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Planning a Large Scale Drug Bust
Although Tuesday's drug bust only lasted a few hours, it took a lot of time to plan. Police departments from all over Harrison County joined with federal offices over the last year to make sure nothing went wrong when they sent 70 officers to the streets.
Keeping officers safe and arresting alleged drug dealers were the main goals of all the chiefs involved in the round-up. They remained together throughout the day to keep track of everything that was happening while officers were at homes or in route to the courthouses.
"A drug task force can do what uniform officers cannot do, what street crime units cannot do, and that is thoroughly investigate a criminal enterprise and completely dismantle it," says William J. Ihlenfeld II, United States Attorney.
That's what happened when police departments from all over Harrison County arrested more than 50 people on state or federal drug and gun charges, but it took a lot of planning to pull off.
"Everything went smooth, every officer was safe and that says a lot," says Clarksburg Chief Marshall Goff.
All the heads of the departments were together at one location where they were each in charge of one team.
"Each had their own assignments and teams that they worked on and we operated out of an incident command to help ensure the safety of all the officers, so we would know where they were at and if they ran into trouble, we'd get help to them as quickly as possible," explains Bridgeport Chief John Walker.
Luckily no one was hurt and available back-up teams didn't have to be involved. This comes from all the planning of the Harrison County Drug Task Force and all the other departments.
Chief Goff adds that it's important to remember that it was the residents of North View that also helped get this going.
They held faith while "I'm telling them that we're going to get this done, we're going to make sure that arrests are made so they hold confidence in the chiefs," he says.
The job isn't done just yet.
"The Harrison County Drug Task Force has requested our assistance in apprehending the remaining three fugitives," says Supervisory Deputy U.S. Marshal Alex Neville.
"It's the top of the iceberg. It's a never ending investigation I believe but we're going to keep fighting the fight to keep the drugs out of the city," says Chief Goff.
Chief Walker and Harrison County Sheriff Albert Marano agree with Chief Goff and they all plan to work together to stop drug and other criminal activity in the county.
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