TUSCALOOSA, USA: Tuscaloosa drug task force has seized more than $2 million in drugs and cash and made more than 1,600 arrests last year, a police spokesman announced here the other day.
Sgt. Brent Blankley, who represents the Tuscaloosa Police Department and the West Alabama Task Force, said task force agents executed 167 search warrants in 2014. Those raids combined with the use of confidential informants, undercover operations and other tactics led to 1,677 arrests and 3,121 criminal charges.
Blankley the task force seized 82 firearms and 78 different types of drugs last year. Among the seizures was more than 90 pounds of marijuana, nearly 1,000 grams of cocaine, several thousand hydrocodone pills and tablets and 23 grams of heroin.
All told, Blankley said, the drugs seized had a street value of $1,125,290. Agents also seized $861,131 cash.
Through civil lawsuits known as fruits of crime forfeitures, almost $300,000 of that money has come back to fund parts of WANTF’s operations. Some of the money was awarded to the district attorney’s office, and some is still tied up in the court system awaiting a judge’s decision on whether the money is subject to forfeiture to the state.
The number of charges as a result of the work of task force agents has grown every year since 2008. WANTF’s commander, Captain Wayne Robertson, said that’s due in part to increases in enrollment at the University of Alabama and a larger population in Tuscaloosa County overall, but he mainly attributed the growth to his unit’s aggressive approach to enforcing drug laws.
WANTF, like other drug units nationwide, has faced some criticism for cracking down hard on the possession and use of marijuana, which critics of the war on drugs say is a harmless drugs. Robertson, though, said the size of the marijuana business necessitates a strict response because the sheer quantity
