Sergeant Smack: The Legendary Lives and Times of Ike Atkinson, Kingpin, and His Band of Brothers by Ron Chepesiuk

Author:Ron Chepesiuk
Language: eng
Format: mobi
ISBN: 9780984233311
Publisher: Strategic Media
Published: 2010-06-14T15:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER TEN

New Kid on the Block

IKE ATKINSON HAD spent less than a year in jail for the 1969 offense of failing to pay a duty on heroin imported into the U.S. and, fortunately for him, he had not been involved in William Herman Jackson’s plan to smuggle heroin to Denver, beginning in late 1971. Nevertheless, Ike began running into big-time legal problems in his home state of North Carolina. It began in 1971 when the North Carolina State Bureau of Investigation (SBI), in cooperation with Federal law enforcement, launched Operation Eagle, a major eight-month drug trafficking investigation.

A division of the North Carolina Department of Justice, the SBI got its start in 1937 when the North Carolina State Legislature ratified Public Law 349, which established the State Bureau of Identification and Investigation. The SBI’s primary role has been to assist local law enforcement with criminal investigations. To accomplish this objective, the SBI works closely with both local and Federal authorities. The Bureau has legal jurisdiction over drug cases in North Carolina and through the years has launched several significant drug initiatives. Operation Eagle was the first major drug investigation in its history, and Ike Atkinson and his criminal organization was the major target.

Charles J. Overton III had joined the SBI in 1970, the ninety-ninth agent hired after graduating from the Bureau’s second academy class. The need for agents and for an Academy to train qualified SBI agents was largely a response to the growing drug trade in North Carolina. Stationed in Fayetteville, North Carolina, Overton began working for an interagency narcotics task force comprised of one other SBI agent and law enforcement officials from the Cumberland County Sheriff’s Department, the Fayetteville Police Department and the U.S. Army’s Criminal Investigation Division (CID). “We didn’t have too many resources, but we started making (drug) buys, arresting the sellers, making them flip, then making more buys, trying to move up the chain,” Overton recalled. “We began hearing that heroin from Asia was being smuggled into North Carolina through military couriers, but it took us a little while before we figured it out. Informants began telling us that there were four or five big drug dealers in North Carolina, and they were getting their heroin supply from the same source—Ike Atkinson.”

Operation Eagle led to the arrest of several suspected drug traffickers who were operating in North Carolina, including Ike Atkinson. On July 5, 1973, Ike and eleven others, including his old pal Eddie Wooten from Washington, DC, were indicted for heroin trafficking. U.S. District Judge Frank T. Dupree set Ike’s bond at $250,000, an indication, SBI officials believed, of his importance in the national drug trade. “This is the most extensive and effective investigation in North Carolina history,” SBI Director Charles Dunn told the press at the time. “The quality and quantity of the heroin is down on the streets while the price is up.”

The Operation Eagle indictment came in October 1972, just eight months after Ike beat his 1969 conviction in the New York City heroin trafficking case.

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