VICE SQUAD BACK ON STREETS

12 Columbus Officers Pulled From Metro Narcotics Task Force

The Columbus Police Department is re-establishing its vice unit to better
fight street-level crime.

Mayor Bob Poydasheff, also the city's public safety director, said Tuesday
12 Columbus police officers will be pulled out of the Metro Narcotics Task
Force to staff the new vice unit.

The move will reduce the Metro Narcotics Task Force, a collaborative effort
of the Columbus Police Department, Muscogee County Sheriff's Department,
Harris County Sheriff's Department, Russell County Sheriff's Department and
the Phenix City Police Department, from about 20 officers to eight.

"I could not use those officers for some of the things that I wanted to use
them for," Poydasheff said. "We have some problems in uptown. I want to
make sure they are serving the proper people in terms of age."

The vice squad was dismantled in 1996 and merged with the Metro Narcotics
unit in an attempt to "streamline communication and information obtained
from the street level that would assist Metro's original mission," Harris
County Sheriff Mike Jolley said.

That mission was to do extended investigations targeted at the region's
mid- and upper-level drug dealers and suppliers. The revived vice unit will
deal with crimes such as prostitution, street-level drug dealers,
dog-fighting, under-age drinking and alcohol sales and gambling.

Poydasheff said he is not sure when the vice unit will begin operations.

"Details are still being worked out," the mayor said.

Local officials hope the move will help reduce neighborhood crime.

"Vice can identify the problems and concentrate on them," Assistant Police
Chief Ricky Boren said. "They may not be the magnitude of what Metro is
working on, but they are major problems to the people in the areas where
they are occurring."

Muscogee County Sheriff Ralph Johnson said the move will not weaken Metro.

"It will better focus it," Johnson said. "The mission of Metro is not to
load up the jail. It is to go after the mid- and upper-level drug dealers,
seize their assets and put them in federal prison."

"We started this year receiving more and more complaints about street-level
drugs, prostitution, commercial gambling and pornography," Boren said.
"These are the areas vice was set up to handle. We have been looking for
ways to make this group of people more efficient on the streets of Columbus."

Recently, Metro officers, a majority of whom come from the Columbus Police
Department, were called upon to handle Columbus street crimes. During a May
23 drug and prostitution crackdown on Elvan Avenue in South Columbus,
agents arrested more than a dozen suspected prostitutes and pimps.

Dennis Roaden, a business owner in the area, had earlier come before
Columbus Council to represent residents fed up with daily sightings of
street-corner drug dealing and open prostitution.

The situation, he said, had been persistent but had worsened in the past
four years. Roaden is hoping news of the new unit will improve a situation
that he said has already seen dramatic improvement in recent weeks.

"I think it's a fantastic idea -- because these are crimes not addressed as
quickly as for example, a house break-in," he said. "When you're short of
officers on the police end, who do you think is going to get priority --
the guy complaining about a burglary or the guy complaining about the
prostitute?"

During the Elvan Avenue roundup, the unit "devoted every one of our
officers to the detail," said an agent. "With a vice unit to handle those
kinds of street-level complaints, we will be able to focus on our original
mandate because anytime you pick up a guy out there with two or three
ounces of crack cocaine, you're getting a dealer off the streets."

It has not been determined which Metro officers will be reassigned back to
the police department, Boren said. Metro Narcotics Capt. J.D. Hawk will
return to the police department and lead the re-established vice unit,
Poydasheff said.