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Even the suburbs have seedy underbellies. This area, with its access to I-95, has a need for

Spotsylvania Street Crimes Unit taking on illegal drugs from the bottom up

By ROB DAVIS

Date published: 2/6/2005

THE DETECTIVES LURK in the shadows, their car engines a quiet rumble, steamy clouds of exhaust licking at the windows.

With evening darkness descending and the moon rising, the Street Crimes Unit of the Spotsylvania County Sheriff's Office begins surveillance.

Tonight, the year-old unit plans to run "reversals," using an undercover officer to sell imitation drugs to willing customers. It is just one tactic the four-man undercover unit uses in its efforts to curtail the county's drug traffic.

Through binoculars, detectives watch the massive 6-foot-8 outline of an undercover deputy trolling the parking lot for customers. Inviting red neon glows in the distance.

Inside the unmarked surveillance cruiser, a crackling transmitter relays every sound from the wire Deputy Shaun Jones wears: his feet scuffing across sand-covered concrete, the groan of truck tires against pavement, the playful shouts of children who circle on bikes.

"Yo, yo, whassup, dude?" Jones asks. "Wha's goin' on, baby?"

In the pouch of Jones' bulky hooded Sean John sweatshirt are a handful of rocks--fake crack cocaine. The Hammer. Twenty dollars for a small off-white rock, a fraction of a gram. Two hundred bucks for a 2-gram nugget.

Detectives with the Street Crimes Unit cooked it up earlier this afternoon in a microwave: BC headache powder coated in Blistex. Now they need to find a customer.

"See the guys on the pay phone?" Detective J.S. Cielakie asks his partner, staring intently into one of the county's two open-air drug markets. "That one guy looks dy-no-mite."

Almost one year ago, Sheriff Howard Smith pulled his four most aggressive deputies off patrol and formed the Street Crimes Unit. Concerns about increasing gang activity and drug trafficking in Spotsylvania fueled his decision.

"I wanted to send a message out to gangs that they're not welcome here," Smith says. "We're going to do everything to keep them from setting up in our county."

So four men traded brown uniforms for blue jeans, a clean-shaven look for scraggly faces. They tamed their patrolman's urge to pull over people who run stop signs. Their focus became solely drugs and gangs.

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Date published: 2/6/2005