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Breakdowns at border, family order fuel drug war

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Jake Driskell doesn’t have to fumble through his stacks of case files to find examples of how drug abuse affects people from all kinds of backgrounds. All he has to do is look in a family photo album.

He’s been leading the charge in the fight against illegal drugs in Jones County for years; his sister Kimberly has been charged with numerous drug-related crimes over the years. He serves as sergeant of the Jones County Sheriff’s Department’s Narcotics Division; she is serving a 15-year sentence in prison for selling methamphetamine in Rankin County.

Both had the same upbringing in Smith County, yet they are now on opposite sides of the drug war. 

“We come from the same family, but we turned out very different,” Driskell said. “That just goes to show that you can’t control how your kids turn out, but you can influence them. I still remember how my Dad used to say that the most peace he had was when my sister was in jail, because at least he knew where she was and that she was safe.”

Many families of addicts can relate to that sentiment. And Driskell has helped give a lot of them that same peace of mind over the years by locking up a lot of drug dealers and users. Last year may have been his most productive yet. 

Driskell and his team filed 199 felony drug cases in 2022, pushing their three-year total to 564 felonies and 2,200 misdemeanors. In all, drugs with a street value of almost $16 million and $750,000 cash have been seized by the JCSD in the last three years, according to numbers the department released this week. To put the number of cases from 2022 in perspective, JCSD officials said there were 88 felony drug case reports turned in during 2019, the year before Driskell was hired by new Sheriff Joe Berlin to lead the JCSD Narcotics Division. 

“We said from the beginning that our goal was to make the county safer by getting dopeheads out of the community,” Berlin said. “Our narcotics agents have worked diligently to shut down the drug dealers who are responsible for poisoning our communities with this garbage ... but it’s a never-ending, thankless job.”

And the job has been made even tougher than expected in the last three years. One year after Berlin took office in January 2020 with the goal of closing shop for drug dealers, President Biden took office and opened the southern border. Since then, fentanyl and meth have flowed into the country virtually unobstructed, and that’s overwhelmed law enforcement in every state.

JCSD narcotics agents and interstate interdiction units have seized 46 pounds of fentanyl in the last three years. That number is particularly eye-opening considering that less than 20 pounds is used for legitimate medical reasons worldwide in a year, Driskell said.

“The increase in fentanyl has been terrible,” Berlin said. “People are using it like candy. We used to give out lifesaver awards for deputies who revived someone with Narcan, but now it’s a nearly daily occurrence. We’re saving the same people again and again. It seems like if we had to bring you back to life once, you would quit.”

Like father, like son 

At the beginning of the week, there were two sets of fathers and sons in the Jones County Adult Detention Center facing charges for dealing drugs. Kelvin Nixon, 48, of Sandersville was arrested in December for possession of meth with intent to distribute. Last week, his 25-year-old son Kelvin Nixon Jr. was charged with sale of a controlled substance — Oxycodone that’s believed to be laced with fentanyl, Driskell said — after being arrested by Laurel police for shoplifting at Hudson’s. JCSD had a warrant for the sale charge.

The previous December, JCSD narcotics agents arrested 65-year-old Ordroffe Ruffin of Moselle for possession of meth with intent to distribute while in possession of a firearm — and that was barely a month after he and his son Andre had been arrested for the same charges. Andre Ruffin, 37, was arrested again for sale of a controlled substance in March. 

The elder Nixon — who has more than a dozen arrests over an eight-year span — was released Tuesday evening after coming up with $150,000 bond. His son has begun building a long rap sheet, too.

“We’re seeing a lot more generational drug users and dealers ... and now we’re dealing with their children,” Driskell said. “It’s the result of the breakdown in the American household.”

He knows from his own family experience that people who were raised right can go astray, but that’s not the case with the majority of the cases his agents work.

“If you see that your father is a drug addict or dealer and grow up in a home with drugs in it, those children are way more susceptible to it,” Driskell said. “We’re seeing it a lot. It’s the breakdown of the family.”

Dealing with the same dealers and users is frustrating, but it hasn’t broken Driskell’s spirit, he said.

“It’s not personal,” he said. “I don’t judge people; I judge their actions.”

Plenty of the people he deals with are likable and productive when they’re clean, he said. Some of them have had genuine life-changing experiences only to fall back into addiction. He singled out Ricky Strickland — a well-known reformed drug addict and dealer who became a high-profile anti-drug crusader for years before being arrested twice in 2022 for dealing meth. 

“I’ve gone down to the jail and prayed with Ricky,” Driskell said. “He’s a good person when he’s clean.”

It all shows that drug addiction is a powerful force, but it’s still a choice, Berlin said.

“You don’t wake up addicted,” he said. “It’s a choice you make to introduce a substance into your body.”

And that choice is the root of almost every petty and serious crime in this county and across the country, from breaking into houses and stealing ATVs to taking gas cans. 

“They do whatever it takes to feed their choice,” Berlin said. “It’s not a disease. You can be addicted to anything ... but it’s because you made a choice.”

Choosing to fight

Driskell is making the choice to continue the fight despite all of the obstacles, from breakdowns at the border to breaks the perpetrators of so-called “victimless” crimes get from lawmakers and Department of Corrections officials. 

He still has the drive despite surpassing the five-year timespan that narcotics agents typically burn out after. He credits his mentors at the LPD for that.

“I was fortunate to come up under the narcotics gurus — Layne Bounds, Vince Williams, Trea Staples — and got my work ethic and learned a lot from them,” Driskell said.

Working narcotics is the most demanding job in law enforcement, he said, because of the hours — holidays, nights, weekends — and because of all the other inherent dangers. That’s the reason most officers don’s stay in it for long. 

“We spend more time with each other than we do with our families,” he said.

What drives them is the hope that their efforts can keep other families safe and together.

“I’m starting my seventh year, and I have no desire to stop yet,” Driskell said.

That’s a good thing for the community — and not such good news for dealers, Berlin said.

“Go out and get a job, be productive in the community,” Berlin said. “If you’re dealing, you never know when we’re coming, but we will get you eventually. We won’t be letting up.”

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