Pubdate: Sat, 13 Sep 2003
Source: Beaufort Gazette, The (SC)
Copyright: 2003 The Beaufort Gazette
Contact:  http://www.beaufortgazette.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/1806
Author: Glenn Maffei, Gazette staff writer

$1M PLUS SEIZED IN I-95 TRAFFIC STOP

WALTERBORO -- More than $1 million was found bundled in a suitcase in the 
trunk of a rental car by a Colleton County deputy during a routine traffic 
stop Wednesday on Interstate 95. Police believe the money may have come 
from multiple cocaine deals. If so, the bust raises the Colleton County 
Sheriff's Office's total revenue in four years to an estimated $8 million 
from suspected drug couriers traveling Interstate 95, said Chris Stevers, a 
former Colleton County deputy who now works drug-interdiction in Ridgeland.

Statewide, there have been other drug busts on I-95 in the past nine days. 
On Friday afternoon, Florence County seized 75 pounds of marijuana worth an 
estimated $375,000. Last week, 50 pounds of marijuana worth an estimated 
$250,000 was seized by the Ridgeland Police Department.

In the Colleton County seizure, the money was neatly stacked in the 
suitcase and bound by elastic bands in an array of denominations mixed with 
several counterfeit $100 bills, said Chief Deputy Steve Bazzle of the 
Colleton County Sheriff's Office.

The driver was alone, headed from New York to Florida when he was pulled 
over for a moving violation near Exit 53, Bazzle said. He could not 
immediately identify the driver, who was "behaving in a manner that set off 
some alarms with the officer." The driver admitted to police the money was 
in the suitcase and consented to a search of the vehicle, Bazzle said.

The traffic stop turned into the largest cash seizure in Colleton County's 
drug-interdiction history -- and it's quite a history.

In October 2001, Deputy William Polk of Colleton County stopped a 1996 Ford 
minivan traveling south on I-95. Hidden in several of the van's side 
panels, police found $992,400.

Police departments routinely get an 80 percent cut of seized money, which 
can be spent on a variety of drug-fighting tools, while the remaining 20 
percent goes to the federal Drug Enforcement Administration.

It's a law enforcement incentive which proves that while drugs may not pay, 
drug-fighting certainly can.

Taxpayers in Colleton County, for example, haven't been asked to buy a 
single police vehicle in four years. Last year, the Sheriff's Office bought 
eight vehicles, all with money from seizures. At about $23,000 a vehicle, 
that saved taxpayers $184,000.

On Thursday, Colleton County emergency officials moved into a remodeled 
E-911 center. It cost about $500,000, but Colleton County taxpayers would 
never know it because drug money paid the entire bill.

"It allows the sheriff to convert those funds to relieve the county on the 
budget situation," Bazzle said. "It's used to buy patrol cars and equipment 
that ordinarily we would do without or depend on the county taxpayers to 
pay for."

Interstate 95, which runs from Maine to Florida, is considered the main 
artery for drugs flowing from Miami. The money usually moves south and the 
drugs move north, authorities say.

"It's the pipeline through the East Coast," said Stevers, who was hired 
July 1 as a captain with the Ridgeland Police Department.

Ridgeland has had enormous success on I-95.

On July 20, a traffic stop turned into perhaps the largest cocaine bust in 
Jasper County history when Ridgeland police seized 30 kilograms of cocaine 
with an estimated street value of $4.2 million. Before that bust, the 
department had seized a variety of drugs off the interstate with a street 
value of $500,000, as well as more than $300,000 in drug money.

Ridgeland's largest money seizure was last November when a traffic stop 
yielded $120,779 and the arrest of an illegal Colombian immigrant. The man, 
who said he did not know the money was hidden in a secret compartment in 
the station wagon, told police he was paid $1,000 to travel from New York 
to Florida, Woods said at the time.

Beginning this month, the Ridgeland Police Department has a full-time 
drug-interdiction team, paid for by combining money from a federal grant 
with the department's drug fund. The James F. Byrnes Federal Drug Control 
Grant will absorb $58,000 of the cost and the department's drug fund will 
contribute $14,500 toward a Chevrolet Tahoe, equipment and a full-time 
officer who will be added to the nine-member department, Woods said.

"If you hit them in the pocket, it hurts them the most," Bazzle said of the 
drug cartels.
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