DRUG TASK FORCE HAVING IMPACT

Law Enforcement Across Region Seeing Increased Success Born Of
Teamwork

Operating on a skeleton staff and shoestring budget, the Southcentral
Kentucky Drug Task Force in its first four months of operation has
nearly matched the average number of drug cases opened in the last two
years by agencies in the counties the task force now serves.

The Logan County Sheriff's Department reported a total of 206 drug
cases in 2002 and 2003, including possession, trafficking and
manufacturing.

The Butler County Sheriff's Department reported 389 such cases over
the same time period and Simpson County Sheriff's Department reported
145. City police in Russellville and Franklin reported 293 and 477,
respectively.

The six agencies recognized the value of a task force able to dedicate
all its resources and manpower toward drug enforcement. Their
conviction led them each to contribute $12,500 toward the task force's
operating budget, even after the task force was turned down for a
$262,000 state-administered Byrne grant, upon which the task force was
basing its July 1 launch date.

Thus far, the task force, based in Russellville, has opened 203
criminal cases with 76 arrests resulting.

"The manpower - the hours we were putting in to deal with this drug
problem - has eased up in a way that they're helping us by taking
these cases and giving more time to them," said Logan County Sheriff
Wallace Whittaker, whose agency contributed an additional $10,000
initial donation to help the task force get off the ground.

"I could see what these drugs are doing to the youth of our community
and it's destroying people's lives," he said. "I wanted to see
something done that would try to deter that and help this community."

In particular, methamphetamine has proven to be a problem of epidemic
proportions in Logan County, Whittaker said.

"Unless you deal with it on an everyday basis, people do not really
have a clue of what (meth) does to your system," Whittaker said. "I
had an inmate send me a poem he wrote at the jail because we had
arrested four of his family members for possession of meth. It was a
unique poem that calls meth the 'devil's drug.' He actually thanked me
for trying to help them."

Butler County also sees that the bulk of drug cases include
meth-related charges, according to Sheriff Kenneth Morris. Meth
destroys the community as a whole, Morris said, citing an increase in
robberies, vehicle accidents, burglaries, mental problems and domestic
violence - all due to an increase in methamphetamine use.

"Everything has escalated because of the drug aspect of it," he said.
"You name it, everything we do, it's increased... This drug task force
is doing really well and we've already seen some improvements in our
county. They can do some things that we cannot do."

Morris said the increased drug enforcement resulting from the presence
of the task force not only cleans up the community, but can also save
lives.

"Most (drug offenders) don't get serious about wanting help until they
get charged," Morris said. "You look at 10, 15 or 20 years in jail,
you get pretty serious about straightening your life up."

Task force Director Jim Devasher has patterned his agency after the
United Nations operations in Kosovo, where he served two years as a UN
police commander in charge of 300 officers.

Just as in Kosovo, Devasher has entrusted one officer with the sole
responsibility of collecting intelligence.

"All he does is compile intelligence and our officers act on that
intelligence in various ways," Devasher said. "He takes leads, tips
and information, he compiles all this and does some background so we
know who's doing what, where they're doing it and when. Then we can go
forward on these cases and it has worked very well, and it worked well
in Kosovo."

Devasher, retired from Kentucky State Police after 26 years and six
months, planned to retire from law enforcement completely after
returning from Kosovo - until he became increasingly aware of the meth
problem.

"I had worked undercover narcotics with state police for two years and
I had heard about meth - or crystal, they called it - but you couldn't
find it," he said. "I remember thinking, 'Boy, if people ever find out
what this stuff is, we'll be in bad shape because it will be rampant.'"

While in Kosovo in 2001 and 2002, Devasher kept in touch with American
news via the Internet and began noticing reports about increased meth
usage.

"When I returned home, I realized it was an epidemic," he
said.

A year after returning stateside, Devasher was out of retirement,
working part-time in the Logan County Sheriff's Department.

"I took the bull by the horns and became the acting director (of the
task force) and put the thing together, with the help of Wallace
Whittaker," he recalled.

Devasher said another tactic that leads to success is that task force
focuses not only on undercover investigative work, but also on aspects
of law enforcement such as basic traffic patrol, which often leads to
drug arrests.

"What we do is we attack it from every angle," he said. "We want to do
the traffic, the searches, the informants, the intelligence,
everything. We feel the more we're out there, the better chance we
have of making cases."

Devasher credited his officers - a staff of fewer than 10 that he
called "the best officers in the three counties" - with helping him
make the concept work, despite the naysayers.

" ... people told us there's no way we could do it without a Byrne
grant. I said, 'Watch us.' We need money, but we're operating," he
said. "I knew if we didn't get those doors opened - if we didn't start
operation - we wouldn't do it. So we started off basically broke."

And the time since the task force's July 1 launch has not been without
difficulty, Devasher said. The agency's budget was down to about
$4,000 last week, when it received a $50,000 methamphetamine grant
with the help of 1st District U.S. Rep. Ed Whitfield,
R-Hopkinsville.

With grant money Devasher hopes the task force will receive in the
future, the agency will fund salaries for an administrative assistant
- - currently paid with money designated to hire an officer - and a prosecutor.

Budget troubles aside, the task force has done a lot with a little. Of
the agency's 76 arrestees, 10 were brought in on cocaine charges, 19
for marijuana, 27 for meth, six for cultivating marijuana, seven for
other drug offenses such as prescription drugs, three for carrying
concealed deadly weapons and four for driving under the influence of
intoxicants.

The agency has also issued 22 traffic citations via its interdiction
team, a non-covert team which exists solely for the purpose of traffic
enforcement.

Recovered property and drugs include 32 guns, to be destroyed by state
government per Kentucky law, a total of eight motor vehicles and
recreational all-terrain vehicles, 1,230 marijuana plants valued at
nearly $2.5 million, 132.5 pounds of processed marijuana, 2.3 ounces
of cocaine and 1,011 prescription pills or ephedrine pills, which is a
methamphetamine precursor.

"About a million a month off the streets," Devasher said. "It's great.