THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, December 20, 1995 TAG: 9512200397
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: NORTH CAROLINA
SOURCE: BY LANE DEGREGORY, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: MANTEO LENGTH: Long : 165 lines
Leroy McClease was sleeping on his waterbed at 4:30 a.m. Tuesday when four state lawmen kicked in the door of his three-bedroom home, stepped over a teenage girl asleep on the living room floor, and burst into his bedroom, pointing pistols and waving pink search warrants.
Police handcuffed McClease, who is known as ``Boogie'' to his friends. They walked him down the stairs, past an illuminated Santa Claus in the sandy front yard. Then, they charged him with a long list of drug-related offenses, put him in the back seat of one of a dozen patrol cars parked along Fernando Street - a back road on Roanoke Island - and locked him in.
In the house, still wearing their nightgowns, the girl and an older woman watched from the worn living room sofa as officers poked around wrapped presents beneath a white Christmas tree and opened every drawer, closet and cupboard in the house.
Across the Outer Banks, similar scenes unfolded in Wanchese, Kill Devil Hills, Nags Head, Avon, Salvo and Hatteras Village.
Dressed in shiny black boots, baggy black pants and black windbreakers with the names of their units stenciled on back, 150 officers from throughout North Carolina descended on the resort islands early Tuesday to wrap up a four-month undercover investigation into illegal drug use.
By 10 a.m., police had arrested 31 of the 52 people for whom they had warrants. Six more suspects already were in jail on other charges. Officers said additional arrests are forthcoming.
Most of the suspects have past police records and are well known by local officers.
Dubbed ``Operation Season's Greetings,'' the raid was the largest drug bust ever in the Albemarle area, and maybe even in the state, officials said.
``It's definitely one of North Carolina's biggest,'' state Department of Crime Control and Public Safety spokeswoman Renee Hoffman said as a county van filled with reporters and photographers followed patrol cars through the pre-dawn darkness. ``We've got husbands, wives, children - whole families together in this. Cocaine, crack, marijuana - we've got it all.''
Police filed a total of 270 charges against the 52 suspects. Alleged infractions include misdemeanor possession of marijuana, conspiracy to sell and deliver cocaine, and felony firearms possession. Bonds set on the suspects ranged from $20,000 to $760,000.
Police also seized five vehicles during the raid - including a brown 1984 BMW with a trunk filled with children's clothes.
``Our goal is to make this a safe and happy holiday season for the law-abiding citizens of Dare County,'' said Roland Dale, director of the state Alcohol Law Enforcement Agency. ``The more drug dealers who are behind bars, the merrier the rest of us will be.''
Initiated at the request of Dare County's Board of Commissioners, Operation Season's Greetings was launched in August, when an officer with the state's Alcohol Law Enforcement Agency moved to the Outer Banks and went undercover.
Adopting a fictitious name, background and string of connections - and using the help of a police informant who had lived in Dare County for several years - the undercover officer quickly became introduced to some of the area's largest alleged drug dealers. He hung out in their homes, was invited to go on buying trips with them and purchased more than $30,000 worth of drugs, with Dare County providing about half the ``buy money.''
The first night the agent arrived on the Outer Banks, he made his first buy.
``Basically, I'm an actor playing a part. I'm never me when I'm undercover,'' said the unidentified agent, who wore a black face mask and dark ski goggles Tuesday morning. ``There's been times I've been in situations when my hair was standing up on my neck. But basically, I felt safe most of the time.
``If you can talk the talk - and have someone to get you in the door - you'd be amazed what that will get you. I can go into a house and not smoke anything and still get away with a buy. There were situations in which I was confronted to do things. But I'm not here to participate in their partying,'' the agent said, emphasizing that he never did drugs with the suspects. ``I'm here to infiltrate their culture and make arrests.''
At least 20 times during the undercover operation, the agent said, suspects asked him if he was a police officer. Sometimes, he said, he would laugh and say, ``Yeah, right, 5-0,'' - and they'd laugh, too. Other times, he'd just lie.
``The only time we have to tell the truth,'' said the agent's supervisor, ``is on the witness stand.''
