The moment before narcotics agents and SWAT team members enter a home on a drug raid is quiet.
Lt. Mahyar Netadj, a patrol officer with Oktibbeha County Sheriff’s Office who served on the county’s drug task force for eight years, said he’s probably been on hundreds of such raids. They’re usually carried out by highly-trained officers who have prepared for a specific raid, from looking at the layout of the building to knowing the suspects’ family members — even sometimes running drills at a different location. So when the moment comes to actually enter the house, the officers become extremely focused.
But when that last quiet moment ends, Netadj said, and officers are entering a house or other building, the building is typically secure and a suspect in custody in less than a minute.
“There’s hours and hours of preparation that goes into about 30 seconds,” Netadj said.
In Lowndes County, narcotics agents and U.S. Marshals carried out a raid in south Columbus Sunday that recovered two pounds of marijuana and 1-1/2 pounds of cocaine — about $65,000 worth of drugs — along with weapons and several hundreds of dollars in cash.
When agents found the suspect, he was allegedly trying to flush marijuana down a toilet.
That was a slightly unusual situation because the suspect in that case was known to be violent and had several outstanding warrants that were not drug-related, said Lowndes County Sheriff’s Office Capt. Archie Williams, who heads the Columbus-Lowndes joint narcotics task force. But it’s not uncommon for task force agents to execute search warrants at homes couple of times a week.
“Most of the time you’re going into the unknown,” Williams said. “And you’re putting yourself in there in danger to come into contact with someone who more than likely has already committed a crime or is committing a crime right then, who may not want to go to jail or may do whatever is necessary not to go to prison.”
Circumstances like that make law enforcement wary of executing that type of warrant, said Clay County Sheriff Eddie Scott. He, Williams and Netadj all stressed that safety of everyone — including the suspect — is the No. 1 priority of a serious drug raid.
“It’s not something that we just want to do every day,” Scott said. “…There’s so much high risk to it.”
Doing your homework
Williams said there are usually days of investigative work behind any drug raid.
There first has to be enough evidence for a judge to sign a search warrant, he said. Technically the judge can issue a warrant if there’s any evidence of law-breaking. However, Williams said, officers don’t want to do major drug busts over small crimes such as having a misdemeanor amount of marijuana.
Whether to raid a home and the details of the raid — how many officers to send, whether to involve other departments, etc. — depends on more factors than just the drugs. In Sunday’s case, Williams said, the suspect, Tiquan Davis, was a known offender who had warrants for aggravated assault and other felonies issued against him already. Marshals looking for Davis joined the raid with the narcotics officers.
“We try to do all of our homework and have all the information that we can have prior to execution of a warrant,” Williams said.
Netadj said officers complete threat assessments on houses and suspects, looking at multiple factors. They use those factors to “score” the threat and determine whether a raid is the best action to take.
And while it is possible that an informant working with police gets last-minute information and officers have to go in quickly, Williams agrees with Netadj that for the most part the raids take several days and even weeks’ worth of planning. They try to have an idea of security cameras and driveway alarms at the house, whether there are children, elderly relatives or dogs at the house and what else is nearby.
For example, Scott said, if there’s a school in the area, law enforcement doesn’t want to enter the raid around the times when children are being picked up or dropped off. In fact, he said, if there’s a school nearby it might be a signal to law enforcement that there are better ways to arrest the suspect and stop the drug operation.
“If we can catch them out (in public) and safely take them into custody, I would prefer doing that,” Scott said. “But if that same person’s dealing drugs out of his home and we know he’s got drugs in that house, we need to get him and the drugs. We don’t want to take a chance of someone else getting the drugs and continue to sell it.”
Results
Williams said officers almost always see security cameras or other alarms to notify suspects if law enforcement is coming. Now law enforcement have to account for apps like Ring, which allows people to see who is on their property from anywhere even if they’re not home, Netadj added.
Often, there is no way to work around that, other than maybe cutting power to the home, he said — though he added there is usually a law enforcement officer keeping an eye on the house to make sure the suspect is home and can tell narcotics agents about security cameras in the area.
Once officers enter the home and the suspect is in custody, investigators can search for contraband. The major drug in the Golden Triangle is ice methamphetamine, though officers also see cocaine, marijuana and sometimes opioids.
Most of the time, Williams said, officers find firearms as well.
“Drugs and guns go hand in hand,” Williams said, adding they even find guns on traffic stops of known drug offenders.
Often those firearms are stolen and are in the possession of people already convicted of felonies.
“Any time you have a drug crime, possession or sale of illegal narcotics and you have a firearm involved, that actually is an enhancement by law on the crime itself,” he added.
Officers have also uncovered counterfeit money and even child pornography during drug raids, Scott said. They’ve also, Netadj said, found firearms and drugs in easy reach of children.
“All of us have families, so … it’s a hard pill to swallow,” he said.
What counts as success for the officers is that everyone involved — agents, innocent bystanders and suspects — are unharmed during a raid.
“You have to depend on your training and tactics to get you through there and in there, and do what you’re trained to do and cover all your corners and your guys’ backs, and make it as safe as you can so that that everybody goes home safe,” Williams said. “And that’s with the violators included.”
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