[Music] [Music] the purpose of this sixth episode documentary series on WDS CW RPT opioids crisis in the Northland is to start a conversation in this series we will trace the epidemic tell stories of addiction discuss treatment and assess law and addiction seek accountability for the crisis and address solutions in this episode we're focusing on law enforcement and the drug courts you'll hear from agencies on different levels from the Duluth Police Chief to a DEA Special Agent you'll also hear from drug court participants the cartel drugs and gangs there's a dark side to Duluth needing exposure in the global market for illegal opioids Duluth has become a hotbed Duluth is under Drug Enforcement Administration Special Agent Ken selects jurisdiction he says Duluth's ultimate source of illicit opioids comes from Mexico and Chicago and that the Canadian border and shipping port is less of a concern whenever you have a border the concern is going to be dependent upon how the enforcement on the other side of that border is so if Canada because they're experiencing a very similar method or a very similar issue with fentanyl with heroin overdoses with opioid issues I don't foresee that it's to an advantage of an organization to say get fentanyl in Canada and then ship it down to the US or vice-versa because they're both experienced the issue so that means we know that the organizations have penetrated those areas the drug trafficking organization so unless there's some kind of some kind of advantage for that organization it probably wouldn't come into play for the fentanyl opioid side of the house now that does that mean that we don't make seizures of course CBP up there at customs Border Protection Border Patrol they make seizures and with the port system when you're talking ports and when you're talking mass transit and begin be at the railways in every we know the cartels utilize those systems south of the border to try to push their narcotics north because of the bulk and the size and you're talking about methamphetamine you're usually talking pounds when you're talking about cocaine usually talking kilos kilos 2.2 pounds when you're talking marijuana you're talking bales you're talking pounds hundreds of pounds so it just takes it takes a vessel or you know a mode of transport that can handle a bulk system like that that's why your ports are popular and of course the fact that it's coming from another country when you're talking about Canadian US and you're talking fentanyl fentanyl a sandwich bag full of fentanyl would last you could last potentially last you if it was pure a year so you don't need that size you know you don't need that transportation system it'd be much easier just have something mailed to you which we know is occurring or just bring it on your person you know it's pretty easy to conceal something that small as opposed to walking around with a kilo of cocaine you know what I think we were talking about car fentanyl which is an analogue of fentanyl it's it's many times more potent and fentanyl some of the it would take approximately if you were to take one of the little packs of sugar like one little equal packs or Splenda packs or sugar pack that is enough to kill about five there are 50,000 people so population to lose 86,000 people imagine two sugar packs a pure fentanyl assuming that people didn't have tolerance and you know there's there's all kinds of variables but that that shows you the extent of what can happen with with car fentanyl fentanyl it's a little bit less because it's it's not as powerful so maybe it takes ten packs you know it's it's really semantics because it's it's that bad where you're talking about such a minut amount to cause such extensive damage drugs in general are going to be dependent upon the type of drug that we're talking about because different ones are gonna come from different areas the country but for the most part most of the narcotics that that flood the Midwest in the Upper Midwest are coming from south of the border the Mexico area controlled by the cartels whether it be methamphetamine whether it be heroin whether it be fentanyl for the vast majority of those narcotics are coming from the south ultimately now their routes may take them coming from the west coast through California and across they may come straight up from the south they may detour and go towards the West in the US and then come back but they're traveling the traditional drug trafficking routes that they've used for decades they were business I mean they're supplying a commodity to you know the American public unfortunately that commodity leads to death in a lot of cases leads to abuse at least a substance abuse there's no quality control that you can't stress that enough you can't put it in you know street terms enough where you have no idea what you're getting I mean you're every time that you're scoring any kind of fat and all any kind of opioid derivative heroin every one of those drugs can lead to death by one use when people see that well you know you're messing with the the lower level dealer or the lower level say the attic a lot of times we have to start someone and to work ourself up the chain sometimes that's all we have so do you fault us because we are we're involved in the community and we're trying to work that you know the problems by working our way up unfortunately we can't stop it start at the top all the time you know sometimes we have to take steps to get there and so I think that's something that needs to be understood too especially in the drug world unfortunately when we're talking about heroin and fentanyl in the opioid side of the house you got to remember that lowest level person if they're getting two or three doses that could be two or three deaths you've got to remember the Drug Enforcement Administration