Happy Hunting

Happy Hunting in White County

The scene would not look out of place around a campfire. The four men talk about tracking, hiding places, running down their quarry, and bringing back their sought-after trophies. Although the conversation takes place in an office, it has the feel of a deer camp.

That is because the four men are White County Sheriff Pat Garrett and three of the department's detectives, Sergeant Clayton Edwards, Sergeant Edward Cullum, and Lieutenant Michael Ray. They sound like they are talking about hunting because they are talking about hunting. Their goal however, is to bring "em back alive.

They are getting ready for a night of beating the bushes of White County for drugs, specifically methamphetamine, and the people who use it, sell it, and make it. After mapping out a game plan in the sheriff's office, they head out to their cars and into the far reaches of the county to flush out their game.

Garrett heads out to White County Patrol Unit 802, a 1995 Chevrolet Caprice with 259, 683 miles on the odometer. Seven hours later, it will roll back in to the sheriff's department with 266 more to its credit.

"This is one of our older units," Garrett explains. "It's not the highest mileage unit we have, but it's right up there. I don't even want to think about what we spend on it for maintenance."

His departure from the office is delayed while he waits for a spotlight to be installed on the car. "I'd like to have one on here that works," he says, shaking his head. "We spend a lot time robbing parts from one car to equip another one. We've gotten all of these new cars, but we're having trouble finding enough radios, bar lights, and spotlights that work to get them ready for the road."

By 8 p.m., Garrett gives up and prepares to leave without the working spotlight. By 8:30, he is near Rose Bud, when he observes a car ahead speeding into town. He pulls the Toyota over, explaining, "When we approach a car that we've pulled over, we don't know what we're dealing with. For that reason, the tension level is high, and we are very careful until we are satisfied that no threat exists."

He approaches the driver's side and observes two young women in the front seat. After running a check on the plate number and the driver's license number, he satisfies himself that the driver was merely driving too fast and was not otherwise impaired.

With an admonition to slow down, he sends them on their way. "I don't really like to write tickets unless the driver is way out of line," he says. "I'll usually warn them to slow down and let them be on their way. If I stop them again though, they're going to have a little more trouble."

When asked if the patrol deputies follow the same policy, Garrett smiled and said, "That's up to their own discretion to do whatever they believe is necessary to keep the roads safe."

The sheriff runs into a bit of a problem trying to contact the dispatcher from the intersections of Arkansas 5 and Arkansas 36. The reception is not clear, and it is obvious from the response that he is not getting through clearly either. His handheld radio won't reach at all.

"It would be nice to have some radio equipment that we can use way out here," he says, frustrated. The radio, a Uniden, which is supposed to scan all of the repeater frequencies, doesn't. "What good is it to have the equipment if it doesn't even work right?" he asks.

After a few hours of patrolling out in the county between Rose Bud, Beebe, and Searcy, checking on abandoned vehicles, checking businesses, and a few traffic stops, Garrett takes a break.

He pulls in at a convenience store just off the freeway in Searcy and meets Kensett police officers Tim Allman and Terry Evans. After chatting for a few minutes, Garrett's radio sounds at 11:20 p.m. "We're moving in," comes the transmission, and then something about a rifle.

"That's us!" yells Garrett, running to the car. Just after getting to the car, another transmission comes over the radio that sounds like, "shots fired." The sheriff hits the lights and sirens and proceeds quickly toward Wolf Hollow Road in Russell, where the detectives are staked out.

By the time he arrives, nearly 12 minutes later, the excitement is almost over. Detectives Ray and Cullum, acting on a tip that meth dealers are using four-wheelers to deliver drugs, attempt to stop a person riding a four-wheeler down the county road. The suspect took off and the chase was on.

"This is a big county," says Garrett. "There aren't a whole lot of us out here at any given time, and when an officer is in trouble, it feels like an eternity before we can get to them."

He pointed out that to the officer in trouble, the time is an eternity. When seconds can mean the difference between life and death, minutes can be fatal. Garrett explains that when a call goes out for assistance, everybody responds.

When he arrived at the turn-off, officers from Bald Knob and Bradford were there, making sure everyone could find the area and that traffic, what little there was at 11:30 p.m., didn't get in the way. Arkansas State Trooper Royce Denney was also on the scene.

The "rifle" turns out to be a bow mounted on the front of the camouflage colored ATV, and the "shots fired" transmission is a mystery. No shots were fired, and no one recalled announcing that any had.

Detectives had chased the suspect down a small, muddy lane, where the ATV skidded out of control, dumping the driver. The driver then fled into a densely wooded area, losing the detectives in the darkness.

Judsonia Police Chief Ray Coffman and patrolman Robert Parsons arrive on the scene with the Judsonia K-9 unit.

Coffman and Parsons have brought their department's tracking dog to help track the suspect down.

The dog tracks the suspect to a mobile home near the area the ATV was abandoned. Officers approach the home and knock on the door, asking the occupants' permission to search the premises. Permission is denied, which causes them to pull back and debate the merits of obtaining a search warrant.

After a few minutes, the officers decide to call off the search, deciding against getting a warrant. "He'll be back out here," says Detective Ray. "He'll come back and we'll catch him another day."

In the meantime, the officers are now in possession of the ATV the suspect was using, which is placed on a wrecker and taken back to the Sheriff's Department to be impounded.

The initial stop attempt was because of a misdemeanor offense, that of riding an unlicensed vehicle on a public road. However, it became a felony, fleeing, as soon as the suspect began running.

Arkansas law states that any vehicle used in the commission of a felony may be subject to confiscation. Garrett explains that the owner will have to come up with a plausible explanation to a judge for the nature of the ATVs use before it can be returned.

As the officers were preparing to depart, a four-wheel-drive vehicle pulled into their midst and stopped, the driver just looking at the officers.

Lieutenant Ray walked to the door, spoke to the driver for a moment, and then asked for his license. A check revealed the driver to be a convicted felon on parole.

The dog was then brought to the truck, led around it, only to "hit" on the passenger side door. Garrett explained that the dog had detected the odor of drugs in the area of the door.

The driver gave permission for the dog to be placed inside the vehicle, whereupon he immediately "hit" on the console and under the driver's seat. Parsons then began to search, but found nothing after about 10 minutes.

Believing that the driver may have thrown something incriminating out the window upon seeing the crowd of officers, he walks up the road, looking in the ditches, but finds nothing.

Ray spoke to the driver, warning him that if he was involved with drugs, he would find himself visiting with officers sooner or later and could be sent back to the penitentiary. The driver leaned out of his window, and, looking at Ray, said tauntingly, "Happy hunting." He then drove off.

Ray returned to the group and spoke to Garrett, clearly frustrated with the night's turn of events. "That one's going back to the pen, and he's going to put himself there," Ray said. "All of these dopers think they can outsmart us."

The night's hunting was called off, the law enforcement officers heading back empty handed. But just for that night. Within hours, the hunt would begin again, and the bad guys don't always give them the slip.