Pot times July 15, 2005

A Growth Industry That's Unwelcome

URL: http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v05/n1118/a04.html
Newshawk: http://www.november.org

Pubdate: Thu, 14 Jul 2005
Source: Star-Banner, The (FL)
Copyright: 2005 The Star-Banner
Contact: bill.thompson@starbanner.com
Website: http://www.starbanner.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/1533
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/pot.htm (Cannabis)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/coke.htm (Cocaine)

A GROWTH INDUSTRY THAT'S UNWELCOME

Drug dealing is nothing new to Marion County.  After all, this is Florida -- and the state's geographic location, shorelines and growing population have long made it an easy mark for drug traffickers.

But the arrests this past weekend of Gerald Dandridge of Ocala and 10 of his alleged accomplices on drug trafficking charges are fresh yet frightening evidence that the illicit drug trade here is a growth industry that has escalated to an unprecedented level.

Law enforcement officials on Wednesday called the bust the most significant in the county's history.  The Dandridge gang was brought down after a 1 1/2-year investigation by the local-state-federal Unified Drug Enforcement Strike Team, known as UDEST.  Besides the arrests -- with more to come, according to agents -- lawmen seized 17 kilograms of cocaine, 250 pounds of marijuana, 20 weapons ( including machine guns ), 10 vehicles and $700,000 in hard cash.  The drugs had an estimated street value of $2 million.

At a press conference displaying the contraband, authorities declared Dandridge and Co.  responsible for most of the cocaine and marijuana trafficking in Ocala/Marion County over the past year or so.  They allege that in a typical week the outfit sold about 20 kilograms, or roughly 44 pounds, of cocaine throughout the community.

"We have dismantled a huge organization," sheriff's Lt.  Lee Sullivan told reporters.

While the amount of drugs and weapons and cash was impressive and confirmation of big-time crime in our midst, it was a bit unnerving when agent Randal Bohman of the Drug Enforcement Administration explained the focus of the strike team.

"Our mission is to target organizations, not individuals, on an international and national level," he said.

There you have it.  When we talk about drug dealing in Ocala/Marion County we no longer are simply referring to local criminal enterprises.  In fact, authorities allege the Dandridge gang received most of its shipments from Atlanta and, closer to home, Volusia County ( Daytona Beach ), and they left little doubt the pipeline doesn't stop there, nor will their investigation.

So Ocala/Marion County's illegal drug trade has officially gone international.  That five of the suspects whose names were released Wednesday are Mexican supports long-running law enforcement claims that the local drug trafficking "has been taken over" by Mexican nationals.

The joint local-state-federal effort that led to the bust is part of the the federal High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area, or HIDTA, initiative that the Marion County Sheriff's Office and Ocala Police Department has been part of for three years.  HIDTA brings together the U.S.  Drug Enforcement Administration, the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, local law enforcement agencies as well as specially assigned federal and state prosecutors to target high-volume drug operations.  Marion County was one of the first mid-sized counties in the state to embrace HIDTA, and obviously the marriage is paying off.

Sheriff Ed Dean touted the impact HIDTA has had on local law enforcement efforts, saying, "If not for HIDTA, I don't know if we could have done what we did today."

While Dean applauds HIDTA and its obvious impact on our community, Congress is pondering a Bush administration recommendation to pare back the program so its funding can be directed to other political priorities.  We are puzzled by such a notion, given that effectively fighting drug trafficking requires not only national and international intelligence, but local and even street-level contacts as well.  That's why HIDTA works -- it offers law enforcement the best of all worlds -- and Congress should not try undo what's working.

International drug links.  High intensity drug trafficking.  Forty pounds of coke per week.  In Ocala and Marion County.  Growth like that our community has been experiencing for a generation is a blessing in so many ways.  Yet, as Dean and others pointed out Wednesday, drug dealing is a business -- big business -- and, like any business, it goes where there's a growing market.  Hence, illegal drugs are an unwelcome growth industry hereabouts.

Dean called the bust a "great day for Ocala/Marion County in terms of our war on drugs, and the war continues."

Continues and, we hope, escalates.