Last week, state and federal wildlife officers began rounding up dozens of suspected poachers in Western North Carolina, bringing to fruition an undercover investigation that spanned several years across several rural mountain counties and penetrated the heart of an illegal hunting ring that targeted black bears.

When a strange man approached an 11-year-old girl in Waynesville’s Walmart more than a week ago and asked her to take off her clothes, police say the young girl did the right thing — she refused.

Ryan Scot Davis, 48, was charged with taking indecent liberties with a child following an incident at the Waynesville Walmart on Saturday, Nov. 24.

A riverside park in Swain County was plastered with graffiti two weeks ago, with several cans of spray paint unleashed on the public outdoor recreation area.

Nothing went un-tagged, even the trees were spray-painted at the Old N.C. 288 park, where picnic tables, a shelter, boat launch and fishing docks overlook the Tuckasegee River as it flows into Lake Fontana.

A $12,000 tractor stolen in Macon County and sold as scrap in Georgia for a fraction of the price; rusting automobiles yanked from lawns in the middle of night; copper wiring stripped from construction sites — rising scrap metal prices and subsequent thefts have prompted a new state law to counteract an increasingly attractive black market.

The Oconaluftee Indian Village in Cherokee was broken into recently. Sacred and traditional items used by re-enactors who portray early Native American life at the living history site were stolen.

Former Bryson City Fire Chief Joey Hughes and his wife, Cylena, were arrested and indicted on embezzlement, fraud, and other charges last week for allegedly purloining money from the volunteer fire department’s fundraising arm.

More than $200,000 was taken over several years, according to the charges brought by the State Bureau of Investigation. The Hughes were indicted by a grand jury last week on 48 counts.

Seventy-year old Ronnie Evans, a retired engineer with UNC-TV who lives in Franklin, seems an unlikely homicide investigator.

A little more than a year after the North Carolina General Assembly passed a law banning various forms of synthetic marijuana, enforcement of the statute still poses a problem for police.

Waynesville Police Chief Bill Hollingsed traveled to Raleigh at the request of Rep. Ray Rapp, D-Mars Hill, about two weeks ago and met with several state officials to talk about synthetic drugs and problems law enforcement officials encounter.

The Waynesville Police Department receives about a dozen calls a week related to synthetic drugs, which in essence are plants that have been sprayed with a number of unknown chemicals and psychotropic drugs, Hollingsed said.

Synthetic cannabinoids are marketed under names such as K-2, Spice, Black Mamba and Bombay Blue, among others. They can also be advertised as incense or potpourri and come in packages marked “not for human consumption.” Problem is, people do consume it. And, anyone can legally buy it.

“You can be 12 years old and walk into a convenience store and buy this stuff,” Hollingsed said. The way the drugs are made and sold one can never be sure what type of chemicals the substance contains, he added.

Side effects of the drugs include hallucinations, seizures, vomiting, elevated blood pressure, increased anxiety, loss of control, lack of pain response, violent behavior and spastic body movements.

“It is a very intense high, and it doesn’t show up on drug tests,” Hollingsed said, adding that the long-term effect of the drugs are unknown.

The police receive calls either when parents find the substance among their children’s possessions or a child has grown suddenly violent or passed out as a result of ingesting synthetic drugs.

“All the sudden, they are absolutely out of control and start threatening people,” Hollingsed said. “You are playing Russian roulette every time you take this stuff.”

Although legislators have outlawed specific compounds, drug manufacturers have tweaked the chemical composition just enough to where it falls outside the arm of the law.

“The original intent of the legislation was that all chemical combinations would be banned,” Hollingsed said.

However, because drug laws require very specific chemical breakdowns, one molecule change can mean the difference between legal and illegal — making it harder and harder for police to enforce laws against synthetic drugs.

Synthetic drugs have been all over the headlines lately after several horror-movie-horrifying incidents. Most notably, Rudy Eugene of Miami was found naked eating the flesh from another man’s face. When police asked him to stop, Eugene simply growled and continued ripping the skin from his victim’s face.

Law enforcement officials then shot Eugene repeatedly, killing him. Not long after the incident was reported, police released a statement saying they believed Eugene was under the influence of bath salts at the time.

Bath salts are a synthetic cocaine or meth substance that causes euphoria, severe paranoia, psychotic episodes, increased energy and heightened senses, among other side effects.

Hollingsed sent a letter to business owners around Waynesville in early April telling them about the drugs and asking those who sell the substances to stop. About a dozen stores sold some variant of the synthetic drugs at the time, Hollingsed said.

“Just because it might be legal, does not make it ethical or safe for the young people in our community,” the letter read.

Legislators, along with the state attorney general’s office, are currently looking into drafting a law similar to the analog drug laws of the 1960s.

The federal government passed analog drug laws to help crack down on the sale and ingestion of different forms of the hallucinogenic drugs PCP and LSD. This means that any chemical substantially similar to those drugs was also deemed illegal, and police could arrest people in possession of them. However, there is no way to know the exact chemical make-up of a compound unless it is tested.

“The problem with that is it requires the state crime labs to test each individual chemical” to see if it is in fact illegal under the law, Hollingsed said.

Since the legality or illegality of specific compounds has people’s heads spinning, law enforcement officials and community members are focusing much of their attention on education.

The Waynesville Police Department, in cooperation with residents, schools and other law enforcement agencies, has started hosting meetings around Haywood County to generate greater awareness of synthetic drugs and their side effects.

“We’ve been active in this county as far as trying to educate people on the danger,” Hollingsed said. “The average kid may not realize the effects it will have on them.”

Waynesville Police Department is one of several law enforcement agencies hoping to see an expansion of the Western North Carolina crime lab in the next several years to speed up processing, trials and convictions of offenders.

“Our evidence has to go all the way to Raleigh,” said Waynesville Police Chief Bill Hollingsed. “We would love to see the expansion of the lab in Western North Carolina.”

The current lab serving WNC, based in the Skyland area of Asheville, can run tests to identify specific drugs and fingerprints as well as process firearms, tool markings and fire-related evidence. However, it is not certified to run toxicology tests, which are most often used to show an individual’s blood alcohol concentration or if they have ingested any drugs. Those tests can only be run at the state lab in Raleigh.

“Right now, our biggest backlog in the system … is toxicology,” Hollingsed said.

What ends up happening is situations like this: A police officer pulls over and arrests a motorist suspected of driving under the influence. At some point, a blood sample is drawn and sent to the lab in Raleigh. While town and county law enforcement officials wait for the results, prosecutors must repeatedly ask for the judge to postpone a hearing or trial as they wait for the results. However, a judge will only delay a case for so long. And, without the toxicology report or other proof that a person was over the legal limit or on drugs, an offender may get off or get a looser punishment than the crime deserves.

Defense attorneys may also request that the crime lab technician who conducted the testing appear in court. In that case, the lab technician must spend a whole day driving from Raleigh to Western North Carolina and back — precious time that could be spent testing evidence for other cases.

“It’s breaking the state,” Hollingsed said.