'BASICALLY, THERE'S NOTHING THIS SMALL OF A COUNTY CAN DO'

When bigger cities don't crack down, cash-strapped Kentucky counties are
often left to try to stop the flow of drugs at the receiving end.

For many counties, when state or federal help doesn't come, there's little
deterrent to the drug trade.

In McCreary County, David Perkins' home, there are no city police
departments. The sheriff's office has a total of nine people. At the
beginning of next year, a federal schools grant that's funding the salary
of five of those officers will end, said Sheriff Clarence Perry.

Some help is coming. McCreary and 28 other rural counties will share in a
federally funded program, UNITE, designed to put 33 new drug officers into
southeastern Kentucky.

But on its own, there's not a whole lot the sheriff's department can do
about drugs being shipped in, said Perry, who took office this year.

"We know it's coming in, but catching them bringing it in is a problem for
us. We don't have enough money. We don't have enough resources," Perry said.

The sheriff spoke from behind a weathered metal desk that sat next to an
old sink. On a door to his office, the words "custodial engineering office"
had been painted over.

"Basically, there's nothing this small of a county can do," he said. "If we
find out about someone, maybe we can make a traffic stop."

Perry's predecessor, Regal Bruner, wasn't as pessimistic, but said,
"because there's not enough money available to hire the number of officers
that are necessary, well, we were just too tied up, really, to devote as
much time as we should have on drugs."