LEX 18 Investigates: Pill Pipeline Replaced By Heroin Highway
While the pill pipeline that bought illicit painkillers to Kentucky has slowed to a crawl recently, a new avenue for opiates has opened up - the so-called heroin highway.
In short, law enforcement officials say the drug that has killed dozens of Lexingtonians and gotten hundreds more locked up isn't manufactured locally. It's grown and manufactured out of the country, brought to the United States where it is altered with cheap fillers and repackaged, and then shipped along Interstate 75 and other major roads connecting Lexington to the rest of the United States.
Throughout the last year or so - as heroin overdose deaths quadrupled and dealers were arrested en masse - there are repeated indicators that much of the deadly drug on Lexington's streets makes its way here from suppliers in Detroit, Michigan.
With an abundance of vacant buildings and a stretched-thin police department, Detroit has become somewhat of a hub city for the drug. It was inevitable, experts say, that dealers would expand to less crowded markets.
Narcotics officers tell LEX 18 Investigates a dose of heroin that sells for $5 in Detroit can sell for $20 in Lexington, and even more in rural parts of the state. The deadly drug's resurgence seems to have taken a north-to-south path through the state. Reports of heroin struck Northern Kentucky, near Cincinnati, first, followed by the Lexington area.
Now, police have started to see the drug in Eastern and Southeastern Kentucky. Due to its availability, low price and similar high, heroin quickly took the place of Percocets and Oxycodone for the opiate-addicted population.
Even in rural Kentucky, the ties to Detroit are visible.
"There is no question the heroin we are seeing on the streets here in Eastern Kentucky is Detroit heroin," said Dan Smoot, director of Operation UNITE, a collective of law enforcement agencies dedicated to drug eradication in rural parts of the state.
"That was the case with pills and, before it, cocaine," he said. "I think back in the fifties and sixties we had a lot of east Kentuckians migrate to the Michigan area for work and, over the years, they were bringing their drugs back to family members."
In Lexington, police aren't as vocal about where the drug comes from. However, indicators continue to arise in news stories, court records and from witnesses that heroin on Kentucky streets passed through The Motor City.
In September, eight people, most from the Detroit area, were indicted in federal court for allegedly conspiring to sell heroin in Lexington. Several of them were originally busted at the Hyatt Regency in downtown Lexington in July - the same day police and city officials were poised to address the media on the strides they had made in eradicating the drug.
Last month, LEX 18 was the only news crew on scene when police executed a search warrant at the Motel Six on Elkhorn Road, where they arrested Corderalla Campbell on a charge of heroin trafficking. Campbell was being picked up at the motel by two men from Detroit for a court hearing on pill charges - the three were part of a group that was charged with trafficking pills in October.
Recently, police have reported busting Detroit drug rings in Paris, Morehead and Pikeville.
As heroin overdose deaths have spiked in the last four years, so have heroin arrests. In 2010, nobody was charged with trafficking heroin in Lexington. Last year, police filed 73 charges of trafficking more than two grams of heroin and 143 charges of trafficking less than two grams, according to court documents.
A search through those court cases showed those arrests include people from Detroit charged with selling heroin to street dealers or directly to users, often from motels and apartments not far from the interstate.
On March 15, state police were investigating a report of drugs at the Red Roof Inn on Haggard Court, when Deandre L. Blackman walked out of the hotel room, spotted the officers and ran back inside, according to court documents. Through the open door, detectives could see "a plastic baggy containing a powdery substance."
The room was searched and Blackman, 20, of Detroit, was charged with trafficking a controlled substance.
Fifteen days later, Michael A. Harris, 27, and Geoffrey Adam Lodge, 32, were both charged with trafficking more than two grams of heroin from an apartment at 1101 Beaumont Center Circle. Police were investigating a report that a man with outstanding warrants was staying there, according to court documents.
Police saw Harris enter the apartment carrying a pink child's backpack. When officers entered the room, several people inside would not say who the backpack belonged two, but the cops found more than two grams of heroin "concealed in a hairbrush in the backpack."
Harris is from Detroit. Lodge is from Lexington. "Witnesses at the scene ... stated Mr. Lodge was there to purchase more heroin to sell," the documents said.
Court documents show that, even when the alleged dealers live in Lexington, there are ties to Detroit spelled out in search warrants and criminal affidavits - such as the dealers driving cars or motorcycles with Michigan plates, or arranging deals on cell phones with Detroit area codes.
Lexington police spokeswoman Sherelle Roberts acknowledged there has been an influx of heroin from Detroit and that narcotics officers were actively investigating. But she said, due to the proximity of the interstate, that's not the only place the drug is coming from.
She said Lexington police are partnering with federal law enforcement to try to help cut off the supply at the source - where it crosses the border.
