ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, June 16, 1996 TAG: 9606170022
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B-2 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: BODY CAMP
SOURCE: RICHARD FOSTER STAFF WRITER
BODY CAMP'S appearance may be deceiving. Although it looks like a pastoral heaven, it's a crack cocaine haven. - This is a place that makes you want to roll down your window as you drive through.
It's alive with smells of fresh-tilled earth and thick green grasses in pastures where horses and dairy cows nibble at stalks by the roadside.
It's the type of place with small, neat churches every mile. At its center, there's the Body Camp Store, where farmers come in, set their purchases on the counter, and take their time paying because they're really there to talk.
It's a community where parents spend Saturdays planting flowers and pulling weeds at the elementary school. It's a place where young couples move to have children and where several generations of some families still live under the same roof.
It's the last place most people would picture when they think of crack cocaine.
But in the past five years, that's what this Bedford County farming community has become known for.
Law enforcement officers point to Body Camp as the worst trouble spot for drugs in the county - a magnet for users from Roanoke and Lynchburg.
"Throughout the elections, I had calls and complaints from around the county about Body Camp," said Mike Brown, the county's sheriff since January. "It's the crack capital of Bedford County, that's what it is."
Like the Henry County community of Sandy Level, where federal, state and local officers recently made a string of crack cocaine-related arrests, Body Camp is one of a growing number of poor, rural communities across the state under siege by crack.
"It's something we've seen with increasing frequency over the last decade," said Col. Wayne Huggins, the state police superintendent. "The bottom line is, no community in this country or in this commonwealth is immune from drugs anymore."
In the past, Body Camp was a route for Franklin County tobacco farmers on their way to market in Lynchburg. According to local lore, it takes its name from farmers who would ask, "Can a body camp here?" (Another possibility is the community was named after a "bawdy" house where men would "camp" for the night.)
These days, the community is known as a base for drug dealers and as a route for narcotics, most of it down Virginia 24, Body Camp's main thoroughfare.
In March, a county grand jury indicted a 26-year-old Body Camp man, Thomas Leroy "Boogaloo" Lipscomb, on three counts of dealing crack cocaine within 1,000 feet of Body Camp Elementary School. A sting the same month led to the arrests of four more people on felony counts of attempting to buy crack.
And last week, during a two-day offensive aimed at curbing the drug traffic on Virginia 24, Bedford County sheriff's deputies arrested one man for possession of crack, a felony, and 12 others on misdemeanor drug charges, most for possession of marijuana.
Many people who live here say Body Camp's reputation as a drug market isn't representative of the community as a whole, however. They say most of what they know about crack cocaine in their community is what they read in the newspapers.
Folks blame the drug problem on "the Projects," a small, three-street neighborhood of low-income government-subsidized ranch houses. It's next door to Body Camp Elementary School on Virginia 24.
People in the neighborhood, which is predominantly black, don't dispute that claim, but they also say the problem isn't theirs alone.
"It ain't all a black problem," one man said. "Look at who they arrested for buying crack. They just busted white people."
`It don't pay to say anything'
On county land records, the 25-year-old neighborhood has the soap opera-sounding name of "Bedford Place," but nobody who lives there has ever heard it called that.
Sometimes residents call it "the subdivision," but even they usually call it "the Projects" because many of their homes were built with low-interest government loans.
Some of the houses are well maintained, with children's toys scattered on neatly trimmed lawns. Others are run-down and in need of paint. At the ends of the streets are densely wooded dead-ends where teens party or play basketball on the weekends.
Some lots are green with trees and shrubs, and other yards have several cars parked in them, with trash and litter underfoot in the neglected grass.
And some houses are abandoned, but not vacant. Those are the ones the dealers have taken over.
Most people in the Projects aren't eager to talk openly about the drug problem. Those who talked with the newspaper would do so only if they weren't identified.
One woman said she was afraid to say anything because "it's been quieter, and I just don't want no headache. I got a family. ... You know how drug people are."
A lot of neighbors are afraid of causing trouble. There hasn't been any real violence, just a few threats or a harsh word here and there. And that's the way people want to keep it.
"It don't pay to say anything," one man said. "If it's quiet, keep it quiet. That's the rule.
"I respect them, they respect me - long as they don't ever slip anything to my kids or my family. Then you'll have a nice big write-up about me for the paper - for murder."
"The biggest concern I hear from homeowners is that there are a lot of good people living there and a few troublemakers are causing the problems and bringing the property values down," said Rodney Dellis, director of the Bedford County office of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which holds some mortgages in the Projects.
