MOULTRIE, Ga. — Nearly four years after the Moultrie Police Department withdrew its participation in the county’s drug unit, the first of a planned two MPD officers has been assigned to the unit.

Sgt. Justin Lindsay, a Moultrie police investigator, has been working alongside the Colquitt County Sheriff’s Office’s three drug investigators since Feb. 12.

The sheriff’s office plans to fill an empty slot and, with the addition of the second Moultrie officer, the Drug Enforcement Team will be fully staffed with six officers.

The additional manpower will lead to a much stronger effort to fight drugs in the county, Sheriff Rod Howell said.

“I’m thrilled, and I think we’re going to see some good results,” he said.

And having officers who are perhaps more familiar with the city of Moultrie in the drug unit’s ranks should be a boost in knowledge.

The city and county officers previously had cooperated in at least three contractual arrangements since 1979. The police department reassigned its two officers from the joint Moultrie-Colquitt County Drug Enforcement Team in March 2014.

Neither side expressed acrimony at the time of the split, and the police department maintained officers working its own cases. They also have frequently worked together in drug investigations during the interim even without a contractual arrangement between the two entities.

Howell said he was excited because when fully staffed there will be double the number of officers tasked with making drug cases compared to the beginning of the year.

“We’ll really be clicking then,” Howell said. “In the first week I think they put some 14 people in jail” on drug charges, which is at least in part a reflection of the additional manpower. “I’ve been listening on the radio, and they have all been out there. They have been active.”

Moultrie Police Chief Sean Ladson said working together makes sense because drugs don’t respect boundaries. People from outside the city may come in to buy drugs; users may seek out houses in the county to target for break-ins.

“It’s very important to me having people on the Drug Enforcement Team,” said Ladson, who prior to his appointment as interim chief in the summer of 2017 headed up the drug unit at the sheriff’s office. “To effectively combat the drug issue we have in the city and county you’ve got to have a joint team.”

The cooperation between the agencies isn’t ending with drug investigations. Next month Moultrie officers will try out for the Tactical Response Unit, which is tasked with handling crises and particularly dangerous situations such as serving high-risk arrest and search warrants.

“We plan on being a combined unit there, too,” Ladson said.

Sharing resources between the police department and sheriff’s office in working drug cases worked efficiently in the past and should be the case for the future, Ladson said.

“That’s the plan, for me to send more people over there, so it can be a joint Drug Enforcement Team,” he said. “It makes sense to have the city and county working together on drugs.”