Pubdate: Sat, 26 Aug 2006
Source: Fayetteville Observer (NC)
Copyright: 2006 Fayetteville Observer
Contact:  http://www.fayettevillenc.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/150
Author: Greg Barnes
Related: http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v06/n1130/a07.html
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/pot.htm (Cannabis)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/coke.htm (Cocaine)

INDICTMENTS, ROBESON COUNTY DEPUTIES' IMAGES AT ODDS

LUMBERTON -- They began their careers as fresh-faced men in their early 20s 
- -- C.T. Strickland and Steven Lovin as uniformed Robeson County deputies, 
Roger Taylor as a sheriff's dispatcher.

They rolled up their sleeves, earned their law enforcement certificates and 
went to work vowing to uphold the law and honor the badge. About 15 years 
later, the three former deputies live in the disgrace of a federal indictment.

They stand accused of burning homes. Beating up drug dealers. Stealing 
public money for their own use. Paying informants with marijuana and 
cocaine. In all, eight deputies have been charged in a widening state and 
federal probe of the Robeson County Sheriff's Office. Strickland, Lovin and 
Taylor are at the center of the investigation.

The indictment is not a finding of guilt. It means only that a grand jury 
found enough evidence to put the men on trial.

But since the indictment came down in early June, a question has 
reverberated throughout Robeson County: What caused three good men -- three 
good cops -- to go bad?

For friends and family closest to the three, the charges are hard to believe.

Roger Taylor was the poster boy. Good looks, big heart, a well-rounded kid 
from a wealthy, self-made family.

As a child, Taylor dreamed of following in his father's footsteps. In the 
1970s, Ewing Taylor had worked his way up to chief of the Lumberton Rescue 
Squad. At times, his son put on a small pair of coveralls, just like those 
worn by his father and other squad members. He couldn't wait for the day he 
could join them.

By high school, Taylor found himself a member of the junior rescue squad. 
At age 18, after one failed attempt, he became a full-time volunteer 
member. About the same time, former Sheriff Hubert Stone hired Taylor as a 
dispatcher. Stone described Taylor as a hard worker who never caused 
problems. By 1998, Taylor had taken over as head of the entire 
communications department.

Two years later, he fulfilled his lifelong dream, becoming commander of the 
Rescue Squad.

I'm doing it because I want to help people," Taylor told a reporter that 
year. "That's the bottom line. My heart is in that rescue. I treat it like 
a family member." Taylor's friend, Rescue Squad member Tommy Stevens, said 
Taylor remains true to his words today.

"The only thing I see Roger trying to do is help Robeson County," Stevens 
said. "Roger is a humanitarian, point-blank. His main goal is to make 
better for everyone around him. That's the only way I've ever known Roger." 
When Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf Coast in August 2005, Taylor helped 
assemble a group that became among the first rescue workers to reach 
victims in New Orleans, Stevens said. Once in the city, Taylor quickly 
started making command decisions, Stevens said.

He said Taylor got a bus and drove a group of tourists and special-needs 
children out of the ravaged city. He said the group also went to University 
Hospital and helped evacuate patients, including a 500-pound paraplegic who 
had to be lowered down the stairwell on a makeshift lift. Taylor 
coordinated the efforts.

"He is a fantastic individual," Stevens said. "He just takes initiative to 
get things done. He goes in and takes care of the problems. Point-blank." 
Taylor's mother, Mary Taylor, declined to talk about the case against her 
son, saying the truth will come out at trial.

"Some of the things printed are absolutely untrue," she said. "It's all 
sensationalism." Strickland C.T. Strickland, the only child of a truck 
driver and a mill worker, was born on his grandfather's land in Prospect. 
His father died when he was 7, and his mother sold their mobile home and 
moved to Lumberton, said Strickland's uncle, Ray Strickland.

Ray Strickland said his nephew stayed with him on weekends for years. "He 
was just a good, solid, smart boy," Ray Strickland said. "I never thought 
anything like this would have ever come up.

"C.T., he was not nothing like what happened to him." Ray Strickland's 
sister-in-law, Sandra Graham, said she taught C.T. Strickland at 
Littlefield School in the 1980s. She called him an average student with a 
happy-go-lucky personality, "a very likeable and comical person." Ray 
Strickland, a former Robeson County deputy under Sheriff Hubert Stone, said 
he got his nephew a job working for Stone in 1990. Ray Strickland said his 
nephew came to his house to eat or visit almost every week until Glenn 
Maynor became sheriff in 1994.

