DRUG ROAD BLOCK OPERATED ON I-49

NEAR MANSFIELD -- Motorists with weak bladders and a man looking for a
place to spit out his tobacco were about the only hits Tri-Parish Drug
Task Force had Tuesday as it resurrected narcotics checkpoints on
Interstate 49.

The special detail even brought more comic relief when hours into it
agents discovered that the absence of vehicles at the checkpoint could
be blamed on a dutiful state highway worker who removed the roadside
sign warning of the checkpoint ahead. The large, professionally
lettered sign, complete with a sheriff's star in the center, later was
saved from near destruction at the parish landfill, where the highway
employee took it after finding it about a half mile south of the
checkpoint near an I-49 exit east of Mansfield.

"Oh, well, we'll just come back another day," DeSoto sheriff's Sgt.
Horace Womack said as he and other agents could only laugh about the
pitfalls of the checkpoint trial run.

But Womack knows firsthand how successful the checkpoints can be. The
DeSoto sheriff's office routinely performed the tasks during the
1990s, seizing drugs and making arrests.

The practice was halted, however, when checkpoints, especially DWI
checkpoints, fell under court scrutiny. DeSoto even had a case
involving the seizure of 4.4 pounds of cocaine from an I-49 motorist
that stayed tied up on appeals for a number of years.

With court decisions of recent years setting guidelines for the
approved checkpoints, the task force is moving again in that direction
as it looks for more ways to combat drug distribution.

"We recently started working more criminal patrol details in the
three-parish area," said DeSoto sheriff's Lt. Pat Cobbs, the task
force supervisor. "So we restarted this as another phase of our
highway interdiction emphasis."

Drug-related arrests are up over the past three months, said Cobbs,
who still is compiling task force arrests in DeSoto, Red River and
Sabine parishes.

"Our local efforts are always our priority. But we do plan to do these
details as time and personnel are available," he said. "We'll critique
today's work to see if changes are needed, whether we need to adjust
the times, do it day or night or whatever factors we need to consider."

About two months ago, agents caught three fugitives and "a lot of
traffic violations" during a similar detail on state Highway 6 near
the Louisiana-Texas line, Sabine sheriff's Detective Randy Murphy said.

Cobbs didn't want to disclose specifics of how the detail works. But
the random checks of motorists are done with the aid of a canine who
is watched to see if he "alerts" to the presence of drugs, he said.

Tuesday, Red River sheriff's Deputy John Mahfouz and canine Rik worked
with the task force. Mahfouz is one of three narcotics agents with
drug-sniffing dogs assigned to the three-parish unit.

The dogs, said Cobbs, are key to the operation. "A Supreme Court
ruling allows law enforcement to walk a canine around any vehicle on a
public passageway. ... Having a canine assigned from each parish
allows us to be more free in our operations."

Cobbs compares the highway drug surveillance to the random searches of
passenger buses in Shreveport. "They catch drugs carried by couriers.
We are focusing on dope that might be carried cross-country. We might
catch couriers, too. But we know any highway has the potential of
being an avenue for drug transactions."

The narcotics checkpoints move around the tri-parish area. Plans are
to do them every two to three weeks, Cobbs said.