Yet, resistance in the neighborhood has been quiet - maybe a "Just Say No to Drugs" bumper sticker or a neighbor anonymously phoning tips to the Sheriff's Office.
There's no neighborhood watch. No church groups confronting dealers. No community meetings.
"What was you going to do with a neighborhood watch?" a woman asked. Community action won't work in the Projects, she said, because - unlike in some urban areas - the dealers here aren't strangers.
The dealers are not an outside influence taking over the community. They're the family down the street who have been their neighbors for 15 years, the boys who used to work on their cars, or the kids, now grown, who used to catch the school bus down the road.
And in this small, close-knit neighborhood, a lot of people won't blow the whistle on drug dealers or users. That's because in many cases, they're related to them by blood or marriage. Or, they've used drugs themselves.
`Stuff out in the open'
Nobody's sure when drugs entered the Projects. Sheriff's deputies recall a time about a decade ago when the worst call they might answer here was for a domestic dispute or somebody drinking a little moonshine.
Five or six years ago, crack showed up. Some people say it came with a Roanoke dealer who moved in briefly. Others say young entrepreneurs in the low-income community brought it in from Roanoke and Lynchburg, looking to make an easy buck.
"That's all it is, fast money," a man said. "Instead of getting their a-- out there and going to work like I do every day, they get fast money."
"I'd just like to see the drug deals busted up and all of them's involved doing some hard time," another man said. "It makes no sense that some people work hard and pay their taxes and these other people sit around all day selling drugs and have more money than the man who's working an honest job."
No matter how crack found its way into the neighborhood, it soon caused big problems for the people who lived here.
"It was a mess," the first man said. "All night long, stuff out in the open, cars up and down the road. ... If I was an undercover man, I'd be rich."
Until recently, when raids slowed down the drug traffic, a steady stream of cars would come into the neighborhood 24 hours a day, buying drugs from people on the street. At night, the buyers' cars -sometimes 10 to 15 cars deep down both sides of the street - would block the single road out of the subdivision.
"Sometimes, I'd have to wait for them to sell their stuff," a woman said. At times, it was so bad that residents would have to wait 20 minutes or longer to get out of the subdivision to go to the grocery store or even to work in the morning.
A meter reader with Southside Electric Cooperative said, "I've been in there reading meters and I've seen the money come out. In the daytime, I've seen marijuana, cocaine, all out in the open. ... I've had people want to fight me for nothing because they're on drugs."
Several neighbors talk about hearing gunshots at night. One dealer's house had a bullet put through the living room window.
A resident said he asked a dealer about gunshots one time and was told not to worry: The dealer and his buddies were just testing some guns before trading them for drugs.
Neighbors also complain about loud noise, partying and drag racing. You could go to bed hearing loud rap music in the neighborhood, get up at 5 a.m. hearing it, and go to work a couple hours later with it still going on, one couple said. There have also been petty thefts, break-ins and vandalism, presumably by buyers who reportedly trade stolen goods to support their habits.
Vacant houses are still one of the biggest problems facing the Projects. Neighbors point to a blue house with a black roof. When the mortgage company foreclosed and the homeowner moved out, the dealers broke in and started using it occasionally for crack and prostitution.
A screen door on the side of the house shows signs of forced entry, and the back windows are broken. Wine and beer bottles are strewn across the yard. Down the street, the front door of an empty tan-and-green house usually stays wide open. In its yard, a child's faded plastic Big Wheel is sunken into the ground among the overgrown weeds.
Residents in the Projects say drug dealers use the vacant houses instead of risking having their own homes raided by police.
"They just take over these vacant houses," a man said. "They used to pull the cars in like they lived there. ... We don't need it in the neighborhood, especially when you got kids playing outside."
`It's in the Bible'
"We're going to find it. Now, if you're lying to us, that's going to be another charge," said Lt. Kent Robey of the Bedford County Sheriff's Office. "Come on, you don't want to lie to us. We're going to bring the dog in, and the dog's going to find it."
It was a Friday night, a little before 9, and the county's new major crimes detection and traffic safety unit, a division trained in methods of identifying cars carrying drugs, had just stopped an old gold van with dark windows leaving Body Camp at Virginia 24 and Virginia 43.
The driver, a thin middle-aged man wearing a worn denim jacket over a white T-shirt and black work pants, stood outside while a couple of drug-enforcement deputies on loan from the Wythe County Sheriff's Office searched his car.
