The Daily Southerner, Tarboro, NC

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  • T.J. ROYAL

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December 28, 2009

Sheriff's office busy with drug arrests in 2009

T. J. ROYAL

More than a million dollars worth of drugs, 30 guns and nearly a dozen vehicles were part of the haul made by Edgecombe County deputies in drug-related arrests this year.

And those arrests and continual drug investigations have resulted in 17 federal indictments through the work of the Edgecombe County Sheriff’s Office.

Edgecombe County Sheriff James Knight had his deputies sprawl part of the confiscated materials across two tables at the Sheriff’s Office on Anaconda Road.

A fully automatic AK-47 rifle was displayed, along with a compact AR-15 single-shot rifle, as well as various handguns, shotguns and rifles.

There was a bag with five pounds of marijuana inside, as well as two bags of powder cocaine inside, with one kilogram and five kilograms inside of them, combined for a street value of nearly $1 million.

The other drugs on the table included a pound of crack cocaine, hundreds of prescription pills, three ounces of methamphetamine, “which is a lot,” Knight said, and 150 bindles of heroin.

Prescription drugs in particular are becoming more prevalent in the county, Knight said, and it is providing a more profitable trade for drug dealers than even cocaine.

The sheriff pointed out two items in particular that had been seized during drug-related arrests this year. A military vest, worth around $2,000, was found on one drug dealer that would be capable of stopping “any weapon we’ve got” from penetrating the chest area of a criminal, he said. “It’s better than any (bulletproof vests) we’ve got right now” for his own deputies to use in the line of duty, Knight added.

The other item was a “kilo press,” worth around $4,000, a custom-made metal press that is designed to compress and ready for packaging powder cocaine by the kilogram, Knight said.

Along with the guns and other items seized this year, the sheriff has kept intact a car his deputies confiscated in September 2008 that had stumped even federal drug agents. The Acura contains a secret compartment within its center console that can be used to store up to 10 kilograms of powder cocaine inside. That working compartment cost around $20,000 to install, the sheriff said.

Knight noted that his deputies went through the car for about two hours looking for the secret compartment when it was confiscated. The car had been stopped by Drug Enforcement Administration officials in Clayton earlier last year, and they could not find the compartment, the sheriff added.

The lengthiest drug-related sentencing resulting from Edgecombe County cases was that of Rodney Pettaway of Pinetops, sentenced to 31 years imprisonment on various drug charges.

On Oct. 22, a member of the La Familia Mexican drug cartel, Sergio Silva “Chino” Torres, was taken into custody after a stand-off at a residence north of Tarboro on N.C. 33.

Knight noted that a handgun, more than $10,000 in cash and $20,000 in cocaine were confiscated from the trailer he had resided in.

Knight thanked the efforts of the three deputies assigned to his drug task force unit, as well as the other deputies who have made drug-related arrests while on patrol and otherwise on duty.

He also noted that his office has a “good-working relationship with everybody” when they investigate drugs, from the county, state and federal level.

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