BECKLEY POLICE CHIEF SPEAKS ON OFFICER'S DEATH, DRUGS IN CITY

Long before Billy Cole became Beckley's chief of police, he was a
high school football standout with dreams of becoming a coach.

Little did he know that one day he would find himself coaching a team
through an endless battle against one of the most formidable
opponents on earth -- crime. From his own experience as a policeman,
he knew the Beckley Police Department team would take its fair share
of hits. As a detective, he investigated the murder of fellow officer
Sgt. David Lilly in 1975. He just never expected his team to take
another blow like that. Now, as the force recovers from the shooting
death of one of its own, this 41-year veteran of the department he
now runs eagerly awaits answers from the ongoing State Police
investigation into the death of Cpl. Chuck Smith, 29, who was shot
last month while carrying out an impromptu undercover drug buy.

"Every case is different," Cole said during a recent interview with
The Register-Herald. "It's hard to have a playbook that says you're
going to go from 'A' to 'B' to 'C.' You've got to rely on your
experience and your training, and try to stay as safe as you can. But
obviously this one went bad." Cole said he intends to review the
final report once State Police complete their investigation.

"If changes are needed, then I'll certainly make them," he said. "
.. When you hear rumors and things, it's not always really accurate,
and . when their investigation is complete, I want to review it and
see what actually happened, not what someone thinks, but what we
know, and then if there are some problems, I will address it." Cole
has been addressing the needs of the department as the city's
appointed police chief for almost 18 years now, a position he worked
hard to achieve starting shortly after his 1963 graduation from Trap
Hill High School, where he played quarterback.

"To look at me now, you'd think probably a lineman," he joked. "I was
going to college to be a football coach, and this job came open and I
was working at Beckley Feed and Hardware at the time," Cole said. "An
older gentleman who worked there talked me into putting in my
application. I put it in on the last day. I wasn't from Beckley. I
didn't know anybody.

So I didn't think I would get the job. But they hired me, and the
rest is history." Cole started out like any other rookie officer, on
road patrol.

But with a force of only 17 officers and three cruisers, road patrol
usually meant foot patrol, or "walking the beat." He spent his early
days walking through town, arresting drunks and checking on
businesses. Eventually, he became part of the force's first detective
bureau, then chief of narcotics.

After serving a stint as chief of detectives, Cole, a lieutenant
then, was appointed by Mayor Emmett Pugh to chief of police.

Over the years, he saw his force grow to a full staff of 48. It's
just four under that now, he said.

At one time, the department had 56 officers, but budgetary problems
made cutting back a necessity.

Cole said it didn't hurt much to lose those positions. "We really
didn't need that many," he said. "Forty-eight's a good number." Four
of those officers make up the department's drug unit. Its head
detective answers directly to Cole, and the unit has authorization to
do whatever it feels it needs to do, Cole explained.

Smith was a part of that group when he died Aug. 29. But with such a
small and visible unit, are undercover drug buys in a small town like
Beckley safe? "Most of the time we use confidential sources," Cole
said. "We really don't do a lot of undercover buying drugs in the
city because so many people know you, which makes it even more dangerous.

It would depend on the circumstances. If they felt safe doing it and
felt like the people they were buying from didn't know them, then
they would (go undercover)." Not so many years ago, Beckley's
narcotics unit participated with TRIDENT, a regional drug task force
that shares undercover officers between Raleigh and Fayette counties.

But Cole said Beckley pulled out of TRIDENT because the need for a
focus on drug crime in Beckley increased. "We're talking about 1,400
square miles, and I thought that I needed to spend my time in
Beckley," Cole said. "They had so much territory to cover that I
didn't feel we were doing enough in Beckley. That's why I dropped
out." Beckley, like other cities in the 1990s, developed a crack
cocaine problem that has yet to go away. And with it came an increase
in other crimes, including violent ones.

"So much of your crime is drug-related, and I know that we were
having a lot of violent crimes at one time, and when you have
trouble-makers like that on the street causing problems, it doesn't
matter to me whether you get them for breaking and entering or for
selling dope," Cole said. "I mean, you're solving the problem either
way, so if they're in jail, they're certainly not breaking in people's houses.

We try correction on both angles. ... It's a lot easier to catch them
selling drugs than to prove they broke into someone's house when
there's not much evidence there." Crime, he admits, has changed since
his days walking the beat. "It seems like there's an awful lot of
people now carrying guns," he said. Crimes involving guns are more
likely to be turned over by police to federal authorities rather than
to state authorities, Cole explained. The federal system, with its
mandated sentencing guidelines, leaves little wiggle room for
alternative sentences, such as home confinement. And oftentimes,
depending on the drug involved, the federal penalty can be stiffer
than the state's maximum.

"We take as many drug charges as we can to the feds because of
mandatory sentences," Cole said. "... The problem you've got (with
the state) is the prisons are full, and I guess no money to build
prisons with, they say, and, I guess, if we had a new prison, we
could fill it up pretty fast." That, he said, is because the war on
drugs is far from over. "I can tell you that we're not winning the
war on drugs," he said. "You throw one in jail, two take his place,
it seems like." But his team is fighting it. In fact, the department
is able to use drug asset forfeiture money to continue policing
against drugs. "We use it to buy vehicles, pay informants, to buy
drugs," Cole said. "It's all used back on drugs, for investigation or
equipment.

Let the drug people pay for the stuff we catch them with." But what
about long-term, in-patient rehabilitation services for local drug addicts?

Would that help win the war?

"I think rehabilitation would help," Cole said, but using drug asset
forfeiture funds for rehabilitation is unlikely.

"We really don't have that kind of asset forfeitures. We have some
money, but nothing that would fund something like that," Cole said.
So can police emerge victorious over their opponents from the drug
world? "I've been at it an awful lot of years, and we're not making
that much progress to that end yet," Cole said. "It's not just
Beckley. I mean, everybody's got the same problem, and some worse."
It's that very problem that Smith's friends and family say he was
focused on solving.

Cole called him a dedicated officer who knew his job and was a good
investigator.

"And I'm sure that he felt that he was safe, or he wouldn't have done
it," Cole said. "It's been a tough time. ... You can really
second-guess your moves on Saturday morning after Friday night's
game." But his team, his police force, is far from defeated. "They
work hard, and they make a lot of drug cases," Cole said. "They're
dedicated people to their job, and I don't think this is going to
make a difference with how hard they work. It's certainly hurtful to
lose one of your officers, but they worked hard before this, and I'm
sure they'll work hard now."