Suspects got caught up in “Operation Happy New Year,” an investigation led by the Fairfield County Sheriff’s Office, with the assistance of the Columbia Police Department, Newberry and Lexington County Sheriff’s Offices, the SCHP and the Fairfield Detention Center.
“We have been working on this since the summer of 2007,” said Fairfield County Sheriff Herman Young, “along with agencies such as Newberry and Lexington County, Columbia, the SCHP and our Detention Center.”
Suspects were arrested and brought to the FCSO bus that is the Mobile Command Center, where they were processed and put into a Detention Center van to await transportation.
According to the FCSO, the operation began in the summer of 2007, using undercover officers ‘to infiltrate areas throughout Fairfield County where we have been receiving numerous citizen complaints about drug activity.
‘This operation is the first phase of a broader plan that targets street-level distributors of illegal drugs.’
Sheriff Young said the arrests made during Operation Happy New Year were mainly for distribution of illegal drugs, and included people arrested for selling prescription drugs illegally.
‘To this point we have apprehended, or are currently seeking, 50 individuals,” the FCSO said.
Sheriff Young said officers would also seize any paraphernalia or weapons they discover, and any money these suspected drug dealers might have collected.
“Anything we find that’s illegal, we’re going to seize it,” he said.
‘This operation is an excellent example of inter-agency cooperation between the Fairfield County Sheriff’s Office and surrounding agencies to combat the drug problem.
‘The drug dealers do not have jurisdictional boundaries and we, as law enforcement, want to show the criminal element that we have no jurisdictional boundaries when law enforcement works together as a whole.’
Sheriff Young said FCSO officers have also assisted in drug arrests in the jurisdictions of these other agencies.
“We’re working as a team, and it’s really paying off,” Sheriff Young said.
Young added that there has been no specific evidence that the drug activity was gang-related, but mindful of the increased gang-related activity in and around Fairfield County, he advanced the expert opinion that such drug deals could be used to help finance gang-related activity.
He said operations like this one would serve as an answer to people who call the Sheriff’s office asking what they’re doing about the drug problem. He pointed out that operations like this one (which started in summer of 2007) take a while to put together, and “we can’t tell them exactly what’s happening, because word gets out (and the operation might be compromised).
“When it comes to something like this (with the arrests,) that’s when everything falls into place.”
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