Deputies have arrested 196 people over the last week as they’ve conducted street-level drug raids across Richmond County.

Beginning last Tuesday, Richmond County Sheriff’s Lt. Robert Partain said police began making low-level arrests in “hotspot” drug areas such as Harrisburg, Turpin Hill, Bethlehem, Sand Hills, Washington Road and Meadowbrook Drive.

“We made 148 drug cases that we consider either users or street level distributors,” Lt. Partain said. “We also are able to use information we obtained from a lot of these arrests to find out, OK, where are they getting drugs in these communities so that we can start targeting those particular locations?”

Almost 50 others were arrested on outstanding warrants and other crimes, he said.

Deputies seized about one pound of marijuana, an ounce of cocaine, $3,000 in cash and 10 handguns.

Lt. Partain said they were attempting to gauge where drug action and distribution were happening in the community, as well as to address some of the complaints by residents of drug use in their areas.

“A lot of the street level drug activity people that see in their community, we were targeting to try to deter some of it,” he said. “We aren’t necessarily going to stop it but were just trying to deter for a period of time then we can try to address the issues.”