DEPUTIES PUT DRUG-SPOTTING CLASSES TO GOOD USE

Cocaine Arrest Made During I-85 Traffic Stop

LEXINGTON - Just six weeks ago, some Davidson County sheriff's deputies
took classes to learn how to find and seize drugs and cash on the interstate.

Since then, the sheriff's office said it has seized about $400,000 and
eight vehicles. The biggest drug seizure by the six-person
drug-interdiction unit came Friday afternoon, when deputies found 5
kilograms of cocaine inside a battery of a car that they stopped on
Interstate 85. The cocaine has a street value of about $1 million, deputies
said.

"We're out here every day -- seven days a week," Sheriff Gerald Hege said.
"We've barely been out of school six weeks."

Deputies from Davidson, Iredell, Alamance and Sampson counties have worked
in each other's jurisdictions to search for drugs and large amounts of cash
hidden in vehicles.

Many drivers stopped on I-85 are pulled over for such actions as changing
lanes without using a turn signal or weaving from side to side.

Deputies are trained to identify indicators of drug trafficking. If there
are enough suspicious indicators at a traffic stop, deputies often run a
dog around the vehicle to find drugs or weapons.