Pubdate: Thu, 29 Sep 2016
Source: Wall Street Journal (US)
Copyright: 2016 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
Contact:  http://www.wsj.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/487
Author: Jeanne Whalen

FOR SMALL-TOWN COPS, OPIOID SCOURGE HITS CLOSE TO HOME

Flood of fentanyl and heroin is straining budgets, putting police at
risk as drug networks spread

During an attempted drug-trafficking bust this spring on Chicago's
South Side, police Sgt. James Madden took off running after a young
man, chasing him into a darkened yard before losing the trail.

Sgt. Madden didn't know where he was going. That's because he
works for a sheriff's office 500 miles away, in the northwestern
corner of Wisconsin.

The officer's work doesn't normally take him so far from his home
of Superior, Wis., (population 27,000), but today's drug trade is
imposing unprecedented new burdens on small-town law enforcement. He
made the eight-hour drive to pursue a Chicagoan who allegedly traveled
to Superior to sell large quantities of a dangerous drug called
fentanyl, a synthetic opioid up to 50 times as potent as heroin. is
supercharging the longstanding problem of drugs in small towns.
Police, forensic labs and prosecutors are struggling to identify and
safely intercept new narcotics that can sicken or kill anyone who
handles them, and to combat trafficking networks that sometimes extend
many hours away. Death rates from overdoses are now higher in rural
areas than in big cities, reversing a historical trend.

"It's hard to imagine how it could have gotten worse than the
heroin we were dealing with," says Brad Schimel, Wisconsin"s
Attorney General. But "the fentanyl has taken this to a new
level." Fentanyl and other synthetic opioids aren't just more
powerful than heroin, they are cheaper and easier to produce, made
from chemicals instead of fields of poppies. Nationwide, 13,882 drug
seizures tested positive for fentanyl in 2015, more than double the
2014 number, according to the Drug Enforcement Administration.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention last month warned about
the growing risk of overdose and death from a "widening array of
toxic fentanyl-related compounds being mixed with heroin or sold as
heroin," often without buyers" knowledge. In one example, it
pointed to a recent spate of overdose deaths in Ohio tied to
carfentanil, a chemical cousin of fentanyl used to tranquilize
elephants and other large mammals.

While Appalachia and the Northeast have been hardest hit by the new
opioids, the upper Midwest is also reeling. On the other side of a
bridge from Superior, in northern Minnesota, police working for a
tri-county task force have intercepted 64.5 grams of fentanyl so far
in the third quarter, enough of the deadly narcotic to kill 32,000
people, up from 12 grams in the second quarter. Officials in and
around Fargo, N.D., are grappling with a rash of fentanyl-related
overdoses this year, including among high-school students who were
snorting the drug through nasal-spray bottles.

In some cases U.S. dealers or addicts are ordering fentanyl or
chemically similar drugs online, directly from suppliers in China,
which the DEA says produces much of the world's synthetic opioid
supply. The agency says a growing number of local dealers have bought
pill presses to turn powdered fentanyl into counterfeit painkillers.
Chinese suppliers are also sending large quantities of fentanyl or its
chemical ingredients to Mexico, where cartels mix the drug into the
heroin supply and smuggle it to U.S. cities, says the DEA.

The big-city dealers who bring fentanyl-laced heroin to the upper
Midwest dip in and out of town, and often recruit local addicts to
help them hide or sell drugs, making them tougher to catch, police
say. In the twin towns of Superior, Wis., and Duluth, Minn., separated
by a small bay at the end of Lake Superior, the business is seriously
taxing local law enforcement.

"They're using more and more middle people to distance themselves
from the sale," says Jeffrey Kazel, commander of the tri-county task
force and a lieutenant in the Duluth, Minn., police department.

For the sellers, some with gang ties, targeting smaller towns is a
smart marketing move. The customers have the means to pay, and
there"s less of the cutthroat rivalry that leads to frequent
shootings in many urban centers. The return is also greater. A gram of
heroin that sells for $50 to $100 in Chicago fetches up to $200 in
Northern Wisconsin or Minnesota, law-enforcement officials say.

Police in Superior got a wake-up call in October, when they arrested
31-year-old Michael Clark in a local motel room where he was packaging
more than 80 grams of drugs into half-gram baggies, according to a
criminal complaint filed in Douglas County Circuit Court. Officers
initially assumed the seized drug was heroin. But when they tested it,
mixing it with some liquid reagents in a plastic pouch, the substance
didn't turn green as heroin normally would. "We got back an almost
neon yellow color," Sgt. Madden recalls.

He sent it off to a state crime lab and asked them to put a rush on
the analysis. A laboratory scientist soon called with the results:
pure fentanyl.

Prosecutors charged Mr. Clark and another man in November with
possession with intent to deliver fentanyl as a party to a crime. Mr.
Clark, from Chicago, couldn't be reached for comment. He pleaded not
guilty, according to his lawyer, who declined to comment further.

The seizure set off alarm bells across the state, where concern was
already mounting about the safety of law-enforcement officers handling
synthetic opioids. The drugs are so potent that anyone touching or
inhaling even a bit can become seriously ill or die. After two
officers in New Jersey fell ill from inhaling a minuscule amount of
fentanyl, the DEA this summer sent a videotaped warning to police
across the country.

Sgt. Madden ordered several boxes of fentanyl testing kits for his
officers, and reminded them to wear protective gloves and screen
substances in the office, not outdoors where the powder might blow
around.

