EX-COP'S COOPERATION HELPS WIN SHORTER SENTENCE

WINSTON-SALEM | A former Thomasville police sergeant won praise from a
prosecutor and a federal judge Friday before receiving just 25 months in
prison for possession with intent to distribute cocaine, Ecstasy and marijuana.

Rusty McHenry's cooperation with federal and state agents helped lead to
guilty pleas on federal drug charges by three narcotics officers with the
Davidson County Sheriff's Office, an Archdale police sergeant and five
other individuals.

"You've done some horrible things, but then you've done some very brave
things to help offset them," U.S. District Judge N. Carlton Tilley Jr. told
him.

Because of that, Tilley said, he was willing to grant a larger reduction
from federal sentencing guidelines than he would normally allow.

A pre-sentence report listed the potential range for McHenry's term, for
what is his first criminal offense, as 57 to 71 months.

After his 25 months in prison, he must serve three years of supervised
release, provide 50 hours of community service in each of those three
years, and pay a $300 assessment.

The sentence visibly pleased McHenry's lawyers and members of his family.
After marshals led McHenry, 32, a burly former steroid user and
weightlifter in a white dress shirt and tie, with a mustache and goatee and
close-cropped hair, out of the courtroom in the Hiram H. Ward Federal
Building to begin serving his term, his girlfriend hugged members of the
FBI and the State Bureau of Investigation present for the hearing.

One of his lawyers, Joe Bruner of High Point, told the judge the girlfriend
had assisted McHenry and the agents with an undercover investigation that
started immediately after McHenry's arrest in Greensboro last Nov. 5 on
state charges of Ecstasy trafficking and possession of marijuana with
intent to distribute.

Bruner said McHenry, who resigned from the Thomasville Police Department,
began cooperating two weeks before he ever contacted a lawyer and that he
carried out multiple undercover drug transactions with subjects he knew to
be armed and dangerous.

Any of those transactions could have proved fatal if the surveillance
equipment McHenry was using had been discovered, Bruner said. "He put
himself at great risk."

With encouragement from McHenry, who also was represented by Charles Lloyd
of Greensboro, his girlfriend helped arrange drug deals by telephone and
accompanied him on controlled buys, Bruner said. The two developed a signal
system for communicating during transactions.

According to a federal affidavit, McHenry made four separate powdered
cocaine buys, monitored by state and federal agents, from Scott Woodall,
then head of the Davidson County Sheriff's Office narcotics unit.

The undercover investigation and information provided by McHenry led to the
arrest in mid-December of Woodall, 35, and two other narcotics unit
members, Lt. Doug Westmoreland, 50, and Sgt. Billy Rankin, 32, as well as
Archdale police Sgt. Chris Shetley, 41, and Lexington area residents Wyatt
Kepley, 26, and Marcus Aurelio Acosta-Soza, 25, on federal charges of
conspiring to distribute cocaine, marijuana, steroids and Ecstasy.

McHenry, referred to in the affidavit as Confidential Witness-1, also
described for investigators a pattern of conduct by the law enforcement
officers, sometimes with his participation, that included writing fake
search warrants, planting evidence and fabricating charges, keeping drugs
and money seized during arrests, attempting to extort more money from the
people arrested, and intimidating suspects and potential witnesses.

Those allegations helped lead to additional charges against the other officers.

On Jan. 28, federal prosecutors charged McHenry with only possession with
intent to distribute cocaine, Ecstasy and marijuana, and on the next day
they allowed him to plead guilty. State prosecutors dropped their charges
against him.

Two other Lexington-area residents, Jonathan Eric Apt,, 29, and Elizabeth
Ann Harward, 25, and Randolph County resident Chad Douglas Wilson, 22, have
since been charged with related federal drug offenses.

Since mid-December, Bruner said, McHenry has received numerous threats by
letter, over the Internet or communicated through third parties. Two
garages in Davidson County refused to work on his car for fear someone
might attack him and hurt one of their employees.

Virtually isolated in protective custody, McHenry declined a chance to
enter the federal witness protection program because that would prevent him
from seeing his two children, Bruner said. But he agreed to give his wife
full custody because of concerns for their safety.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Sandra Hairston told Tilley she could not dispute
anything Bruner said.

McHenry "did everything that was asked of him," Hairston said.

But the judge, besides commending McHenry, also lectured him. Tilley said
McHenry's criminal conduct, as a policeman, had undermined public support
for the law. "It really does endanger the whole system," the judge said.

Tilley also said McHenry sold drugs to citizens he was sworn to protect.
"You . put drugs in the hands of people who could be very much harmed by
them," the judge said.

Asked by Tilley if he wanted to speak, McHenry choked back tears but
managed to say, "I want to apologize to the citizens and to law enforcement
for the black eye they received because of my conduct."

McHenry is the first federal defendant to be sentenced in North Carolina in
connection with the investigation.

Woodall, Westmoreland, Rankin, Shetley, Kepley and Acosta-Soza are
scheduled for sentencing next month.

Apt, Harward and Wilson are to be sentenced in August.