Federal Prosecutor Tries A Radical Tactic In The Drug War: Not Throwing People In Prison | HuffPost Latest News - Action News
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Posted: 2014-02-28T03:12:39Z | Updated: 2017-12-07T03:16:22Z

U.S. Attorney Bill Nettles is pursuing a bold new approach to the "war on drugs" in South Carolina. (Photo: North Charleston Police Department/Flickr)

In the video, Joey Lee Pyatt Jr. is standing shirtless in a dingy kitchen, a blue bandana tied around his neck. The door and floor are covered with sheets of clear plastic, and two young women, one in a white string bikini, the other in black lingerie, measure white powder on a digital scale and sort it into plastic baggies.

"Baggin' up a thousand grams," Pyatt raps into the camera, playing the role of proud drug lord.

In another scene, the aspiring rapper shows off the proceeds of his illicit business, standing in front of the Huckabee Heights housing project in Conway, S.C., as a man next to him nonchalantly tosses dollar bills in the air.

"Welcome to Conway," a sign along the highway reads in another shot.

According to law enforcement officials, Pyatt's artistic persona closely matched his life off screen. His blue bandana signaled allegiance with the Crips. He was arrested in 2012 for carrying a concealed gun in a bar. The projects where he rapped have indeed been hot spots for drug and gang activity.

Just a few blocks southeast of the projects is where Detective Tyres Nesmith of the Conway Police Department found Pyatt, shot and bleeding, just after 1 p.m. on Jan. 6 this year. He was sprawled on the ground in a cement driveway behind a blue one-story house.

"He was just laying there, right where that car is," Nesmith told me a few weeks after the shooting, sitting in her unmarked squad car and pointing to the spot where Pyatt had lain. "I was like, 'Hang on, hang on for me.'" Pyatt died at the hospital. He was 23.

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