Pubdate: Sun, 08 Jan 2012
Source: Waterloo-Cedar Falls Courier, The  (IA)
Copyright: 2012 The Waterloo-Cedar Falls Courier
Contact:  http://www.wcfcourier.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/3510
Author: Jeff Reinitz

EASTERN IOWA HEROIN USE UP

WATERLOO, Iowa --- The thump came a few minutes after Tai-Lin 
Phillips went to the bathroom of his small apartment.

When acquaintances who heard the noise went to check on him, they 
found Phillips on the floor unconscious.

One of the people in the apartment, 39-year-old Vonvette "Von" Leroy 
Sawyers would later tell police and friends he gave Phillips CRP.

Someone called 911.

Paramedics arrived and took Phillips to Allen Hospital, but he never 
regained consciousness and was declared dead.

A medical examiner later determined Phillips --- a 41-year-old father 
of four who was living in a transitional home on Lafayette Street --- 
died from "mixed drug toxicity," a combination of heroin and alcohol.

Within weeks, a federal grand jury indicted Sawyers, Mark Deland 
Wilson-Bey and Lewis "Junior" Boldon for conspiracy to distribute 
heroin. Court records allege Wilson-Bey made a delivery on Nov. 3, 
the day Phillips collapsed.

Phillips wife, Kiki Phillips, denies her husband was a heroin addict. 
She said he had used marijuana in the past and battled an earlier 
crack cocaine habit.

"I believe someone else injected him with it," Kiki Phillips said. 
"If he shot himself with a needle, where's the needle?"

A deadly opiate, heroin is seeing a resurgence in Iowa, according to 
drug enforcement agents and treatment officials. Still, other drugs 
like methamphetamine and marijuana are more prevalent.

"There is no doubt that it is available," said Scott Smith, the 
resident agent in charge of the U.S. Drug Enforcement 
Administration's office in Cedar Rapids. He is part of a law 
enforcement task force charged with tackling the recent flood of 
brown heroin from Mexico.

There have been deaths --- 22 in the area stretching from Iowa City 
to Cedar Rapids to Waterloo in the past 18 months, Smith said. 
Numbers for Black Hawk County weren't available, but the DEA's 
assessment noted an increase in both fatal and non-fatal heroin 
overdoses in Linn and Scott counties in Iowa between 2008 and 2010.

In 2009, local drug officers seized only 10 grams of heroin in Black 
Hawk County. A year later, it was 129 grams. Figures for 2011 weren't 
yet available.

And there are other signs of heroin's presence.

In November 2010, a woman fell from the window of her downtown 
third-floor apartment. She survived with a broken arm but was 
difficult to understand for officers trying to find out who she was 
and how she fell. Inside her apartment they found six small bags of 
heroin on her dining room table.

In November 2011, medics were called when a body was found in a 
Johnson Street apartment. When they took the deceased to the 
hospital, they found an extra needle among their supplies. Relatives 
told police they suspected the man was a heroin user. Officers found 
prescription methadone bottles and a plastic bag with "white 
contents," according to court records. A death certificate has yet to be filed.

Dispatched to a suspicious vehicle call on Byron Avenue on Dec. 31, 
officers found a syringe and a capsule with heroin residue.

Treatment workers saw an increase in heroin and prescription opiate 
patients about six months ago, although that trend has since dropped 
off, said Chris Hoffman with Pathways Behavioral Services.

He said drug use is cyclical. There were was a tide of heroin in the 
early 1970s. It subsided for a while but made a comeback in the late 
1980s and early 1990s.

"Heroin doesn't go away. You just quit hearing about it," Hoffman said.

The drug is smuggled from south of the border. Most of the powder 
that reaches Waterloo is trafficked by Chicago-area gangs, Smith 
said. He said the purity levels found in Northeast Iowa are astonishing.

Smith worked at five other DEA offices before landing in Iowa. When 
he was in Texas, he saw heroin that was only about 17 to 18 percent 
pure. In Oklahoma City, black tar heroin there was in the low 40s.

The brown heroin that has been making its way to Iowa is around 50 
percent pure.

"I'm truly surprised we don't have more fatalities, because that is 
strong heroin," Smith said.

Heroin users quickly develop a tolerance, which forces them to take 
more to experience the same high.

"This cat and mouse game with the volatile, unpredictable purity 
levels of heroin plays a significant role in the amount of overdoses 
our area is experiencing," Smith said.

The drug is reaching a suburban, middle class market in the state, 
according to an Iowa Office of Drug Control Policy report. Although 
there are a number of older, long-time users, the current average 
user is in his or her mid-20s, Smith said.

Heroin is also filling a void for residents addicted to prescription 
opioid-based painkillers who are seeking a cheaper way to maintain 
their habits.

One example cited in the DEA's recently released National Drug Threat 
Assessment put it this way: Heavy oxycodone users may need to take up 
to 400 mg a day to feed their habit. That costs $400. Users can get 
the same effect with heroin for a fraction of the cost.

On the law enforcement side, officers are dismantling some of the 
organizations that allegedly bring heroin into Northeast Iowa from Chicago.

In February 2011, drug agents with the Waterloo-based Tri-County Drug 
Enforcement Task Force and other agencies raided 17 homes under the 
cover of early morning darkness finding heroin, methadone, oxycodone 
and guns. Eight people --- several with prior drug convictions in 
Cook County, Ill., where Chicago is located --- were indicted for 
conspiracy to possess heroin with intent to distribute and other 
charges. The first trial was scheduled for last week.

Court records allege the heroin ring that involved Sawyers, 
Wilson-Bey and Bolden operated in Iowa as far back as January 2007.

Smith said the heroin probe is so vast it split into branches, with a 
separate round of indictments coming from Cedar Rapids. He estimates 
there will about 75 to 100 indictments by the time all the cases play out.

Meanwhile, Tai-Lin Phillips's wife struggles with how to explain the 
death to his children.

"You don't want them to have the stain of 'your dad was a heroin 
addict,' when he wasn't," she said.

Tai-Lin Phillips graduated from Hawkeye Community College and taught 
computer programing at the Computer Learning Center in Chicago.

"He was a hard worker," she said.

She is also trying to sort out the facts. She said those who were in 
the apartment gave conflicting accounts of what happened.

"They gave me three different stories in the first few minutes of the 
whole situation," she said.
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