September 29, 2014 at 3:43 p.m.
Deadly wave of heroin surges into Northwoods
Deadly wave of heroin surges into Northwoods
When actor Philip Seymour Hoffman died of a heroin overdose on Feb. 2, 2014, a famous face became attached to a problem that many in law enforcement have been fighting for years. Although Hoffman died in New York City, the drug has been making inroads into rural America for several years and the Northwoods of Wisconsin has not been spared.
A local connection
On Dec. 10, 2012, 29-year old David Stahl was found dead in his home in the town of Crescent. The cause of death was an apparent heroin overdose. The investigation into his death by members of the Northcentral Drug Enforcement Group (NORDEG) resulted in charges being filed against Richard Lewis, 28, and Jennifer Heiting, 26.
Lewis and Heiting were eventually sentenced to four years in prison and a long period of extended supervision after they accepted plea agreements on charges of first-degree reckless homicide and delivery of heroin.
Near Stahl's body were two empty bindles containing heroin residue. NORDEG investigators learned he had accepted a FedEx package containing heroin on Dec. 8, 2012. The package came from somewhere in Illinois. Heiting and Lewis traveled from St. Germain to Stahl's residence to retrieve the package, giving him two bindles as payment.
The drug investigators of the Oneida County Sheriff's Department are members of NORDEG, a seven-county drug task force which includes investigators from Langlade, Forest, Lincoln, Price, Vilas and Taylor counties. Until recently the task force was led by Detective-Sergeant Sara Gardner.
When you meet Gardner, a hardened veteran detective in the War on Drugs is not what first comes to mind. In a T-shirt and jeans, with her hair pulled back in a ponytail, she looks like any typical Northwoods soccer mom between errands.
Only the pistol on her hip and the badge hanging from her neck dispel that notion. While in charge of the task force, Gardner led two full-time investigators and one part-time community policing officer who handle drug-related investigations in Oneida County and go elsewhere in the task force area to help out as needed.
Prescription drugs often the gateway
Gardner said the recent influx of heroin into the area was preceded by a rampant problem with the abuse of prescription drugs.
"I've been in law enforcement for close to 17 years and when I started in the drug unit it was 2005. At that time, the partners that I had all wanted to deal with the cocaine and marijuana, all the real drugs that they talk about, and I got put with the prescription pills. And I knew at that time - I could just see an influx in those - that we were going to have an issue with narcotics. Oxycontin had come out by 1995 and people were already starting to use it. And as far as prescription drugs are concerned, from 2013 to 2014 - just in the first six months period - we've had a 32 percent increase in the amount of prescription drugs that we've seized," Gardner said.
She said investigators have been working with doctors and pharmacists to reduce the abuse of prescription drugs.
"Once law enforcement got the chip off their shoulders that they didn't want to share information with doctors and pharmacists, the results have just been awesome," Gardner said. "We started to figure out who the users were and all that and people started to get cut off from their prescription drugs and it became a double-edged sword. They couldn't get their prescription medications, so they started to go to heroin. If they can get an (Oxycontin), they'll use it. If they can't get an (Oxycontin), they will go to heroin. It's just a vicious circle and we're just over our heads."
Funding cuts hurt drug unit's efforts
Gardner said a major roadblock for investigators is money.
"We don't have the funding that we used to," she said. "We apply for a grant every year here that used to be $200,000 that we would split over seven counties, now we're getting roughly $50,000 to spread over seven counties and it's not enough."
One of the requirements of the grant is that NORDEG work joint investigations with the other counties in the task force, the local police departments in those counties and the Drug Enforcement Administration.
"We have jurisdiction in all of those areas," Gardner said. "So if we have something going on in say Taylor County, we will hook up with their investigator and go over there. We never really know where (we're) going to be on a daily basis," she said.
Gardner said one of the problems with heroin is the difference in price that addicts pay in the Northwoods compared to the border areas of Illinois, Minnesota and even Wausau.
"We have individuals here who are tripping down to Waluga, Ill. and purchasing a quarter gram bag of heroin for $10 and coming up here and selling it for $50 or $100," Gardner said. "It's just economics. Up here, they're going to be making money."
To combat the influx of the drug, Gardner said joint investigations between NORDEG member counties have become more common. Because large-scale dealers are not limiting themselves to one area, sharing of information is crucial, she added.
"The information sharing, we all do really good with that up in this area," Gardner said. "Our investigations have taken me to Florida, I've gone to Minnesota."
Gardner said she knows of a man from Florida who was getting prescription medications from doctors in that state and bringing them up to Lincoln and Oneida counties. He was making about $45,000 a month, she said.
"When that person ends up getting arrested, now you have a direct source who is out of the market and it takes a while for that to build up again," Gardner said. "So the people then turn to heroin because it is the only thing available."
Addiction an expensive curse
When someone becomes addicted to heroin, they eventually have to find a way to support their habit, Gardner said. Having an $800-a-week heroin habit is not out of the ordinary.
"They have to start earning that money somehow. So they start going to someone else and it's hardest for the females because a lot of times they are put in a sexual situation - they start trading or they are put into prostitution - just to support their habit," Gardner said. "Eventually they will get to a point where because of the heroin or IV drug use that people don't want to have sex with them because they have contracted Hepatitis C, HIV or (other diseases). Now they are forced into 'I'm not going to trade for my heroin, I'm just going to sell it for someone else because my debt is on you.' Sometimes it's even males who are put in this position where they have to sell for someone just to support their habit."
Another way that addicts support their habit is by stealing.