is exactly as the name sounds it's an enforcement arm it's a law enforcement body we don't get into the treatment of individuals that's another agency that's several other agencies in the US government provide resources and funds and and education on that part but we try to put everybody in the same room I can tell you from Duluth they're doing that on the local level and have been for the longest time Duluth Police Chief Mike Tuscan believes we can't arrest our way out of this problem although others do disagree we have very robust enforcement in fact our task force that lieutenant Kaiser runs is second to none in the state very well run operation again that is trying to limit sources supply we know from some of the defendants that have been at the up at the jail and some of their conversations that they've had is we're not coming back to the city because as soon as you try to set up and Duluth the police are there and so we know that that is a that there is a message that we've delivered that this is not the place that we you can easily blend into the community and set up shop and distribute these poisons to our people so that is impacting so that we know that's working I think that the not know excellent initiative the fact that we've saved over 50 lives that that people have an opportunity to recover that's working and we're looking at now last year we did dare in the schools did a pilot but we're also now looking at some other options to do further education with students six seven eight nine and into the middle school as well trying to educate nationally and locally law has a 360-degree fight against opioids from the sky ground underground railway highways ports borders commander of the Lake Superior drug and violent crime task force Jeff castle is familiar with the ingenuity of drug rings there are null poppy fields in in Minnesota the Mexican cartels they used to be the middlemen for for the South America a lot of the drugs cocaine and heroin were being produced in South America but they changed their marketing Lee they decided to grow opioids and poppy fields in in Mexico and as time went on they they found out about fentanyl and they've got people that are able to order the the chemicals and and put the fentanyl in their product and majority of the product that they're setting up is going to have fentanyl in it that was seized in Duluth that's a cartel stamp there's multiple ways of beginning into the country I mean they've got tunnels that they've built underneath the border they've done in El Paso well one of the the border areas where they have miles of cars getting into the country and it's just the numbers game how many how many cars have loads and how many are able to get through that's all part of the business of these cartels is getting those loans though they'll make specific compartments you know and add them onto cars I mean they've they've got submarines that they've used to transport drugs to the United States they've got planes they've got drones that they're now using the throw out over the border so there any way that they can get the product over they're gonna do it because they're gonna make money and they know it and it is a big reason why you know the statistic that 80% of the opioids in the world are consumed in the United States there is a large pool of addiction that they can come here to take advantage of and they are taking advantage of their selling product for two to three to four times the amount that they were what they would receive somewhere else they are taking advantage of our population of our people and making a profit on it the epidemic does not distinguish between age sex or location and with an increased death count there is a need for better coordination we went to the DA and we started a program first in the nation where we took one of our investigators made them a DEA task force officer for the diversion unit which is deals with opioids and pills being diverted we went to the National Guard and we we asked them for their help and through their counter drug program they they gave us a full time analyst and analysts are they're worth their weight in gold because there's just so much a data that goes in with dealing with these organizations that are selling we've partnered with the ORS group that we were talking about early about and helped write a grant where they were able to get I think was about $600,000 to get a treatment place with the Center for alcohol and drug treatment six Bend facility fir for people that are substance use disorder with opioids the CDC acknowledges that many health departments law enforcement and community-based organizations are uniting I'm not um we're not as far as Intel on that we're not as far as the street-level were more the information takers and we we've pushed it up and then our awesome team that you know the Drug Task Force that works with local agencies they'll put stuff together and come up with plans on how to crack down on it so and they're doing a really good job so I would say it there's weekly we get weekly calls on it sometimes like I said we'll get four calls and none I guess it depends on if people are getting power people are getting money when their main source of income coming in it has a new batch came around or if there's a good surround like this it hasn't it's been a slower week for us but I would say like today we had one but I mean it's it's almost calls daily about some kind of you know drug suspicion or I won't say everyday and overdose but there are some weeks where we do get that uh citizen might call saying there's some of that it's not acting like themselves and they seem like they're higher impaired very lethargic so we'll check on them just to make sure that they're taken care of I don't get that the help they need if they need to be a hospital