ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Friday, April 26, 1996 TAG: 9604260062
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: BEDFORD NOTE: BELOW
SOURCE: RICHARD FOSTER STAFF WRITER
THE SHERIFF WAS JUST showing reporters a new traffic safety unit, when ...
What started out as a news conference and simulated drug bust by the Bedford County Sheriff's Office became the real thing Thursday in an almost unbelievable coincidence.
For the benefit of local media, Sheriff Mike Brown staged a fake traffic stop on Virginia 122 Thursday morning to demonstrate his major crime detection and traffic safety unit - a new unit being trained in methods of spotting vehicles that could be carrying drugs.
But before Brown could bring the news conference to a close, two men in a blue pickup truck drove by, yelling something unintelligible at the deputies parked on the side of the road.
The deputies noticed the car had a burned-out tail-light and other possible violations, including dark tinting on the truck's windows. Lt. Kent Robey, who heads the unit, called the county dispatch center and learned the truck's owner had a suspended license.
Robey and a Wythe County deputy who is helping train the Bedford officers jumped into a customized Ford Mustang and gave chase.
A few minutes later, Robey pulled the truck over; after gaining the driver's consent, a Wythe County officer searched the car and found in the truck's ashtray a smoking pipe, a razor blade, and a small bag containing what appeared to be marijuana and some partially smoked marijuana cigarettes, or ``roaches.''
"Whatcha doing with drugs in there?'' Robey asked the driver.
"What drugs?'' the man replied.
"They found drugs in your truck there," Robey said, pointing.
"Maybe a roach, that's all I know about," the man said.
The Wythe County deputies brought out a drug-sniffing dog and a box of tools and started removing bolts and looking under the truck's stereo speakers. Another officer examined the underside of the truck bed. Within a couple of minutes, they found another clear plastic bag containing a green leafy substance hidden down by the engine block.
All together, the officers found about a quarter-ounce of what they identified as marijuana.
The driver, John M. Kirby, 26, of Bedford, was charged with possession of marijuana and driving with a suspended license, misdemeanors punishable by a maximum of 12 months in jail and a fine up to $2,500.
"Can you believe it? What can I say?'' Brown said afterward. "We didn't stage this one. They're not on our payroll. ... Can you imagine? Driving by five police cars and shouting something, when you know you have a suspended operator's license and drugs in the car?''
Thursday's arrest was another in a string of drug-related arrests in Brown's first four months as sheriff. The new traffic unit made 14 arrests for drug possession in 14 hours last weekend, all for marijuana.
That's one more drug-possession arrest than the Sheriff's Office made during all of 1995; in 1994, the office made 19 arrests for possession.
Wythe County Sheriff Wayne Pike, a friend of Brown's, has lent Brown his special traffic-enforcement deputies and their cars - customized Mustangs equipped with video cameras, audio recorders, alcohol sensors, tint meters to measure the darkness of shaded windows, and radar units that can catch speeders in both directions.
The Wythe County deputies have in recent months found hundreds of pounds of marijuana that people have tried to smuggle along Interstate 81. Over the next months, they'll be training their Bedford County counterparts, who hope to catch similar cars soon.
Fully equipped, the flashy cars actually cost about $10,000 less than a comparably equipped full-size squad car, Brown said, and the cars are valuable in other ways, besides their obvious use in high-speed chases.
For one thing, people slow down to look at the vehicles, giving officers a chance to take a closer look for violations.
Speaking of the Wythe County unit, Brown said: ``They're the Green Berets
LENGTH: Medium: 78 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: Landmark News Servicee. Lt. Kent Robey finds a bag ofby CNBsomething in the engine of a pickup after two men in the vehicle
yelled at the officers. color.