By TIM EBERLY | The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Police agencies often perform undercover stings at stores that sell alcohol. They send under-age buyers in to see if stores will sell them beer or liquor without asking for identification.
Last month, police pulled off such a sting in southwest Atlanta, but also stumbled across a veritable scavenger hunt of illegal narcotics: Bags of crack and powder cocaine and marijuana scattered throughout the store, according to a police report.
But because police couldn’t link the drugs to anyone, they only seized the drugs to have them destroyed, the report said.
The sting, called an alcohol compliance check, happened on Oct. 18 at the Stop-N-Shop in the 2000 block of Alison Court, the report said.
While the underage informant walked inside to buy alcohol, an unidentified man tried to sell marijuana to a police detective and another person involved in the sting outside.
The pair declined the offer and waited until the minor walked outside with a six-pack of Budweiser before switching gears and calling in a drug-sniffing police dog, the report said.
The dog sniffed out 70 bags of marijuana, 71 bags of suspected crack cocaine, six bags of powder cocaine and an uncut chunk of crack cocaine the size of a cookie, according to the report.
The locations of the drugs, police wrote, made them believe the store’s owner and manager should have known about them.
“One area in particular was behind the counter in a box on the shelf near the managers [sic] office, where the general public is not allowed,” a police detective wrote in the report.
Police arrested the store clerk, 38-year-old Yared Tedla, an immigrant from Ethiopia, whom they say sold the alcohol to the minor.
They also arrested one of the men at the store, Phillip Lookadoo, 24, of Atlanta, on a warrant for failure to appear on marijuana charges, the report said.