COUNTRY LIFE NOT SO SIMPLE

Drug Traffic From City Keeps Easing Its Way In

MOUNT JACKSON - The Shenandoah Valley's rural setting and proximity to
illicit drug supplies in Washington have increasingly been attracting the
wrong kind of business.

Two weeks ago, authorities with the Northwest Virginia Regional Drug Task
Force arrested 12 Winchester transplants on charges related to cocaine
trafficking.

Last month, federal agents rounded up 15 members and associates of an
outlaw motorcycle club as part of a six-state bust on drug and firearms
charges.

The drug traffic - particularly methamphetamine - is luring more organized
crime to otherwise peaceful rural areas. The scope of investigations often
expands even beyond the reach of regional investigations like those
conducted by the Northwest Task Force. The partnership of state and local
police covers Winchester and six counties in the northern valley.

Investigators say traffickers who set up in the region range from loosely
organized cabals to long-standing gangs such as the Warlock Motorcycle
Club, whose members were included in the Shenandoah County bust.

In Mount Jackson, the gang case jarred people who live and work in the
northern Shenandoah Valley town of about 1,400. Ringed by farms and
shadowed by Massanutten Mountain to the west, the town seems the
unlikeliest place for a crossroads of interstate drug-peddling.

"It's scary," Brenda Getz said recently while leaving a downtown business.
"You wouldn't think something like that would happen at a little place like
this."

The suspects allegedly set up an illegal bar and strip club on the south
end of Mount Jackson and sold drugs from at least one legitimate business
in the area, Carter said.

Local United Methodist minister Jeff Roberts thought he'd left such things
behind when he moved here from Washington three years ago.

"I'm a city boy," said Roberts, who lived in Chicago before living in
Washington. "Folks like me who come to a place like this have a sense that
it's a different kind of place - that it's safer."

Roberts and several other people making their way about town last week were
unaware of any gangs in the area until they learned about the case.

Earlier this month, state Attorney General Jerry W. Kilgore held the first
meeting of an anti-gang task force assembled to study the phenomenon
throughout Virginia.

Kilgore organized the task force of lawmakers and police in part to help
rural localities get a better grasp of the phenomenon, said Tim Murtaugh,
his spokesman.

"The smallest, most picturesque communities may in fact have gangs
locally," Murtaugh said. "They may be loosely organized, and may not have
the hierarchy everybody's thinking of, but if you have three kids that are
running out and systematically breaking into houses, that's a gang."

The Shenandoah County case typifies why gangs and other forms of organized
crime drawn to the drug trade require far-reaching law-enforcement cooperation.

Three years ago, investigators with the Northwest Drug Task Force were
looking into methamphetamine distribution in the area, said Capt. Tim
Carter of the Shenandoah County Sheriff's Office.

Authorities learned that Warlocks members were behind much of the
trafficking, and tried unsuccessfully to penetrate the group, he said.

The Warlocks are a national motorcycle organization associated with the
free-spirited bike gangs such as the Hell's Angels. Such gangs are often
referred to as "one percenters" - or, the 1 percent of cycling groups whose
members sometimes engage in outlaw activities.

Carter said the members in the region were an exceptionally close-knit,
even paranoid group with ties to the local community.

"Our task force guys tried to work it as a traditional drug organization
case. We just couldn't get anything to work for us," Carter said.

In November 2001, authorities sought and received the help of agents with
the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. ATF agents
were eventually able to infiltrate the group by joining the club, Carter said.

On July 24, authorities arrested local members and associates on state and
federal drug and firearms charges. The 15 local suspects were part of a
round-up of 34 gang members or associates in West Virginia, Maryland, New
York, Florida and South Carolina, Carter said.

In the valley's northern reaches, the Winchester area and Warren County
have become increasingly popular drug dealing bases for out-of-state
traffickers.

The Interstate 81 and Interstate 66 corridors give big-city dealers easy
access to a ready market virtually free of competition, said Dan
Woloszynowski, an ATF spokesman.

The thin supply of drugs allows them to hike prices to four or five times
the rates in the cities, Woloszynowski said.

"The money is there, but there's no competition," he said. "They can move
in, and they don't have to fight anybody for any turf."

On Aug. 8, Task Force members arrested five Winchester residents on charges
of trafficking cocaine during the last 18 months. Many were Mexican
nationals, and another seven of their associates were detained on charges
of being in the country illegally, said Lt. Phil Crisman, a task force
investigator.

The group had dealt drugs in other states before arriving in the valley,
Crisman said.

"Winchester was just the last place they stopped," he said.

In May, a high-ranking New York member of the L.A. Bloods received a
30-year federal prison term for firearms and drug trafficking in
Winchester, Woloszynowski said.

Nearby Warren County has also had its share of major drug conspiracies.
Last year, a federal grand jury in Charlottesville indicted 26 members of a
loosely organized drug gang from Washington on charges of distributing
cocaine in Front Royal for nearly a decade.

That case was also a Northwest Task Force case that grew. Police seized
about 250 grams of cocaine and $17,500 in cash, Woloszynowski said.

With its proximity to Washington, Warren Sheriff's Office Investigator
Jerome Robinson thinks it's inevitable that some of the metropolitan area's
ills might be sprawling outward in advance of development.

"My opinion is that the city is slowly moving this way," Robinson said.