NEIGHBORS PROTEST LATE-NIGHT DRUG RAID BY FBI

Marchers Say Tactics Excessive, Frightening

FARMERVILLE -- About 100 neighbors marched through downtown Saturday to
protest an FBI raid on a family of alleged drug dealers, saying the raid
was excessive and scared the whole neighborhood.

They say the allegations against the Nation family weren't true. Ten
members of the family were arrested on counts of distributing crack cocaine
and conspiring to do so.

"I see these people every day. They could have arrested them any time and
any day. They are not violent. They're just normal people," organizer
Sheila Lewis said.

The Nation family gave the local school money for a new playground, she
said. "Does that sound like a menace?"

Lewis said she doesn't know about how they made their money, but does know
they were not a threat to the neighborhood. "These people are so nice," she
said.

The night they were arrested, Lewis said, it was police that scared the
community, not the Nation family.

Melissa Nation, who was in the protest, said, "Everybody was asleep in
their bed, and they came in our neighborhoods to our homes and busted down
doors and just destroyed everything in each person's home."

People have sold drugs in Farmerville for years, Lewis said.

That night, "it was like a war zone," Lewis said. "People were scared to
death. One woman who lived a couple of houses down still hasn't been back.
She's too scared."

FBI Special Agent Cal Sieg said nobody has filed any abuse or brutality
complaint about the raids. Accused drug traffickers are likely to be
violent, so agents take precautions, he said.

Agents wanted to get in and out of the house, and make the arrests quickly
to decrease the chance that anyone -- agent, arrestee or bystander -- would
get hurt.

Surprise and an early morning raid, so that as few people as possible are
out and about, are the keys to doing that, he said.

"If we can control the situation, then we are confident that no one will be
injured. And I guess the best proof of what happened is that no one got
injured, no one was hurt," he said.