Wisconsin"s three forensic crime labs, meanwhile, began stocking an
overdose antidote called Narcan in case technicians accidentally
inhaled or ingested anything during testing, says Sandy Koresch,
technical unit leader of controlled substances at the state crime lab
bureau. They also began handling any suspected fentanyl cases inside
specially ventilated areas. the bay in Duluth, where opioid overdose
calls to 911 have nearly quadrupled since 2013, officers this spring
began carrying Narcan in their squad cars. Mr. Kazel, the Duluth
police lieutenant, says they have already saved 12 people. A nonprofit
group donated the first 100 kits, worth $75 each, but now the
department is running low and doesn"t know how it will be able to
buy more. "There"s no line item for Narcan" in the budget, Lt.
Kazel said.

Lt. Kazel also said the Duluth police department has already exceeded
its overtime budget this year, in part because of the opioid crisis.
The force has tried to save money by getting volunteers from the
community to handle some tasks, such as picking up and discarding
dirty needles that people call to report.

In Wisconsin, Sgt. Madden oversees a sprawling, seven-county narcotics
task force bordering Minnesota to the west and Michigan's Upper
Peninsula to the east. It relies on state and federal grants for much
of its funding, money that tends to run out in the third quarter of
each year, he says. When it does, officers sometimes have to scale
back investigations because they don"t have enough cash to buy drugs
undercover, Sgt. Madden says.

Wisconsin"s crime labs are facing a parallel challenge - how to
accurately identify a stream of new opioids they've never seen before.

The labs have seen a big rise in fentanyl submissions, which soared
from 29 statewide in 2014 to 105 so far this year. In recent months
they"ve also started encountering drugs highly similar to fentanyl,
known as analogs, that they can"t immediately categorize. That has
left them scrambling to buy samples of various fentanyl-like compounds
from chemical companies, to try to match them to the drugs they"re
seeing in the lab, says Ms. Koresch.

Duluth and Superior police are carrying out several trafficking
arrests a week, but the opioid supply keeps coming, much of it from
Chicago. Police and drug users say the Chicagoans who bring the drugs
to town don"t typically mention fentanyl, and in some cases may not
know they are selling it.

Duluth"s biggest fentanyl bust happened in July, when police found
46 grams of a substance containing fentanyl stashed inside a Red Bull
12-pack box in the trunk of a car that had been driven up from
Chicago, according to a criminal complaint filed in district court in
St. Louis County, Minn.

A witness told investigators the rented car had been driven to town by
Chicagoan Deonte Bowdry, who was charged with selling fentanyl and
heroin, according to the complaint. A related complaint leveled the
same charge against his companion, Tiffany Dickerson of Duluth, after
police found 16.5 grams of a substance testing positive for fentanyl
in her purse. She told police Mr. Bowdry had given it to her to hide,
and asked her to text local customers to arrange sales of the drug,
which she referred to as heroin, according to the complaint.

C.J. Bird, a Duluth addict, says she nearly overdosed recently after
trying to buy heroin from the couple but getting what she believes was
fentanyl instead. "Fentanyl scares the crap out of me," says Ms.
Bird, who has since taken steps to get clean.

Mr. Bowdry and Ms. Dickerson are also facing separate narcotics
charges in St. Louis County. Neither they nor their lawyers responded
to requests for comment.

In Superior, after Mr. Clark's October arrest, he was released to
await a court date. Within weeks, police believe he was back in town
selling drugs out of a local addict"s house.

"Clark would send the addict out to make deliveries in the
street," Sgt. Madden says. In December police raided the house, but
"they had flushed all the drugs down the toilet," he says.
Prosecutors charged Mr. Clark with possessing drug paraphernalia and
helping to obstruct an officer. He posted bail and was released. He
pleaded not guilty to the charges, according to his lawyer, who
declined to comment further.

Mr. Clark stopped coming to Superior after that and instead asked
local addicts to drive to Chicago to pick up drugs, according to Sgt.
Madden and a DEA agent's statements in court papers. So Wisconsin
police decided to go to him.

In late May, Sgt. Madden's entire four-man narcotics squad piled
into a Jeep Grand Cherokee and a Toyota van for the long drive to
Chicago along with an informant-heroin user from Wisconsin who
described himself to investigators as a repeat customer of Mr.
Clark's, according to court records. The informant had arranged to
meet Mr. Clark in the South Side neighborhood of West Englewood to buy
a stash of drugs, the records show.

The Superior crew coordinated the operation with Chicago police and
DEA agents. When they arrived at a South Side police station to
prepare for the buy, Sgt. Madden saw a wall of 20 or so mug shots of
local gang members, and recognized several from their dealings in
Superior. "I knew three of them. And we"re probably 8A1/2 hours
apart," he says.

The officers had the informant wear a recording device, and gave him
$3,300 to make the purchase, according to court records.

Around 10:45 p.m. on May 26, the informant entered a parked car and
bought about 50 grams of a substance later testing positive for
fentanyl, according to a criminal complaint filed against Mr. Clark in
June in federal court in the Northern District of Illinois.

When the officers rushed to the site of the alleged sale to try to
arrest Mr. Clark, about a dozen people hanging out in front of a house
took off running in different directions, Sgt. Madden says.

It was dark and the agents didn't know whom to chase, so each ran
after a different person. When he hit a dead end in a backyard, Sgt.
Madden noticed an elderly man sitting on a porch. The man said he had
seen somebody run through, headed for a nearby street. Sgt. Madden
didn"t recognize the name of the street, noting that he was visiting
from Wisconsin.

"Can I ask you, if you're from Wisconsin, what are you doing here?" Sgt. 
Madden recalls the man asking.

"I said because there are drugs from your neighborhood coming to my
neighborhood and I"m going to keep coming back until it stops," he
says.

Mr. Clark was arrested soon afterward when he turned up to court for
an unrelated matter. He was charged in federal court in Chicago with
distributing fentanyl. His lawyer said he pleaded not guilty and is
awaiting his day in court.

Paul Overberg contributed to this article.
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