"The other detectives in our bureau, when we have a rash of burglaries, they will come to us and ask who are our biggest drug users at this point, whether it's prescription drugs or heroin, because they all know they're trying to support their habits," she said. "We work really well with the pawn shop as far as who has been pawning things, they are very supportive. Nine times out of 10 we will go over a couple names that we have, say an investigator has from last week, and they will say yeah, they were pawning stuff last month. We'll follow it back and track it to a burglary that we had last month. It's an effective way of finding people who have been involved with stuff like that."
Officers face hidden dangers
Making arrests in drug cases can be very dangerous to law enforcement personnel.
"It's horrible, that's what it is. It's not just that it's a crime. The officers here won't search vehicles anymore unless they are wearing stick-proof gloves," Gardner said.
In the past, investigators would place syringes in test tube-like containers which would hold two or three needles. They would be sealed and tested for use as evidence, Gardner said.
"Now what we have to do is bring in the big sharps containers, we're talking maybe a foot-and-a-half by a foot. If there is something we need to send to the crime lab we'll put it in one of those little tubes, otherwise everything else is gathered up and placed in those big sharps containers," she said.
Gardner said the investigation into Stahl's death led to the recovery of enough needles to fill a big trash bag.
"It's risky," she said. "I ask people right away if they have anything that is going to poke me. I have kids, a family that I have to go home to, and I'm going to be kind of ticked off if I get stuck. For the most part, they are pretty good about telling us if they have something but they have them hidden. One woman I dealt with had knee-high boots and told me she had nothing on her. As soon as I unzipped the boot, I saw the tip of a needle inside of the boot. If I hadn't been cautious, it's very likely I could have stuck myself."
Early treatment is key
For people who have not yet fallen too deeply under the spell of heroin addiction, Gardner believes treatment has to be a part of the sentence that the criminal justice systems hands down.
"I will tell you, unfortunately, the first time they shoot up with heroin, their addiction can be just as strong as if they have been using for 10 years. They are always going to be chasing that first high and they're never going to achieve it, that's part of the problem," Gardner said. "You will have people who use one time and they are addicted and have a lifelong battle with it."
She said it used to be that law enforcement would put someone in jail and then let the courts deal with it. Now there is the added problem of finding a place for the addict in a treatment center.
"We have actually gotten people out of jail specifically to go to treatment," Gardner said. "Because we know that if we get a heroin addict off the streets in jail for say 72 hours and then put them back on the streets without getting treatment, the chances that they will use heroin again are pretty good. And if they use the same amount that they used before they got incarcerated, that's when we are going to find the person that overdoses because their tolerance has kind of gone down. That's the part of drug addiction they (addicts) don't understand. So we have to work with that person while they are still in jail, to look at the treatment options. If they are being sentenced to prison or time in the Oneida County jail, you can spend your first 45 days in Koinonia (a drug and alcohol treatment center in Rhinelander) or your last 45 days in Koinonia. Because if you don't offer them something for treatment, you're either going to find them dead or they are going to be committing the same kind of crimes or even worse."
"That doesn't do anything for us. Law enforcement learned a long time ago that we can't arrest ourselves out of the problem, you have to look at the big picture. You have to work with the doctors, you have to work with the pharmacists," she added.
Due to conflict of interest concerns, members of the task force can't serve as Narcotics Anonymous sponsors but that doesn't mean they don't go out of their way to help the people they have arrested.
"My investigators and I, we get calls at two or three in the morning from people who we have put back on the street. We tell them, if you want to shoot up, call. We'll kick you in the butt. Do you want us to come knock on your door again and arrest you? And we'll get those calls from those people," she said, adding that she once spent over two hours on the phone with someone because he wanted to stick a needle in his arm.
"It's just not putting on the gun and the badge in the morning and arresting somebody, you also have to put on all those other hats. I'm really lucky that all the other guys in my unit are willing to do that. If you have cops that aren't, then you're going to have more problems," she said.
Gardner said the burnout rate for drug enforcement officers is high because they don't often see positive outcomes.
"When you work in law enforcement, you want to be able to help someone find their lost dog or find a runaway or just do something positive," she said. "You don't really see the positives (in the drug unit), you see people treating their kids poorly, not because of any fault of their own other than because of their drug addiction. You see abuses, you see sexual abuse which has a direct correlation to drug abuse. And all you see is that, you go home and you're drained at the end of the day. You need to find that positive. The guys I have right now, one has been in here close to three years and one has been in a little over a year. Sometimes we have to pull somebody out and put them back on the road. We haven't gotten the funding to get more officers, but you have more of a problem," she said.
The officer who has been in the unit just over a year is just now getting to the point where he can operate on his own.
"It's a really complex type of law enforcement and it wouldn't be good to train them for a year and all of a sudden move them and get another individual. There just isn't enough hands. I could take three more full-time investigators right now, just for Oneida County," Gardner said.
Work of drug unit supported
Gardner said every level of local law enforcement, from the sheriffs to the judges, has been very supportive of the task force.
"We're lucky that right now that we have a sheriff for years who has been very dedicated and it's been ongoing for the past few sheriffs. They have all been 100 percent behind the drug task force," she said. "They see the direct correlation between the drug use and the crimes that we see. They will tell you that most of the crimes, be it burglaries or batteries and even at this point accidents causing injuries, we find that often prescription drugs or heroin are involved."
Once cases reach the desk of the district attorney and suspects appear in front of judges, Gardner said the same level of support shows up there, too.
"When it comes to heroin, they (the district attorneys) quickly got on board and said if you're going to deal heroin up here, we're not going to tolerate it," Gardner said. "I hope they keep that stance and the judges keep that stance as well. Because that is the only way that we're going to be able to do anything."
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