Pubdate: Sat, 12 Nov 2005
Source: Fayetteville Observer (NC)
Copyright: 2005 Fayetteville Observer
Contact:  http://www.fayettevillenc.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/150
Author: Greg Barnes

CRIME BATTLE HITS OBSTACLES EAST OF THE RIVER

Complaints Are Growing About Drug Dealing, Prostitution And Other 
Crime Near Interstate 95 In Godwin

GODWIN - Drugs and crime fester in the shadows of Wade's new athletic 
park and Godwin's recent beautification efforts. Residents in the 
towns on Cumberland County's northeastern tip have worked hard and 
long to make their communities better places to live. Drug problems 
undermine those efforts. This month, in a mobile home along a country 
road between Godwin and Wade, sheriff's deputies stumbled onto what 
lawmen believe are two of the largest methamphetamine labs ever found 
in North Carolina. Last month, Godwin Mayor Deborah Tew said, a young 
pregnant woman was kidnapped at gunpoint from Harnett County, taken 
to a home about a half mile from hers and repeatedly raped. In Wade, 
people can stand outside the Poor Boy's store and point across the 
street at what they suspect are two drug houses.

They say a third one is just up the street. In Godwin, prostitutes 
ply their trade on the exit ramps to Interstate 95. Residents say 
drug transactions, panhandling and prostitution are rampant and 
flagrant near the interstate's interchange at N.C. 82. "The presence 
of crack addicts and prostitutes in town has become all too common," 
Tew wrote in a letter on town stationery in response to a reporter's 
questions. "It is almost impossible to go to the store in Godwin 
without being approached by one of these in search of money.

If such is allowed to continue there will be no community left for 
our children and grandchildren." Tew said she is especially concerned 
with the increase in violent crime in her area. Sheriff Moose Butler 
said he was unaware of the severity of the problems in Godwin. He 
seemed surprised by Tew's letter and vowed to focus attention on 
problem areas northeast of the Cape Fear River. But Butler said 
residents share responsibility. They need to report their concerns to 
him or his deputies, he said. "I think it's a communication problem," 
Butler said. Sheriff's statistics indicate that Butler has a point.

Of the 146 citizen complaints to the Sheriff's Office from Godwin 
last year, only one was related to drugs. But residents may have a 
point, too. Many say the Sheriff's Office isn't doing enough to 
combat the drugs and break-ins east of the Cape Fear River. Last 
year, sheriff's records show, those residents lost more than $3 
million worth of property to thieves and vandals.

Of the 2,288 burglaries reported by the Sheriff's Office last year, 5 
percent were cleared by arrest, according to SBI statistics. Only 
Richmond County had a lower clearance rate among the state's 100 
counties. Moses Seidi, who operates the Godwin Grocery, is among 
those who say crime and drugs are out of control at the I-95 
interchange. "I've had a lot of cops saying, 'We'll get them, we'll 
get them,' but nothing ever happens," Seidi said. "Man, you call them 
and it takes three hours for them to show up." Carolyn Waskas, the 
assistant manager of Poor Boy's in Wade, said deputies are aware of 
the problems in her community. "Every time a cop comes in here and 
you tell him about it, he says he knows," Waskas said. "They say they 
have to catch him in the act." Other residents, who asked not to be 
named, voiced similar complaints. Meth lab On Nov. 2, sheriff's 
deputies went to a mobile home off Percy Strickland Road to follow up 
on a report of a stolen vehicle.

The deputies walked behind the mobile home and found what they said 
were items used to make methamphetamine, among the most destructive 
and highly addictive of illegal drugs. Narcotics Lt. Myron Sampson 
said deputies entered the residence and found a meth lab. Later that 
evening, deputies were led to a barn where a second meth lab was 
found. A warrant was issued, charging Brian Vann, who lived in the 
mobile home, with operating the labs. Vann, who is 31, and another 
man are being sought by law enforcement. Two women who were in the 
home when deputies arrived - Brooke Stevison of Benson and Alycia 
Farmer of Dunn - have also been charged. Sampson said information 
suggests that the meth lab had been in operation between four and six months.

He said the drugs were being sold primarily to people living in the 
Wade-Godwin areas and in Harnett and Sampson counties. The labs' 
discovery is the latest indication that drugs are increasingly 
staining Cumberland County's otherwise bucolic landscape east of the 
river. Money plea At the I-95 interchange in Godwin this week, a 
polite, well-groomed young man who identified himself as Justin 
approached a truck and asked for money. He said he and his wife 
needed a few dollars so they could stay at the Economy Lodge in 
Fayetteville. When pressed, the man acknowledged that he was lying.

He said he was out of work, and he and his wife had been panhandling 
along the exit ramp for at least a month. The man walked over to the 
Godwin Grocery, where Seidi kicked him out of his store. Seidi said 
the man's begging is bad for business. Seidi and his relatives have 
owned the store for about a year. He said the problems were far worse 
before he took over. He said he has driven away troublemakers. But, 
he said, the area has a lot to do to get better. "Shooting is not a 
big thing around here," he said. "I've heard that a lot." Residents 
and sheriff's investigators say a lot of the problems stem from a 
mobile home park near the interchange. The park is owned by Clifton 
L. Turpin Jr., a Falcon Town Board member. Sheriff's investigators 
raided a mobile home in the park about two years ago, seized drugs 
and arrested the tenant, said Capt. David Cowart, assistant chief of 
detectives. The mobile home was removed from the park but eventually 
relocated near the Godwin Grocery. Cowart said deputies have raided 
the mobile home at least twice since then. He said residents keep a 
trash barrel burning in the yard day and night. When officers make a 
raid, Cowart said, people throw their drugs in the fire before 
arrests can be made. Turpin said he cleaned up his mobile home park 
about two years ago, but he acknowledged that problems persist. "I 
can't make an arrest," Turpin said. "When the law obviously knows 
what's going on, I don't know why things don't happen." A man who 
identified himself only as Robert - "because I have to live here" - 
said he once saw two motorcycle riders pull up to a mobile home at 
the interchange and fire into it. "They ride up and down and shoot at 
each other," he said. "The night before last, there was all sorts of 
shooting going on." Once, he said, he watched deputies arrest a man 
and haul him off to jail while they searched his mobile home. The man 
was back before the search could finish, he said. One Godwin resident 
said he takes the long way home at night rather than ride past the interchange.

