Police get points for drug seizures
After hearing that meth is such a big problem in town, it was also good to hear that the good guys were having some success in tackling the issue.
The Pine Bluff Police Department, using two search warrants, detained eight people, and a gun and several grams of meth were confiscated. One of the leaders of the search said this amounted to a win for the cops.
“Right now, methamphetamine across all ethnicities in Pine Bluff, other than marijuana, is our biggest enemy in narcotics, in what we do,” said police Sgt. Brett Talley, a team leader on the searches. “It’s rampant. It’s cheaper, and the market is saturated.”
Those are rather chilling adjectives, especially for a highly addictive stimulant that has many bad side effects for the user and for society in general. The sting is part of interim Police Chief Lloyd Franklin Sr.’s Blue Rain initiative in which the police are turning up the heat on all sorts of transgressions in hopes of forcing criminals to think twice.
Detectives with the Pine Bluff police’s Vice-Intelligence-Narcotics division went to 3102 Rose St. and seized 14.3 grams of crystal meth and a handgun, and at 907 S. Pennsylvania St., detectives said they seized 13.5 grams of crystal meth, a digital scale and two glass smoking pipes.
The two sites may have been connected, the officer said.
“We got both warrants for the sale of methamphetamine, so in that sense, they’re connected,” Talley said. “I’m sure that there is some crossover.”
We imagine word will get around, that being that the police are watching and waiting and making life more difficult for druggies. That’s the way it should be. In other words, you, and you know who you are, have been warned.
And that’s good because drug use and sales cause so many problems, as Talley points out.
“It’s a big focus because in Pine Bluff, drugs are probably the most popular thing when it comes to crime,” he said. “There are going to be people committing different crimes, burglaries and batteries, to support the habit of it.”