman Tom Brewster said methamphetamine has
been the chief drug his office has encountered.

"Meth is the scourge of the middle part of this country now," he said.

Brewster said one key piece of the anti-drug efforts in Benton County has
been educating neighbors about methamphetamine, like what a lab smells like
or looks like.

Along with more reports of meth, he said, have come reports of marijuana.

Police in the state's two largest departments -- Little Rock and North
Little Rock -- admit that marijuana is not public enemy No. 1 when it comes
to drugs and crime. The officers are quick to say that if they have
information about marijuana dealing, they'll pursue it. But their current
and past investigations focus on crack and methamphetamine.

The reason for that, they say, is that drugs often bring other crimes with
them. And, police say, crack and methamphetamine, because of their
addictiveness, are nearly guarantees of increased burglaries, robberies and
thefts.

"Obviously we concentrate on drugs that are having a bigger impact on a
community," Little Rock police Capt. Sam Williams said. "If we get
information about someone dealing marijuana ... we are going to investigate
it.

"If we had to do one or the other -- which we do not -- we would go after
the crack houses and the people dealing the methamphetamine."

Williams, the drug investigations supervisor, said that many users of
"hard" drugs -- such as methamphetamine, cocaine, heroin and LSD -- use
marijuana as a mild sedative to come off the other drug.

"You just don't find a crack abuser or methamphetamine abuser who doesn't
smoke marijuana," Williams said. "Any time we increase emphasis on
narcotics arrests, marijuana arrests have got to go up."

Sgt. Jim Scott, a North Little Rock police spokesman, said some explanation
for the increase of marijuana-related arrests rests on police officers'
noses. Scott said his department, like many others in the state, has
started and increased foot and bike patrols through neighborhoods,
increasing the chance that an officer will smell the drug.

Scott said those foot and bike patrols also increase the chances that a
neighborhood resident will tell the police about drugs in the area. And
increased training for patrol officers in drug recognition and street
awareness has helped.

But Scott said that most marijuana arrests in North Little Rock stem from
whatever activity attracted the officer's attention in the first place. He
said the pot arrest may follow a traffic stop or a warrant check or other
drug activity.

"You always find them in combinations," he said. "I've never been to a
crack house ... where there wasn't marijuana in some quantity."

In more rural parts of the state, like Monroe County, drug investigations
often mean state police investigators work with a local department that
lacks the manpower for such investigations, Morrow said. State police will
go in undercover where local officers couldn't, help with surveillance and
provide money for drug purchases, he said.

Morrow said that the statewide addition of officers has helped the campaign
against drugs.

But no matter what drug commanders want to go after, Morrow said, much of
what gets taken off the street hinges on who is talking to police.

"In a sense, it comes back to their informants and what they can deliver to
you," Morrow said.

Sheriff Morris said his office is going after all drugs, but the thrust of
its drug investigations in the last few years has been methamphetamine.

The increase in drug arrests is a point of pride for the lawman. Monroe
County now arrests more people for marijuana per 1,000 residents -- 11.3 --
than any other county in the state.

Morris said some of that stems from the presence of Interstate 40, where
deputies lie in wait for drug traffickers to speed through their county.
But some drug traffic is local, and the area drug dealers who were dealing
mostly in marijuana years ago have also moved to methamphetamine, Morris said.

Now they sell what the buyer wants, he said.

"If you make a drug bust, you're going to find marijuana," Morris said. "As
long as they have the money, they'll sell it to them."

Besides putting more emphasis on drug investigations, Morris, who has been
sheriff since January, said he goes to area schools and tells students what
happens when police arrest someone for drugs. He tells them about jail and
what drugs do to people, but he also tells them things teen-agers fear more
- -- police can confiscate cars under drug forfeiture laws.

"I just know what these drugs do to these youngsters," he said. "There's no
hope for them if we find them with drugs.

"I just pray for the youngsters that they listen to me and take my advice
and don't fool with this stuff."