GUTHRIE DRUG WOES REFLECT MANY STATELINE COMMUNITIES

"It's like this: People get on it and they can't work, their productive
work falls off and they start getting the money any way they can. -- Police
Chief Bob Whittlesey

GUTHRIE, Ky. -- When drug dealers want to evade police detection in this
Todd County stateline community, they don't have to do anything dramatic.

They don't have to peel out, driving a high-powered muscle car through
roadblocks and there's no dramatic gun battle with machine-guns or pistols.

All they really have to do is walk one block, moving from Kentucky to
Tennessee or visa-versa, depending on which side of town the officers shows up.

It's a frustrating situation for Police Chief Bob Whittlesey and his
five-man police force, policing Guthrie and it's territory over the
railroad track, South Guthrie, an incorporated area in Tennessee located
less than a half-block away.

Whittlesey has been with the department for 20 years and he's been the
police chief for 13 of those years.

But times have changed and the drug scene has erupted during that same time
period.

"When I first started, I didn't know up-or-down about it (illegal drugs). I
don't think drug dealers knew about it. I've always said that you could
take a marked car and go down across the railroad tracks and buy marijuana,
they were that trusting," said Whittlesey.

He explains it just takes his entire small department's efforts to patrol
24 hours a day in this small town of 1,700-plus citizens. Two of his police
officers, Keith Dwyer and Matt Dolezal, are considered the narcotics
officers, but that's because their main patrolling shift is when the drugs
are usually sold.

Dwyer makes an educated guess that there are about 10 to 15 drug dealers in
his community, whether you're talking the Kentucky side or South Guthrie.

Police have to be stone-solid positive of a crime before pursuing dealers
into South Guthrie.

"South Guthrie is not an incorporated area and they don't have law
enforcement," said Whittlesey. "The Montgomery County Sheriff's Department
does a good job in covering it, but they're spread thin.

Most of Guthrie's problem is crack cocaine, according to Whittlesey and
it's a familiar story to the police.

"It's like this: People get on it and they can't work, their productive
work falls off and they start getting the money any way they can. They'll
start stealing from father, mother, brother, sister.

"It will stay that way for awhile until mother, brother, sister get tired
of it, then they'll throw them out. Then comes burglaries, breaking into
cars, home burglaries," said Whittlesey. "You can tell what is their
situation by what crime they are doing.

"Crack cocaine is still our No. 1 drug, maybe some powdered cocaine. You
can throw meth in here, but it's not one of our big problems, but it's'
growing," he said.

Guthrie officers raided a house last week. There wasn't anyone in the
house, but they found 17 grams of crack, a weight scale hidding in a light
fixture and a unique method of delivery.

Dwyer explained that after making a prior payment, someone would come to
the house, knock on the outside wall and a baggie of dope would drop out of
the clothes dryer outlet.

"If we didn't have any dope here, then this would be Mayberry," said Dwyer.

Whittlesey says most, if not all the crime in town comes from, or is the
result of drugs.

Because of their location on the state line, police say that deliveries of
dope are made from Russellville, Springfield, Hopkinsville and nearby
Clarksville.

The city police get help from the Pennyrile Narcotics Task Force in
southern Kentucky and the 19th Judicial Task Force in Tennessee's
Montgomery County.

However, the lion's share of any works remains with the Guthrie Police
Department and the state line isn't going anywhere.