Steps to fight war on drugs

By CARRIE KIRSCHNER - The Independent

CATLETTSBURG May 09, 2008 11:34 pm

— County officials are taking steps to finance a local war on drugs.
Additional funding is expected to be added to the budgets of the sheriff’s department and county attorney’s office to step up drug enforcement efforts in Boyd County.
The sheriff’s department will receive an additional $126,000 in funding during the next fiscal year to hire new deputies in order to reassign two veteran officers to a new drug enforcement task force, according to Judge-Executive William “Bud” Stevens.
Sheriff Terry Keelin said the additional deputies are the only way the county will be able to spare the manpower to work on drug cases. He said the number of calls the department fields has grown annually and officers are simply “saturated” with other police work.
Last year, the department opened 500 criminal investigations and worked 974 accidents, he said. Those numbers are already up for this year, he added, leaving “no time to work on narcotics.”
“If as a county we want to attack the drug problem, that has to be all they (the two deputies) do,” Keelin said. Most of the drug cases the department has worked recently have been by “happenstance,” but have netted large amounts of cash and confiscated property for the department.
He said a drug unit most likely will pay for itself through those two means. Just this year, Keelin said, officers have purchased $35,000 in equipment using seized drug money and have $8,000 more in the bank. An additional $12,000 is on the way from a federal drug case and there are three cars and two motorcycles waiting to be auctioned off, Keelin said.
Stevens and Keelin said there are moral reasons as well as monetary reasons to step up efforts to go after drug traffickers and dealers.
“We have a horrendous drug problem. Our people are just ate up with pills,” he said. “If we don’t take a strong stand and be aggressive we’ll have serious problems,” Keelin said.
He said if drugs and alcohol were taken out of the local society the vast majority of police calls would never be made. He said drug-related incidents account for more than 80 percent of calls.
People are either committing crimes under the influence or for the purpose of getting drugs, he said.
Stevens added that the majority of inmates housed at the Boyd County Detention Center are there on drug-related charges. He said while there may be an initial spike in incarcerations, ultimately they expect numbers to decrease. “If they can’t get drugs then they can’t get sick,” he said.
Boyd County Attorney Phillip Hedrick is requesting a $50,000 budget increase for the coming fiscal year in order to pay for the additional prosecutions.
CARRIE KIRSCHNER can be reached at ckirschner@dailyindependent.com or (606) 326-2653.