PARTICIPANTS SAY FIVE-DAY INTERDICTION A SUCCESS

FLORENCE -- Coordinators are calling the recent multi-agency interdiction
effort orchestrated by the Florence County Sheriff's Office a success, one
that could likely to be duplicated before the year is out.

During a five-day period beginning March 28, officers on the local, state
and federal levels, acting on behalf of their host agencies, performed
traffic enforcement at the area's two high-traffic corridors: Interstates
95 and 20.

Instructed to enforce all local, state and federal laws, they also
patrolled nearby roads in search of any and all criminal activity.
Meanwhile, state transport police conducted safety inspections of
commercial motor vehicles, Sheriff Kenney Boone said.

The operation was rooted in multi-jurisdiction agreements Boone signed at
the beginning of the year.

"The reasoning for it was establishing and maintaining relationships that
allow us to use our resources, bring them to-gether," Boone said.

Deployed 20 hours each day, interdiction teams worked 547 traffic cases,
ranging from driving under the influence to a stop of a motorist traveling
150 mph.

In addition to drug seizures - marijuana, cocaine, heroin, mushrooms, etc.,
- - officers also reported the arrests of six fugitives, people wanted in
other states, made eight felony arrests and recovered three stolen cars.
Several thousand dollars in currency also was seized, the customary 80
percent of which given back to the sheriff's office to use to combat
illegal drug activity.

In retrospect, the haul recorded during the one-week special operations was
promising, officers with the Florence County Sheriff's Criminal Enforcement
Unit said.

"We thought it was very successful, with it being the first one we've ever
done of this magnitude - involving so many agencies," said Lt. Curt
Summerford, adding that an encore could happen in three or four months.

The lieutenant eschews the reputation the squad of hand-picked, specially
trained officers has as exclusively a narcotics-tracking entity.

"People think that we're out there looking for drugs and nothing else,"
Summerford said. That is a misconception on the part of the public, he said.

"We try to tell people, 'We're out there to do criminal enforcement, we're
not out there just to look for drugs and seize money,'" he said.

"We interview people and, because of our training and experience, we pick
up on some of the indicators that would lead us to believe that something's
not right here," Summerford said. "Some don't really mean illegal
activity's afoot, it just means that something's not right." The unit,
whose origins date back to the late '90s, has been productive in its
enforcement, with nearly 300 arrests recorded, and more than $1 million in
cash and millions of dollars worth of illegal drugs confiscated.