SHELBY COUNTY PLANS TO RESTART DRUG TASK FORCE

Shelby County plans to form a multijurisdictional drug task force to deal
with an increase in drug traffic in the state's fastest-growing county.

Sheriff Chris Curry has said a drug unit is one of his top priorities, and
he moved a step closer to that goal this week when he won the County
Commission's backing to seek a grant.

Curry's chief deputy, John Samaniego, has written an application for a
$364,029 Law Enforcement Planning Division grant. The grant, through the
Alabama Department of Economic and Community Development, would
re-establish the Shelby County Drug Enforcement Task Force beginning Oct.
1. The old task force folded in 1999.

The county is being asked to ante up $121,343 in matching funds for the
first year's operation.

The grant application paints a scary picture for residents of the state's
most affluent county. It says: "Shelby County's illegal drug activity
exists at all socioeconomic levels and age groups, and crosses all racial
and ethnic lines."

According to the grant application, drugs being abused in Shelby County
include marijuana; prescription tranquilizers and painkillers; designer
drugs; cocaine in both crack and powder form; and methamphetamine, known as
crank, ice and meth.

"Recreational use of illegal drugs by minors and young adults is on the
rise," according to the document.

The numbers included in the document show a 28 percent increase in arrests
for marijuana possession, from 345 in 2000 to 443 in 2002; a 53 percent
increase in possession arrests for other controlled substances, from 266 in
2000 to 408 in 2002; and a 153 percent rise in arrests for distribution of
controlled substances, including marijuana, from 120 in 2000 to 304 in 2002.

The former Shelby County Drug Task Force dissolved in 1999 after a $265,000
grant failed to come through. By the time the funding disappeared, so had
most municipalities' participation on the force. Montevallo Police Chief
Steve Southerland cited politics and personalities as problems leading to
his city leaving the unit.

"The way they are setting up the board, it looks like they are doing
everything they can to take the politics out of it this time," Southerland
said.

According to Samaniego, the Sheriff's Department would be the managing
agency of a task force that would include Pelham, Alabaster, Helena,
Montevallo and Columbiana.

The governing board would be the chiefs of those police departments, the
sheriff and the district attorney. The task force would "establish and
maintain an intelligence database" and "collect intelligence countywide on
gang activities along with drug dealing organizations in Shelby County,"
according to the grant application.

The Shelby County district attorney's office would provide a full-time
prosecutor to the unit, handling all the unit's criminal prosecutions, as
well as its condemnation cases.

Each department would pay its employees' salaries, insurance, worker's
compensation and provide an undercover vehicle.

Among the task force's stated first-year objectives are:

To seize 1,000 grams of cocaine and crack.

To conduct 250 drug investigations, resulting in the arrests of 250 people.

To seize $30,000 in drug proceeds.

To seize 40 firearms from defendants charged in drug arrests.

To convict 100 defendants on drug charges.

"What we hope to accomplish here is a centralized information center on all
drug trafficking in Shelby County," Samaniego told the County Commission,
"by us all working together and handling all felony arrests within the task
force. Hopefully, if we get funded by ADECA, we can put this together by
the end of the fiscal year."