Ray Strickland said Maynor knew he was a big Stone supporter and encouraged 
his nephew to stay away from his home. A few months after Maynor took 
office, Ray Strickland said, his nephew stopped visiting him for good. "He 
has always been a good boy, but he got messed up when working for Glenn, 
either that or he got mixed up with the wrong crowd," Ray Strickland said. 
"I wore the badge, and that was an honor. For it to be where it's at now 
and what it's gone through, it's an insult to me." Leroy Freeman, a friend 
of C.T. Strickland's, said Strickland came to see him after his arrest.

"He told me that he hadn't done anything," Freeman said. "He says he's 
innocent and he doesn't know anything about anybody else." Freeman said he 
knows Strickland as a good, hard-working man. After he left the department 
in 2003, Freeman said, Strickland would stop by and tell him about his job 
as an investigator with a big Florida company. Lovin Steven Ray Lovin had a 
lower profile in the county than the other two former deputies. Lovin grew 
up on the outskirts of Maxton. Stone hired him shortly after he finished 
high school and earned his law enforcement certification. Lovin worked as a 
uniformed deputy in the Maxton area until he suffered a brain illness and 
began receiving treatment at the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota, Stone said.

He said other deputies rallied to help Lovin and his family by contributing 
their sick leave and donating money so he could pay his bills. Stone called 
Lovin a "a real clean-cut guy" and said he had "no problems with him 
whatsoever." Lovin's wife, Lori, declined to comment about her husband or 
his alleged wrongdoing.

A man who identified himself as the manager of Big Boy Towing in Lumberton, 
where Lovin has worked for about two years, described Lovin as a "fantastic 
person" who is dependable and hard-working.

"He's a nice person, a wonderful family," said the manager, who declined to 
give his name or discuss the charges against Lovin. "He has a lot of 
friends outside of the sheriff's department." December trial Taylor, 
Strickland and Lovin have all left the Sheriff's Office. They are out of 
jail, awaiting a trial that has been scheduled for December. The 29-page 
indictment accuses the three men of crimes committed since 1995, a year 
after Maynor became sheriff. Maynor resigned in 2004, citing health 
concerns. Prosecutors say Taylor conspired with others in 1997 to burn 
Lewis Vernon's home and pawnshop. They say he paid someone $1,600 for 
helping to burn the home and used about 25 pounds of marijuana as payment 
for burning the pawnshop. The same year, prosecutors say, Taylor, 
Strickland and Lovin went to drug dealer Hubert Ray Locklear's home, beat 
up some of the people there and burned the house to the ground.

Taylor is also accused of giving marijuana and cocaine as payment to 
confidential informants. In 1998, the indictment says, he took about 15 
pounds of marijuana from the sheriff's evidence room and gave it to a 
snitch. The indictment accuses Strickland, 39, of beating up a suspect, 
Daniel Watts, and stealing about $11,000 from him.

Lovin, 36, is accused of stealing more than $150,000 seized from 
drug-traffic stops on Interstate 95. The indictment alleges that Lovin used 
some of the money to buy a Harley-Davidson motorcycle and a Ford F-250 
pickup. Prosecutors say Lovin had a secret compartment under the stairwell 
in his home. Hydraulic lifts opened the compartment. Stone and Johnson 
Britt, the county's district attorney, speculate that a lack of supervision 
under Maynor -- a relatively inexperienced lawman when he won the sheriff's 
seat in 1994 -- is partly to blame for the troubles the former deputies now 
face. Stone and Britt say the men were allowed to remain in the drug unit 
far too long. The temptations are great for almost any low-paid lawman 
under those circumstances, they said. Stone said he routinely rotated 
deputies in and out of the drug unit. Cuyler Windham, chief deputy in 
Cumberland County, said his department does the same to reduce temptations 
and to ensure that undercover deputies don't become known to drug dealers.

Despite the temptations, Locklear and Freeman, a political activist in 
Robeson County, said the indictment surprised them.

Freeman said Strickland came to see him shortly after the indictment was 
handed down.

"These allegations, or whatever he is charged with, is really a shock," 
Freeman said. "All I know is he tells me he hasn't done anything wrong and 
he doesn't know anything about these other things charges on other folks. 
"All I can do is take him at his word and hope that nothing is there. I 
feel sorry for all those fellas' families because it's got to be 
devastating, all these charges and then again all these rumors.

"That's what I worry about, their children and their spouses and their 
parents. I think about that a lot, and it bothers me; knowing that they are 
going through all this trouble.
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