The driver looked down at the ground, his eyes hidden by the brim of his black Malcolm X baseball cap. "It's in the Bible. Look in the Bible," he said, without looking up.
Standing in the cab of the van, Deputy Brian Boze opened a small red Bible on the dash. Inside, tucked between Psalm 41 and Psalm 42 was a small thing that looked like a pebble or a piece of dirty soap. It was a $20 crack rock.
```Blessed is he that considereth the Poor. The Lord will deliver him in time of trouble,''' Boze read as he lifted the rock into an evidence bag. "That's a good quote."
Boze recently uncovered 100 pounds of marijuana hidden in a false truck bed on I-81 in Wythe County. He and another Wythe officer are in Bedford County to train deputies in methods of drug enforcement on the county's roads and highways.
It's one of a series of initiatives by Sheriff Brown aimed at stemming the county's drug traffic. In Body Camp alone, Brown estimates, $5,000 to $10,000 or more in crack cocaine is traded every week.
Given those numbers, one $20 rock over a two-day patrol seems like a small victory.
But before Brown took office, there weren't any arrests for crack in Body Camp.
"When Wells was in there, Wells didn't care," one of the neighbors said of former Sheriff Carl Wells. "You could call a deputy sheriff and nothing would happen."
Many neighbors talk about a failed raid a few years ago in which no drugs were found and no arrests made. They also talk about a police car that came before the raid with its lights and sirens on. Many believe the dealers had been tipped off.
"A whole lot of people was upset about that," a woman said.
Ironically, though neighbors think Wells wasn't doing anything about the drug problem, all the drug buys undercover police made from Lipscomb were made when Wells was sheriff. The indictments, however, were handed down after he left office.
As for the rumors that someone tipped off the dealers, Wells launched an internal investigation with the help of state police after hearing about it, but no evidence of a leak was found.
Given the wariness of dealers, it may not have taken an insider to tip them off.
Last week, the crack dealers seemed one step ahead of police. Sheriff's deputies pulled over one car and, after a drug dog alerted them to the scent of crack, searched it. The deputies found $300 in $20 bills - but no crack.
Later, they raided a suspected drug house. The dealer they were looking for was gone, and so were the drugs, if there had been any. From inside the house, the deputies could hear their own radio traffic blaring from a police scanner.
That's not uncommon. The dealers listen to police scanners, neighbors say. "They know the law's coming before the law does," said a farmer who lives in Body Camp.
Still, Brown is making inroads into the crack problem, and he hopes to make more. This summer, he plans to hire a community police officer to organize neighborhood watch groups in Body Camp. And with a $12,000 donation from a county woman, the Sheriff's Office will add two specially trained drug dogs to its arsenal.
The signs of Brown's battle are showing. On some county roads, dealers and buyers have spray-painted obscene slogans, cursing Brown.
But also, for the first time in a handful of summers, some people in the Projects are sitting on their porches and working in their yards. A neighborhood whose residents once cowered at their windows and locked themselves in their houses is starting to come to life again.
It's quiet enough most summer nights now that neighbors can hear the buzzing of locusts in fields outside the Projects.
A lot of them credit Brown. "I thank the Lord for Brown. I feel safe and secure," a resident said.
The raid in March made a big change in the neighborhood, he and his wife said.
"I was so glad to see it. That was the best night of our life," she said.
"It made a big difference," another woman said. "They don't have as many customers anymore. We don't see the same cars as much. They're scared now, I guess."
As for Brown himself, he has no illusions about his war with the drug pushers.
"In the real world, it will be pushed to some other location, hopefully to some other county," he said. "I'm sorry for any other jurisdiction that happens to, but maybe if we all keep pushing, we can push it out to sea."
The sheriff said, "If we can hit [drug dealers] enough in fines and jail sentences, maybe we'll make these people think, `This costs too much. I'm getting out of the business.'
"Or is that living in a dream world? It probably is."
LENGTH: Long : 280 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: STEPHANIE KLEIN-DAVIS/Staff 1. This abandoned houseby CNBis alleged to have been a crack house in "the Projects," a
subdivision of low-income houses in Body Camp. Color. 2. An
abandoned house's mailbox left open in Body Camp, "crack capital of
Bedford County.'' Color. 3. The pastoral scene on Rock Cliff Road in
Body Camp shows the beauty of the rural community. 4. The area near
this Dumpster in Body Camp has been well known as a place for drug
transactions. 5. Map of Body Camp.