will cross so that's what that one yesterday here that's a spot cuz it's kind of off from Yale and there's more cameras back here we get a lot of people actually in cars that are will get overdoses in cars and a lot of times maybe a friend might call it in our concerned person saying hey this person is overdosing and then by the time we get there they're gone because at least email they want to help their friend but they don't want to get in trouble technically we're not there to get the person who's overdosing in trouble we're there as a life saving effort so that's kind of like the least of our concerns at that time so this is our kit so it's bright red everyone usually has one in their duty bag and then in the inside it has two doses of narcan and ours are the nasal version I know there's some fill of wit forms and everything like that but this is the most user friendly as far as techniques folks you don't worry about dealing with needles or anything so this is the narcan and what we'll do is administer and their nasal passage you know will give the one dose and wait for responses when we started seeing more and more overdoses occur more and more deaths occur we recognize all this there's people dying out on the streets we knew we had to make some changes and I went to my boss the chief and asked for more resources and you know we're a medium-sized department and to asked to pull a body away from the street to bring to an investigative unit that's a big deal but he recognized the issue with with what was going on and ingredie gave us another investigator there there are so many cases that we deal with that you know I need more people to investigate them mark Reinholds is an addiction counselor with experience in Corrections he believes some of the modalities are outdated I have worked in Corrections in this field in particularly program I was working with I would have the guys for four weeks while they're in jail system and then I have for ten weeks ago they got out so and that was fascinating there's a really difficult population to work with there is a function of law enforcement in there I think for a lot of people getting the attention the law enforcement attention is the one that actually wakes them up and says okay I've got to do something about this but the repeated criminalization of use issues it's actually very detrimental to people that have use issues and it's mainly detrimental to the fact that it just increases more stress in their lives than make some of our lives more difficult it doesn't do any good it's not it's not any way shape or form kind of helping them with the issue it just exacerbates the situation so mmm you're talking about how to help people through that you can't arrest our way out of this the vast majority of people that do there's legitimate physical reasons why the vast majority people have use issues it's not a behavior issue it's not a poor choice issue corrections in many ways is still based upon Neal morale model and behavior model that use issues are still a choice you're making bad decisions Valerie's Wendigos acquis is an enrolled indigenous member in Canada and lives in Duluth after a dark past of using drug dealing herself and overdosing a handful of times she's found a new path to healing and is now sober she says she just wanted to get out of jail so she could get high again never been to jail and I never not had to like go completely without heroin or without something to help so I remember being in a holding cell for like four days and just being really sick well I ended up joining a rule 25 and you know at that point it wasn't like serious I wasn't I wanted you don't jail no I didn't want to be there I wanted to go get high so I did it and I was like what was this gonna get me out and I'm like well we got away for trimming bed and you know I got I think a release of my own recognizance or something like that when they let's go on so I did that and with the treatment didn't take it serious I snuck in gram and a half according to a journal of American medicine published peace most prisoners 80 to 85% who could benefit from drug abuse treatment do not receive it and not treating a drug abusing offender is a missed opportunity to simultaneously improve both public health and safety Duluth County attorney Marc Rubin believes treatment for inmates can change lives if they want and thinks treatment should begin sooner for addicts behind bars rather than towards the end of their sentences some people might think it doesn't pay to send people to prison because there's a there's no there's something there that isn't working too well the Department of Corrections in Minnesota has one overriding driving goal right now and that's to free up beds in the prison because they cost money to keep people in prison the problem is people are getting released from prison before treatment when you go to prison for selling of drugs and you may have an addiction problem to you do not even get into a treatment program towards until you get down to one year left in your sentence when you could use treatment right off the bat and number two people who are dealing drugs are being released from the Department of Corrections into a the challenge incarceration program which has there's there's good purpose in that but there are drug dealers that qualify for that program will we find out on the street our Police Department runs into those dealers and they're from there full sentence or they might have been a seven or eight year sentence they maybe did a year of their time so without enough supervision without addressing any chemical dependency needs adequately and also they're predators they want to make money and they know for some reason people in our area have a healthy unhealthy appetite for these types of drugs drug counselor Kellan