HENRY COUNTY, Ala (WDHN) -- After just one day on the job, one Henry County task force is already making waves.
On Thursday, Henry County's Sheriff's Pro-active Drug Enforcement Unit—or the Spade unit—officially took effect after months of training.
Spade is an 8-man unit of narcotics officers—Sergeants, deputies on patrol, and even a school resource officer. This unit began training in early March with one common goal: being proactive in drug approaches.
"The goal of the unit, too, was to take some of those dangerous drugs that are here in our county and get them off our streets," said Henry County Sheriff Eric Blankenship.
According to Sheriff Blankenship, in the early morning hours of Friday, the Spade team, Eufaula's Swat Team, and Barbour County's K-9 unit executed a search warrant in Henry County.
As of now, details are limited, but Blankenship did reveal that "three known drug dealers" were arrested.
While this is a huge stepping stone for the spade unit, Blankenship hopes this team can help get rid of the dangerous drugs around Henry County.
"We're seeing an uptick of fentanyl cases. We're seeing a lot of drugs that are laced with fentanyl--including marijuana," the sheriff said.
Blankenship did note that the drug issues stretch far past Henry--with the entire country going through the same thing.
With that being said--the Henry County sheriff did say that along with dealing with local drugs--the spade unit hopes to prevent drugs from out-of-state from being moved into Henry County--via a very popular highway.
"431 is a major drug corridor coming from Atlanta, down to the panhandle. We had one last week from Tennessee headed to Florida, that we stopped with trafficking drugs," Sheriff Blankenship said.
As of now--this case is still under investigation, and the Henry County Sheriff's Office is expected to release additional information soon.
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