"We don't see it as just a Detroit issue. We're looking at the points of origination, where it enters the country," she said. "We're looking at the big picture."
http://www.lex18.com/news/lex-18-investigates-pill-pipeline-replaced-by-heroin-highway/ Law enforcement say locals helping traffickers set up drug operations
By Sarah Hogsed
Register News Writer
RICHMOND — Heroin, a drug that used to be associated with 1970s rock stars and inner cities, has crept into Madison County recently, leading to a law enforcement “nightmare,” according to local officials.
“Heroin is dominating the market right now,” Richmond Police Chief Larry Brock said Thursday. “It has absolutely taken over.”
With increased legislation in Kentucky and elsewhere that has squeezed the “pill mill pipeline,” opiate addicts are turning to heroin as a cheaper and faster-acting high. Drug gangs in Detroit and other northern cities have seized this opportunity to bring their drugs south to sell at a higher profit, Brock said.
This has had fatal consequences as overdose deaths have skyrocketed in Madison County, according to county officials.
Drug gang operations
Heroin makes its way into the U.S. mostly through Mexico and Central America, and Detroit has become a major import hub, according to Brock.
The heads of drug-dealing operations in Detroit and other northern cities have sent hundreds of their dealers south into places such as Ohio, Kentucky, Tennessee and Virginia.
The key to taking down a trafficking operation is to remove the person in charge, according to the RPD’s head narcotics officer, Sgt. Rodney Tudor.
“You work to dismantle, not disrupt,” Tudor said. “That’s how you take care of the problem.”
However, this strategy is proving difficult because the drug bosses do not leave Detroit.
“You can arrest and arrest, but they’ll keep sending (the dealers) down,” Tudor said.
One strategy the various drug gangs use is to have the multiple lower-level suppliers they send south go by one nickname, making it difficult for officers to track them down.
“The problem we’re seeing with the heroin is there’s so many dealers,” Tudor said. “... It’s hard for local law enforcement to decipher the hierarchy.”
It’s a “nightmare” for law enforcement, Tudor added.
Local residents aiding dealers
Out-of-town dealers have been able to infiltrate Madison County with the help of local addicts, according to Tudor and Brock.
“We will prosecute these people every time,” Brock said.
In late January, 22-year-old Richmond resident Melissa D. Wolke was charged with criminal facilitation to heroin and oxycodone trafficking. Officers say Wolke helped a Detroit man, 19-year-old Deonte M. Long, rent a room at the Care Free Suites on Colby Taylor Drive.
In that room, officers reported finding 14.4 grams of heroin and 386 oxycodone pills.
Madison County residents are providing places for the dealers to stay, renting motel rooms and cars for them and providing transportation to and from Detroit, Brock said.
Tudor acknowledged that local drug addicts often help the Detroit dealers out of fear, because they are financially indebted to them.
“These dealers won’t get a foothold if people don’t help,” Brock said.
He pointed out that heroin was a major drug problem in the 1970s but slowly faded to the background as cocaine and crack hit the scene in the 1980s, followed by prescription pill and methamphetamine addiction.
“This is a new generation (of users) with no experience with heroin,” Brock said.
Trafficking brings violence
In addition to deadly drugs, the suppliers from Detroit often bring down their own brand of violence, according to Brock.
“The culture of violence they bring is different then the level of violence we’re accustomed to here,” the chief said.
Last week, police arrested 44-year-old Robert C. Cobb Jr. after receiving a report that he had assaulted a woman. Inside the home on Brandy Lane, officers discovered 7 ounces of heroin, 136 oxycodone pills, marijuana and more than $20,000, according to the report.
A Detroit man arrested late last year in connection with heroin trafficking and the alleged kidnapping of a woman, was indicted this week on a charge of beating another Madison County jail inmate.
Erroll Johnson, 24, also has an active Michigan warrant charging him with assault with intent to murder and discharging a firearm in or at a building.
Combating the problem
At a time when federal and state law enforcement grants are lean and funding for more staff is close to nonexistent, Madison County law enforcement is working closely with federal and state agencies to learn how to take down these heroin drug operations.
The FBI in Michigan has helped Richmond police identify many of the dealers coming here, Tudor said.
“We have a pretty strong relationship with federal agencies” including the DEA and ATF, Brock said.
The Kentucky State Police also help local officers get intelligence on heroin traffickers, and the RPD works with Berea police and Madison County Sheriff’s deputies in arresting the dealers, Tudor added.
“We talk daily with people who work in drug enforcement in Madison County,” Tudor said.
Covert operations using undercover officers and “controlled” drug buys also are employed to gather evidence against the drug traffickers, Tudor said.
Ultimately, Brock acknowledged the key to combating heroin-trafficking in Richmond and Madison County isn’t just on the shoulders of law enforcement, but also takes work on the part of the state and federal justice systems and drug treatment programs.
“When addicts get to the point of saying ‘I need help,’ there must be treatment available,” Brock said.
- See more at:
http://www.richmondregister.com/localnew...h.QJbLNcEe.dpuf
