Local law enforcement agencies joined forces to arrest 27 suspected drug offenders in Columbus and Lowndes County.
Operation Street Heat, which has been in the making for nine months, combined the efforts of the Columbus Police Department, Lowndes County Sheriff”s Department, U.S. Marshals, Metro Narcotics Unit and the Mississippi Bureau of Narcotics. Beginning at 8 a.m. Wednesday, four teams of officers began criss-crossing the city and county serving warrants and making arrests.
Authorities had compiled a list of 48 suspects facing 110 felony narcotics charges. Nineteen arrests were made Wednesday and eight others in the last 30 days from the same undercover operation.
CPD warrant officers Robert Walker and William Thrasher, two of the 26 law enforcement officers participating Wednesday, spend every day serving warrants and arresting wanted persons. Wednesday”s roundup was business as usual for them, just with a much bigger team and a focus on drug offenders.
In their line of work, Walker and Thrasher encounter some offenders repeatedly. Police said one of the first arrests from Wednesday, Titus Little, wanted for three counts of sale of cocaine, usually runs from police, but he gave himself up without a struggle. Going quietly was probably the right choice as two teams of officers descended on Little.
Others are harder to find. Thrasher says some drug dealers will change addresses as often as every three months to evade authorities.
“I don”t know how they keep up with the electric deposit fees,” he joked.
Another suspect the roundup teams attempted to serve a warrant on had been witnessed four days ago entering his known address. When authorities knocked on his door Wednesday, a person at the home said he or she hadn”t seen the suspect in months.
The teams did more than just knock on doors. They stopped vehicles known to be driven by suspects and, in at least one case, approached suspects on the street.
One car known to belong to a suspect, a late model Ford Mustang with a half-and-half black and white paint job, was stopped by the team, but the suspect was not in the car. The stop did, however, yield an arrest when the woman driving the car was found to have a suspended driver”s license.
While serving a warrant on Highway 373, a five-car police convoy drove past an 18-year-old suspect who was standing on the side of the road. All five vehicles turned around and converged on Jamarcus Patmon, who was wanted on two counts of sale of cocaine.
An associate standing with Patmon who is also suspected of drug sales was released, and Patmon was taken to the Lowndes County Detention Center. Before officers transported Patmon to jail, they stopped by his home in a Highway 373 trailer park to notify his mother of his arrest.
Patmon called to his mother through an open window from the back seat of a squad car, but she firmly rebuked him.
“I told you not to be running up and down these streets. I can”t break you out of that police car,” she told him as the car pulled away.
As the team darted back-and-forth across Columbus, Thrasher pointed out the most problematic areas of town for drugs and crime. Seventh Avenue North from 14th Street to Railroad, which is known as “the block.” The “Memphistown” area near the 2100 block of 14th Avenue North. And “Frog Bottom,” which is composed of the fruit streets on Northside.
Thrasher and Walker will be visiting these areas and many others in the near future looking for the 21 suspects on the Street Heat list who were not apprehended, as well as serving warrants for other crimes.
Jason Browne was previously a reporter for The Dispatch.
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