Davis is now sober and shares from personal experience how opioid use can lead to criminal activity and it's a path he wishes no one else to lead there's legal ways to opioids all day long I mean through the mail gone the street you know there's a hundred different places and ways to get it if you want it it was very interesting for me when when they they took my percocet tonight and condoms away because I feel like it was too little too late you know I feel like they wanted to do a good thing but I was already wrapped up in addiction so yeah I just found a way around it you know I I wasn't gonna argue with them because you know what what point would that serve you know I I had dope to get so I went got it and it um led me to places that I wish I didn't go Lynn Hall's son Brad Kristofferson was killed by an opioid overdose he went to prison before he died it really got in trouble with the law when he brought a girl who was wearing a wire to a drug dealer to get her drugs and then Brad would get free drugs from the guy for himself and and he was busted with this big drug task force bus that they had here in Duluth and they sent him to prison federal prison for that I mean I I believe that these big-time drug dealers need to go to prison but when an addict is just trying to get free drugs yeah he I don't think that he should have gone to prison he should have gone to treatment I told me he can get drugs were easier to get in prison than they were on the street they were just in the next cell our drug unit we don't go after users that's not what were for okay do we end up arresting some users when when we do our search warrants or we do our operations sometimes that happens yes but do we go out specifically to target somebody that's a user that's probably got a substance use disorder no that's not what we're here for we're here to take take the people that are taking advantage of our pool of and that's what we do we have a large pool of addiction here and there are people that are coming to this area specifically to make a lot of money they take advantage of people and you know eventually kill them or put them in jail because of the drug court has been around a long time in our area and if we see people that are completing the one two year program sometimes even little longer but if they can eventually come clean be clean and live a productive life then it's a success if they're not engaged in criminal activity again it's a success we realize though that it it crosses if they come into the criminal justice system with an addiction they come into the criminal justice system with an addiction there are also other collateral effects for instance there's probably a child protection matter going on at the same time 80 some percent of our child protection cases involve opioid abuse so it's not just dealing with someone in isolation in the criminal justice system that is going to be in drug court they've got probably child protection issues employment issues they probably can't hold a job because of the addiction and they also in order to feed the addiction what do they have to do they probably have to steal or engage in something else illegal to afford their addiction I don't know why is it so hard to catch these drug dealers do I I mean I know they're out there trying to do that and you know when Brad died they got information from his phone and I was told there that drug bust that they had here in Duluth last summer that the guy that sold Brad those drugs got caught but for Brad he had bought in you know fentanyl he didn't even know that he thought it was buying heroin he didn't have a chance I mean the autopsy report he had three different types of fentanyl I mean the drug dealer had to know and this was going to kill him nobody could survive the amount of fentanyl and you know you can't be everything at once so it's kind of like a struggle to get it all together in a good motion work because you want to figure out what's a long term solution but you got to figure out okay how do I save them now the person before anything else first and that's why I believe our department has these OB orchids because that's what we're here for life saving so if you see something say something I mean you don't have to say you know my name is Sally Johnson I live at this address this is my telephone number Social Security number it's it's as simple as saying hey this is where I'm seeing this we don't require you to tell your name or anything like that we take tips so there's a third a tip line also on our website that you can go I mean once in a while you'll get a good story which reminds you you know why you do this job is there's a kid that me and my partner we got a call on and it was to the point where we thought you know he wasn't gonna make it and he was able to have narcan and you know we went his family was there and I went I didn't see him much after that and then I went back to his house like three or four months later and I went into the house and he gave me a hug and he you know he thanked us he said you saved my life and you know and I want it and I want to change if you want to report any suspicious activity surrounding illegal opioids you can do so anonymously by calling the Lake Superior drug and violent crime task force at two one eight seven three zero five seven five zero [Music] next episode we're focusing on the case against opioid manufacturers and how lawmakers are working on legislation to combat this public health crisis there's a lot of issues about pharma companies not just opioids but also how much they're charging for regular prescription drugs and I think it's time to take them on when it comes to opioids and also when it comes to the price of prescription drugs and again for additional information and resources please visit WDSU org [Music] [Music]