By Kent Faulk
Birmingham News
BOAZ, Ala. — A three-day sweep by law enforcement agencies in Marshall County netted more than 100 people arrested on various crimes, many of them related to the possession or sale of drugs, authorities said Wednesday.
Operation Summer’s Over included the confiscation of cash, guns, 394 grams of methamphetamine, 15 grams of crack cocaine and 48 vehicles, authorities said. The four-county region FBI Safe Streets Task Force coordinated the sweep, which involved 20 local, state and federal law enforcement agencies.
Marshall County District Attorney Steve Marshall said the focus of the sweep was drugs and small neighborhood gangs around the county.
Referring to five men who were recently tortured and killed over drugs and money in Shelby County, Marshall said, ''We have witnessed what happened in Shelby County and we do not want a similar nature of a crime to happen here in Marshall County.’'
Late Wednesday, 104 people had been arrested in the operation and more arrests were expected overnight. In addition to drug-related arrests, 11 men were charged with failure to pay more than $384,000 in back child support, and other people were arrested for DUI at drivers’ license checkpoints set up around the county.
The arrests also are leading law enforcement officials on drug investigations outside the county, including in Birmingham, Atlanta, Huntsville, and Jackson County, said Guntersville Police Chief Jim Peterson.
Marshall County Sheriff Scott Walls said one thing about the arrests stood out to him -many of those arrested also were arrested in the first task force sweep last year.
''They’re the same old, same old,’' he said.
Walls and other law enforcement officials on hand for a press conference said other sweeps would be held in the future. ''This is not the end,’' he said.
In an unrelated operation Tuesday, the task force coordinated a sweep that resulted in more than 55 arrests in neighboring Etowah County, according to the FBI.
Copyright 2008 Birmingham News