Having such a small, close-knit population of year-round residents made it harder for the agent to infiltrate the drug community - but easier to get around in it once he had, said the officer.
``Everybody is kin to everyone here. So it's kind of tough to sneak in from the outside without someone's cousin questioning you,'' the agent said. ``After people started trusting me, though, it just mushroomed. The whole thing sprouted and took off.
``If I'd had five more months here, I could've gotten them 50 more people.''
Officials decided to end the investigation because ``things were starting to get a little too hot out there,'' the agent said. ``In this business, you can't afford to be too greedy. So we decided to call it off now and go with what we had.''
The undercover agent was responsible for all of the arrest warrants, state officials said. He traveled throughout the barrier islands and became accepted in various circles. ``Money knows no color - and neither do drugs,'' the agent's supervisor said.
Seven of the suspects arrested Tuesday are women. Ages range from 16 to 50.
``I really didn't think we'd get the numbers of people we got down here,'' the agent said from in front of the Dare County jail, where guards were fingerprinting members of the morning's round-up. ``And I didn't think it would all come together so quickly.''
In a cold, hard rain Tuesday morning, while the rest of the Outer Banks was sleeping, officers from the Dare County Sheriff's Department; the North Carolina Department of Revenue; the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms; and the Kitty Hawk, Kill Devil Hills and Nags Head police departments joined 50 state ALE officials in the fourth-floor meeting room of the oceanfront Ramada Inn at 4 a.m.
Over cinnamon rolls and steaming black coffee, the officers decided who would raid which house and how to best handle their attack.
``Some of these defendants are violent and usually armed. Others won't be,'' Pat Forbis, an assistant supervisor for the ALE, told the officers.
Police had photographs and floor plans for most of the residences they raided. They knew which doors on the homes opened to the outside and which exits were blocked from the inside by furniture, clothes or boxes. They knew whose dogs were tied up and whose were friendly. They even knew which suspects were sleeping with other suspects.
And they were sure most of the people they wanted would be home at 5 a.m.
McClease, 46, who officers say was one of the area's drug kingpins, was among those caught by surprise. Although police said he was a well-known firearms dealer in the area, McClease did not pull a gun or resist arrest when officers gave him the unexpected wake-up call.
A state official said McClease was charged with trafficking cocaine, possession with intent to sell and deliver crack, maintaining a dwelling for the purpose of selling a controlled substance, maintaining a vehicle for the purpose of selling a controlled substance, and possession of a firearm by a felon.
Officials set McClease's bond at $760,000. Inside his single-story house, they found an unloaded .22-gauge shotgun propped behind one bedroom door; shotgun shells in a cardboard box in the living room, near framed baby pictures; and a plastic baggie filled with what appeared to be marijuana by the television. In a stereo cabinet, they found an aluminum can that had allegedly been used as a crack pipe, and, in McClease's bedroom, they found a tape-recorded book titled ``Drug-proof your Kids.''
Summonses from other court cases and a string of letters from the sheriff's department also were lying around McClease's cluttered house amid piles of dirty laundry and pots of rotting crabs.
A couple miles away, on Sir Francis Drake Street in Manteo, Larry Hill was asleep at his house when another team of six law enforcement officers jammed a hammer behind his doorknob and burst inside, screaming, ``Police! Search Warrant!''
``He sat straight up in bed and put his hands over his head,'' ALE officer Bob Stocks said later. ``He was the only one at home when we entered. Apparently, we woke him up.''
Hill, 47, has a prior police record. He served time for armed robbery, assault with a deadly weapon and escape from police custody, Stocks said.
Beneath floor vents in Hill's house, officers found a brass-bowled pink pipe and a thin plastic bag which they thought might have contained cocaine residue. The items will be tested by police. ILLUSTRATION: Color photos
DREW C. WILSON/The Virginian-Pilot
Two agents from the North Carolina Alcohol Law Enforcement Agency
search under a waterbed mattress at the Roanoke Island home of Leroy
``Boogie'' McClease on Tuesday morning.
Leroy ``Boogie'' McClease, an alleged drug kingpin, is led from his
home. He faces a number of drug-related charges.
KEYWORDS: DRUG ARREST DRUG RING STING OPERATION by CNB