RURAL AREAS STRUGGLE WITH DRUGS, CORRUPT OFFICIALS

On average, half of all police officers convicted as a result of FBI-led
corruption cases between 1993 and 1997 were convicted for drug-related
offenses, according to a federal Government Accounting Office report.

Vickey Horton Tapleys suspicions about a Vidalia officials involvement with
drugs were consistent with what was happening in other parts of South
Georgia during the mid-to-late 1990s.

Throughout the past decade, law officers entrusted to put drug dealers
behind bars actually were taking bribes to assist them.

Coffee, Appling, Telfair, Atkinson - the counties where that was happening
- - form a drug belt running north from the Florida border, with Toombs
County sitting on top.

Look at a road map, and its easy to see why.

Those counties sit squarely in the middle of two major transportation
routes I-95 and I-75 making them ideal distribution locations. Expansive
farms, small populations, and twisting rivers in these rural counties help
conceal the activity.

Its very easy to move drugs because this is a major transportation hub,
said Jeff Evans, a special agent at the Georgia Bureau of Investigation
Drug Enforcement Office in Savannah.

Lets put it this way, Toombs County has kept us very busy over the years,
said Assistant U.S. Attorney Karl Knoche.

When the Atlanta office of an international drug rehab program, Narconon,
sought to open a treatment facility in a another rural Georgia county, it
didnt expect many clients - or opposition.

Mary Rieser, executive director of the office, said the quaint downtown and
apparent folksiness of the place didnt suggest the prevalence of cocaine,
marijuana or methamphetamine.

She apparently was wrong.

From the start, ministers and residents thanked Rieser for coming. They
said drug use and distribution were rampant in the area and they hoped the
organization could help. But the warm reception didnt last long. Next thing
Rieser knew, the organization was being criticized and the facility plans
fell through. People told Rieser police were in league with drug dealers
and wanted Narconon out.

Rieser wouldnt identify the county where the proposed facility was to be
located. But her account is consistent with the answer given by national
security expert Joseph D. Douglass when he was asked why drugs have become
cheaper and more readily available.

The biggest problem, he said in an April 2001 interview with New American
magazine, is the fact that narcotics trafficking enjoys political
protection, he said, noting the gross annual revenues of international
organized crime are nearly $2 trillion.

Obviously, this provides a lot of money for buying off political officials
at every level. But it also offers valuable leverage to compromise and
manipulate institutions as well.

Few go as far as Douglass in condemning law enforcement or politicians. But
the profitability of narcotics is tempting for struggling counties and
low-paid law officers.

By private plane, boat and pickup truck, traffickers bring drugs into rural
areas, rent motel rooms and repackage drugs for shipment to larger cities.
The shadowy enterprise is shielded by large tracts of wooded farmland and
isolated roads and waterways.

Its very similar to what used to be moonshining, said Bill Mason, marketing
director for Narconon. Its the same thing with drugs. Theres just a lot
more money,

At state and national levels, there are plenty of instances where law
enforcement officials have taken bribes to protect criminals or to turn a
blind eye to their crimes. Drug enforcement officers are widely seen as
more vulnerable to corruption because of the amounts of money involved and
because agents work closely with addicts and snitches.

Jimmy Terrell, an instructor at Ashworth College in Norcross, investigated
so-called Dixie Mafia figures in 1970s when he was with the Barrow County
Sheriffs Department. He thinks many of the former leaders are dead or in
prison, but there is no lack of criminal activity in rural areas.

Nice thing about South Georgia is you got a lot of farms, he said. You can
go in with a truck and off-load drugs and no one would know it. No one
would say anything to you if youre not bothering them.

In 1992, a number of Toombs County residents were convicted for taking part
in what federal officials called a Dixie Mafia drug distribution ring. The
investigation by the U.S. Attorneys Office, FBI and Drug Enforcement
Administration discovered that Lyons resident Willie Eugene Collins was the
leader of an organization that ran a widespread marijuana enterprise out of
a Vidalia business called the 292 Club.

Terrell doesnt think law enforcement efforts have been a total failure. But
he said its naive to think officers cant be corrupted. And its often easy
for them to convince themselves that theyre not doing anything wrong.

Someone just says, Dont be on this road on this day and you get $1,000 in
an envelope, he said. Theres been a lot of bad cops over the years. Its not
hard to put a lot of money in front of a police officer and have him give
you information. When you put enough money out there, money talks.

Toombs drug busts fail to target major players

Toombs County, home to Vidalia, was a good place for drug trafficking,
because it is rural and sparsely population outside of city limits. Vidalia
residents are aware of the prevalence of drugs in their community and high
schools. So how has local law enforcement addressed the issue?

In 1995, Vidalia and Lyons police arrested 46 small-time drug dealers and
users in the largest bust ever in Toombs County. Law enforcement said it
showed they were cracking down on drugs.

Black leaders reacted with disgust in a newspaper article the next week.
All but two arrested were African-American, and all were smalltime pushers.
If police really wanted to make a difference, the leaders said, they would
go after the major suppliers.

Doy Cave, a former Vidalia police reporter now living in New Orleans, said
Darrell Collins stepped up drug enforcement when he became police chief.

There were a lot of undercover drug sale busts and roundups; it looked like
things were getting done, Cave said.

But Cave said there were no busts of major suppliers, even though there
were plenty of reports of people renting hotel rooms to manufacture crack
cocaine and flying in drugs.

Another former editor, Steve Hurwitz, now a practicing attorney, said the
targets of drug busts in Vidalia were widely known before those busts were
made.