Minimal sentences Sheriff Butler and some of his top deputies say 
minimal punishment for drug dealers is part of the problem. Another 
problem, investigators say, is that it can take weeks to establish 
probable cause for a warrant to search a suspected crack house.

When the tenants are arrested, other drug dealers often take their 
place in the same house. "We have been making arrests in and around 
that area since 1994," said Sampson, referring to the Godwin 
interchange. "You arrest one and three take his place." Sampson said 
drugs and crime are a plague throughout the county, and some areas 
are far worse than Godwin and Falcon. Maj. Craig Hart, head of the 
sheriff's patrol division, speaks passionately and forcefully about 
efforts to combat crime east of the river.

Hart was so upset by what Tew wrote in her letter that he said he 
stayed at the office poring over records until about 10 Wednesday 
night. Hart noted that the Sheriff's Office has received more than 
130,000 calls for service this year, about 30,000 more than in all of 
2004. Calls from the Godwin area represent less than 1 percent of the 
total volume, according to statistics he provided. The figures show 
that if crime is as bad as Godwin and Wade residents believe, Hart 
said, they have an obligation to report it. The area east of the 
river encompasses almost 500 square miles, Butler said. It's 
impossible for deputies to be everywhere at once. Until last year, 
the Sheriff's Office had carved the area into three zones, which were 
staffed around the clock with one patrol deputy per zone. Civil 
deputies, whose main responsibility is to serve papers, also work the 
area and could be called on as needed. In August 2004, the area was 
divided into four zones because the county thought it would be able 
to shift deputies once Fayetteville annexed 27 square miles of what 
the county was patrolling. The annexation got delayed until Oct. 1 of 
this year. When it did, the county Board of Commissioners agreed to 
let Butler keep five of the 10 deputies who had worked in the annexed 
area. Today, Hart said, east of the river is patrolled at all times 
by a deputy in each of the four zones, as well as two floating patrol 
deputies during peak times of criminal activity. The extra patrols 
are making a difference, Hart said. The reported losses from 
burglaries, larcenies and property damage dropped from $3.2 million 
in 2003 to $2.9 million in 2004 - a decrease of $326,000. "We are 
trying to be more proactive than reactive," Hart said. "That's the 
focus we are trying to change." Hart and Butler acknowledge that 
outlying areas of the county still have significant problems with 
crime and drugs.

Heavy residential growth east of the river contributes to the 
problems, they said. Hart said he could use twice as many patrol 
deputies to adequately serve the area. He points out that Cumberland 
County had 10 deputies to patrol the area annexed by the city. 
Fayetteville will use 50 police officers. Butler said he doesn't have 
the manpower to shift other deputies to patrol. He said he is at the 
mercy of the Board of Commissioners. The department has 288 full-time 
deputies. Another change is coming, a sheriff's substation at a 
recreation center planned for Eastover Central Elementary School. The 
substation would not be staffed full time. Complaints grow Despite 
recent improvements and those to come, some residents in Godwin and 
Wade remain unhappy with the Sheriff's Office. At the hardware store 
in Wade, a group of older men complained about a lack of response 
from sheriff's deputies.

In years past, they said, the deputies knew you and checked up on 
your businesses. It's not like that anymore, they said. On Julian 
Road in Godwin, Jerry Olsen and a friend sat in a golf cart in 
Olsen's driveway. "If you got something and you want to keep it, be 
sure to lock it up because these crackheads around here will want to 
steal it to get a fix," said Olsen, a former county Planning Board 
member who once worked as a military drug counselor. Olsen said a 
Godwin man he knows once gave his son a home to stay in. The son sold 
everything in the house to buy drugs. "He went so far as to hock the 
front door," Olsen said. "There was nothing left in the house worth 
anything." At the Godwin Grocery, one blond prostitute has become so 
familiar to locals that they know her by name. At Poor Boy's and at 
the hardware store in Wade, two people said they heard rumors about 
the meth lab about three months before it was found.

No one bothered to tell the Sheriff's Office. That, Butler said, is a 
large part of the problem.

If people come forward, he said, the Sheriff's Office would send its 
community policing team in to work the area. Butler said he and other 
high-ranking sheriff's officials plan to meet soon with Tew, the 
Godwin mayor, to listen to her complaints and work to resolve them. 
Butler said Tew's letter frustrated him. "She never wrote me a 
letter," he said. "Nobody ever mentioned anything to me." Tew disagrees.

She said she contacted the Sheriff's Office before she wrote her 
letter. Debbie Tanna, the sheriff's spokeswoman, said the sheriff was 
away on business but a deputy called Tew repeatedly to hear her 
complaints. Tew said she didn't return his calls because she had been 
away. She said she talked to Butler personally about drugs in Godwin 
twice within the past year. Afterward, she said, she saw a greater 
patrol presence, including checkpoints. "I honestly did see a 
result," she said, but it faded when the extra patrols stopped. And 
that, residents east of the river say, is where a large part of the 
problem lies.
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