Ocean Apartments, at 612 31st Ave. S. in Atlantic Beach, is ordered closed for a year. All tenants must vacate, except for a security guard.
Since at least May of 2018, the Ocean Apartments has housed and facilitated the sale of illegal drugs. Tenants of the Ocean Apartments hang out on the patio of their apartment or in the parking area and sell drugs to people walking off the street or driving into the parking lot. This drug activity occurs throughout the day and night.
In the fall of 2018, officers with the Horry County Police Department (“HCPD”) and the Drug Enforcement Administration (“DEA”) began an investigation into the illegal drug activity at the Ocean Apartments.
Using confidential informants (“CI’s”), the officers purchased crack cocaine from multiple tenants in Rooms 101, 103, 104, and 205. In total, officers purchased crack cocaine 25 times from 10 different Ocean Apartments’ tenants. These buys usually occurred either in the parking lot of Ocean Apartments or in one of apartments’ doorways.
Most, if not all the crack cocaine purchased from the tenants, had the same unique characteristic of being unusually flat or thin.
On November 14, 2018, officers executed search warrants on Rooms 101, 103, 104, and 205. Pursuant to these searches, officers recovered 2.6 pounds of marijuana, 50 grams of crack cocaine, 18 grams of cocaine, 20 hydrocodone pills, and 3 handguns, one of which was reported stolen.
Subsequent to the arrests of several Ocean Apartments’ tenants, officers learned the Ocean Apartments is managed by Rodger L. Gamble, who lives on the second level. Mr. Gamble manages the property, collects rent from tenants, and is an employee of Respondents.
Mr. Gamble allows other tenants to use Ocean Apartments to facilitate their drug dealing.
Officers learned there is drug dealing activity in almost every Ocean Apartments’ room. All of the drug dealing tenants are members of the Bloods street gang, and drug dealing tenants frequently accepted guns in exchange for drugs. One of the tenants, Tyler Harris a.k.a. Ty, cooked all the crack cocaine for the other dealers and used a unique method which resulted in the thin or flat crack cocaine.
In April and May of 2019, after the service of this nuisance action, officers again purchased crack cocaine from an Ocean Apartments’ tenant.
Atlantic Beach Crack House Closed Consent Order of Abatement_ 06-05-19 by David L Hucks on Scribd