INDICTMENTS, ROBESON COUNTY DEPUTIES' IMAGES AT ODDS

LUMBERTON -- They began their careers as fresh-faced men in their early 20s
- -- C.T. Strickland and Steven Lovin as uniformed Robeson County deputies,
Roger Taylor as a sheriff's dispatcher.

They rolled up their sleeves, earned their law enforcement certificates and
went to work vowing to uphold the law and honor the badge. About 15 years
later, the three former deputies live in the disgrace of a federal indictment.

They stand accused of burning homes. Beating up drug dealers. Stealing
public money for their own use. Paying informants with marijuana and
cocaine. In all, eight deputies have been charged in a widening state and
federal probe of the Robeson County Sheriff's Office. Strickland, Lovin and
Taylor are at the center of the investigation.

The indictment is not a finding of guilt. It means only that a grand jury
found enough evidence to put the men on trial.

But since the indictment came down in early June, a question has
reverberated throughout Robeson County: What caused three good men -- three
good cops -- to go bad?

For friends and family closest to the three, the charges are hard to believe.

Roger Taylor was the poster boy. Good looks, big heart, a well-rounded kid
from a wealthy, self-made family.

As a child, Taylor dreamed of following in his father's footsteps. In the
1970s, Ewing Taylor had worked his way up to chief of the Lumberton Rescue
Squad. At times, his son put on a small pair of coveralls, just like those
worn by his father and other squad members. He couldn't wait for the day he
could join them.

By high school, Taylor found himself a member of the junior rescue squad.
At age 18, after one failed attempt, he became a full-time volunteer
member. About the same time, former Sheriff Hubert Stone hired Taylor as a
dispatcher. Stone described Taylor as a hard worker who never caused
problems. By 1998, Taylor had taken over as head of the entire
communications department.

Two years later, he fulfilled his lifelong dream, becoming commander of the
Rescue Squad.

I'm doing it because I want to help people," Taylor told a reporter that
year. "That's the bottom line. My heart is in that rescue. I treat it like
a family member." Taylor's friend, Rescue Squad member Tommy Stevens, said
Taylor remains true to his words today.

"The only thing I see Roger trying to do is help Robeson County," Stevens
said. "Roger is a humanitarian, point-blank. His main goal is to make
better for everyone around him. That's the only way I've ever known Roger."
When Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf Coast in August 2005, Taylor helped
assemble a group that became among the first rescue workers to reach
victims in New Orleans, Stevens said. Once in the city, Taylor quickly
started making command decisions, Stevens said.

He said Taylor got a bus and drove a group of tourists and special-needs
children out of the ravaged city. He said the group also went to University
Hospital and helped evacuate patients, including a 500-pound paraplegic who
had to be lowered down the stairwell on a makeshift lift. Taylor
coordinated the efforts.

"He is a fantastic individual," Stevens said. "He just takes initiative to
get things done. He goes in and takes care of the problems. Point-blank."
Taylor's mother, Mary Taylor, declined to talk about the case against her
son, saying the truth will come out at trial.

"Some of the things printed are absolutely untrue," she said. "It's all
sensationalism." Strickland C.T. Strickland, the only child of a truck
driver and a mill worker, was born on his grandfather's land in Prospect.
His father died when he was 7, and his mother sold their mobile home and
moved to Lumberton, said Strickland's uncle, Ray Strickland.

Ray Strickland said his nephew stayed with him on weekends for years. "He
was just a good, solid, smart boy," Ray Strickland said. "I never thought
anything like this would have ever come up.

"C.T., he was not nothing like what happened to him." Ray Strickland's
sister-in-law, Sandra Graham, said she taught C.T. Strickland at
Littlefield School in the 1980s. She called him an average student with a
happy-go-lucky personality, "a very likeable and comical person." Ray
Strickland, a former Robeson County deputy under Sheriff Hubert Stone, said
he got his nephew a job working for Stone in 1990. Ray Strickland said his
nephew came to his house to eat or visit almost every week until Glenn
Maynor became sheriff in 1994.

