Evidence handling of New Hanover County Sheriff’s Office in question.The New Hanover County Sheriff’s Office Vice and Narcotics Unit may have serious issues when it comes to chain of custody in preserving evidence of crimes.

We at Blue Line Radio heard the disturbing news of yet another negative issue involving the New Hanover County Sheriff’s Vice and Narcotics Unit. We hinted to it in our most recent article, or “Evidence Denied” part one. Now, out of concern that there is absolutely nothing that is going to come of this, we have decided to bring this dark issue out into the light. But first, some insight as to how and why this type of thing could happen within our Sheriff’s office. It happens because of conditioning. It happens because of negative role models and leadership.

First, we have to remember that the former Sheriff, Sid Causey, was the unit commander for over the last sixteen plus years as a staff member, then continued to control it through one “direct report” commander during his administration as Sheriff. This would be the same Sid Causey that in the year of 2000, as Captain in the V/N Unit, drove down to Tampa Florida to seize illegal drugs on information gleaned from a defendant in the New Hanover County Jail; this is without the knowledge of the Tampa Police. Then, after being told “nicely” by the Tampa authorities not to come back to Tampa to work drug cases on their own, Causey slips into Tampa to bond out a drug defendant, go to the bank and retrieve over $80,000.00 in cash. This is when a “tip” was called into the Tampa drug unit and Causey was told that he was going to be investigated and to leave Tampa. Both DEA Tampa and DEA Wilmington, felt that if Causey’s unethical if not criminal conduct were disclosed, that it may jeopardize the international drug case deemed, OPERATION XTERMINATOR.. So, no further action was taken against Causey and he later became the next elected Sheriff after Sheriff Lanier decided not to run in the 2002 election.

There were other incidents of misconduct and possible criminal behavior by Causey and his drug unit.Arrest of NORWOOD CREECH, aka Jack Creech in March of 1997 and the seizing of a million dollars in cash. Mr. Creech says a large amount of the cash seized was missing from total. Claims law enforcement agents stole it from the confiscated cash. Creech arrested by Causey's Vice and Narcotics Department. TERRELL PARLATORE, the Vice and Narcotics Division's secretary was arrested for trafficking cocaine and altering evidence. The investigation turned up unaccounted for and missing drugs from evidence lock-up. One bundle, a pound and a half of cocaine, is unaccounted for. Anyone talk to her about how she got set-up?

Longtime Causey friend and former North Carolina Secretary of Transportation and political operative GARLAND G. GARRETT, JR. was indicted by a federal grand jury on 246 counts of money laundering and fraud. Garrett's troubles relate back
to the mid-1990's. Mr. Garrett owned and operated Cape Fear Music in Carolina Beach. Mr. Causey the man in charge of investigating crimes of vice never so much as issued a parking ticket to the "Godfather" of video poker. Asleep at the
wheel or something corrupt?I’m sure I can think of other similar situations, like the young drug dealer that was “detained” for over 24 hours without being charged, so the agents in the unit could negotiate with his mother to sign her car over to the Sheriff’s office. Or the video poker people that were never charged, but the unit seized tens of thousands of dollars of assets. Or recently the young man who’s Tahoe was seized even after the drug unit reduced his charges and made the family believe that the truck would be returned to them, and this never happened. And of course there is the Brenda Curry case that was meat of the first article, Evidence Denied.

Now, back to current concerns. We are concerned that a Vice and Narcotics Detective recently resigned on September 14th of this year. The word is, that this New Hanover County Sheriff’s Department member, went into the V/N evidence lock up and took a seized window air conditioner unit and placed it in his daughter’s window at his home. This vice narcotics agent’s base salary when he was employed by Sheriff McMahon was $51,729.60. The circumstances of how and why this happened are mind boggling by themselves, but what took place afterwards is where the mind cannot comprehend. After finding out that an older air conditioning unit was placed in the seized air conditioner box, the contents were fingerprinted and the prints came back as the agent that was allowed to resign on the 14th of September. So, the agent of the New Hanover County Sheriff’s Vice and Narcotics Unit committed a crime by all appearances, but was allowed to resign. My question is why. This is the biggest affront to all of law enforcement and for the elected Sheriff, the highest elected office in the county and the Chief Law Enforcement Officer in the county under the North Carolina Constitution, to close a blind eye to. The saddest part is that many of our local politicians are aware of some of the things that are mentioned in this article and still, no one has lifted one single finger to have this brought to light.
With all of this said and pointed out, I hope that the readers of this have a better understanding of how things go wrong. But just in case the point is not clear, here’s the “Cliff Notes”, you have a past commander that was part of the problem…he gets rewarded and the subordinates take note. Now you have a Sheriff that lives in a closet and prefers not to get involved and allow criminal actions within his department to go unenforced.

My thought is, the Sheriff should stop and think, that no matter how much you spray perfume on something that stinks, it’s just perfume covering stink. My advice is to man up, do your job, and correct this problem before you are faced with another Peyton Strickland like incident. And for those in Command Staff, grow a pair and fix the problem instead of coasting into your retirement so many months away.