No Boundaries

Carteret County Sheriff Asa Buck based his entire campaign on cleaning up the county's major drug problem. Although it began before he took office, today his and a handful of other law enforcement agencies showed they are serious about cracking down on drugs.

They're calling it "Operation No Boundaries" -- it was a massive drug sweep that spanned Carteret, Jones and Onslow Counties.

Detectives from six agencies (Jacksonville PD, Morehead City PD, Beaufort PD, Carteret Co. Sheriff's Office, Jones Co. Sheriff's Office and NCIS) announced this afternoon a round-up that's put more than 50 people behind bars on drug charges in the last three days.

Officers from those agencies have been working together since November. They say through their undercover operations, they purchased drugs from more than 100 street-level drug dealers.

As of 11 a.m. Saturday, they'd arrested 51 of them.

Sheriff Buck says drug dealers Down East need to start looking over their shoulder.

"The people in this county realize that the drugs are a serious problem," Buck says. "We're going to be putting the resources toward working hard against drugs. And like I said, if we didn't catch them in this one, we're liable to catch them in the next one."

During the sweep, officers seized nearly 500 grams of marijuana, about 125 grams of cocaine, $16,000 in cash and at least three cars.

They say more multi-agency sweeps like this one are in the works.

Hopefully that gives you some confidence that officials here in the East know there is a problem -- and they seem to be working to do something about it.

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