Shirley Makes Comments on Drug Raid

Stephens County Sheriff Randy Shirley is making additional comments on last week’s raids that dismantled a multi-million dollar drug operation.

Last week, multiple local, state, and federal law enforcement agents served more than 20 search warrants and made more than 20 arrests to bring down a $9.5 million drug operation run by 31-year-old Horace Mayfield, who lives in Barrow County now but is a native of Stephens County and based his operation out of Stephens County.

Shirley said taking down an operation like this is not something that can be done quickly.

He said that it takes time to bring down such a large operation and build a case against the individuals before going in to make the arrests.

“You have to have today’s technology and you have to have folks on the inside,” said Shirley. “You cannot have a drug agent just go in and automatically buy drugs from an individual, especially individuals of this magnitude. Even the drug arrests under Mr. Mayfield, the head of the drug operation, were ones that did not actually sell to individuals, they sold to street dealers.”

Shirley also said that an operation like this requires a lot of teamwork.

He said one agency or department alone cannot make this happen.

“When you have something of this magnitude go down, it is a lot of planning and organization that took place over the past month just to get us to the arrest point,” said Shirley. “The command post in Eastanollee had technicians, their own legal team, many, many agents that had an array of different responsibilities. Even had air support.”

Shirley went on to say he is proud of the operation.

“This was an individual who was of the upper echelon of the drug profiteers and he was operating for many, many years,” said Shirley. “It will also keep a lot of drugs of Toccoa and Stephens County that would have flooded our community as they had been.”

Shirley said he is also proud of all of the cooperation between the different agencies that were involved.