Ray Strickland said Maynor knew he was a big Stone supporter and encouraged
his nephew to stay away from his home. A few months after Maynor took
office, Ray Strickland said, his nephew stopped visiting him for good. "He
has always been a good boy, but he got messed up when working for Glenn,
either that or he got mixed up with the wrong crowd," Ray Strickland said.
"I wore the badge, and that was an honor. For it to be where it's at now
and what it's gone through, it's an insult to me." Leroy Freeman, a friend
of C.T. Strickland's, said Strickland came to see him after his arrest.

"He told me that he hadn't done anything," Freeman said. "He says he's
innocent and he doesn't know anything about anybody else." Freeman said he
knows Strickland as a good, hard-working man. After he left the department
in 2003, Freeman said, Strickland would stop by and tell him about his job
as an investigator with a big Florida company. Lovin Steven Ray Lovin had a
lower profile in the county than the other two former deputies. Lovin grew
up on the outskirts of Maxton. Stone hired him shortly after he finished
high school and earned his law enforcement certification. Lovin worked as a
uniformed deputy in the Maxton area until he suffered a brain illness and
began receiving treatment at the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota, Stone said.

He said other deputies rallied to help Lovin and his family by contributing
their sick leave and donating money so he could pay his bills. Stone called
Lovin a "a real clean-cut guy" and said he had "no problems with him
whatsoever." Lovin's wife, Lori, declined to comment about her husband or
his alleged wrongdoing.

A man who identified himself as the manager of Big Boy Towing in Lumberton,
where Lovin has worked for about two years, described Lovin as a "fantastic
person" who is dependable and hard-working.

"He's a nice person, a wonderful family," said the manager, who declined to
give his name or discuss the charges against Lovin. "He has a lot of
friends outside of the sheriff's department." December trial Taylor,
Strickland and Lovin have all left the Sheriff's Office. They are out of
jail, awaiting a trial that has been scheduled for December. The 29-page
indictment accuses the three men of crimes committed since 1995, a year
after Maynor became sheriff. Maynor resigned in 2004, citing health
concerns. Prosecutors say Taylor conspired with others in 1997 to burn
Lewis Vernon's home and pawnshop. They say he paid someone $1,600 for
helping to burn the home and used about 25 pounds of marijuana as payment
for burning the pawnshop. The same year, prosecutors say, Taylor,
Strickland and Lovin went to drug dealer Hubert Ray Locklear's home, beat
up some of the people there and burned the house to the ground.

Taylor is also accused of giving marijuana and cocaine as payment to
confidential informants. In 1998, the indictment says, he took about 15
pounds of marijuana from the sheriff's evidence room and gave it to a
snitch. The indictment accuses Strickland, 39, of beating up a suspect,
Daniel Watts, and stealing about $11,000 from him.

Lovin, 36, is accused of stealing more than $150,000 seized from
drug-traffic stops on Interstate 95. The indictment alleges that Lovin used
some of the money to buy a Harley-Davidson motorcycle and a Ford F-250
pickup. Prosecutors say Lovin had a secret compartment under the stairwell
in his home. Hydraulic lifts opened the compartment. Stone and Johnson
Britt, the county's district attorney, speculate that a lack of supervision
under Maynor -- a relatively inexperienced lawman when he won the sheriff's
seat in 1994 -- is partly to blame for the troubles the former deputies now
face. Stone and Britt say the men were allowed to remain in the drug unit
far too long. The temptations are great for almost any low-paid lawman
under those circumstances, they said. Stone said he routinely rotated
deputies in and out of the drug unit. Cuyler Windham, chief deputy in
Cumberland County, said his department does the same to reduce temptations
and to ensure that undercover deputies don't become known to drug dealers.

Despite the temptations, Locklear and Freeman, a political activist in
Robeson County, said the indictment surprised them.

Freeman said Strickland came to see him shortly after the indictment was
handed down.

"These allegations, or whatever he is charged with, is really a shock,"
Freeman said. "All I know is he tells me he hasn't done anything wrong and
he doesn't know anything about these other things charges on other folks.
"All I can do is take him at his word and hope that nothing is there. I
feel sorry for all those fellas' families because it's got to be
devastating, all these charges and then again all these rumors.

"That's what I worry about, their children and their spouses and their
parents. I think about that a lot, and it bothers me; knowing that they are
going through all this trouble.