Heroin use at epidemic level
By
Brandy Chandler-brandychandler@gmail.com
There is not an empty seat in the Hillsboro Municipal Courtroom. The benches are crowded with defendants awaiting arraignment on violations ranging from minor traffic altercations to high felony charges. Each cell in the Highland County Justice Center is full. For the judge viewing the courtroom – and the court system – from his bench, the docket has become so overrun with a spike in drug crimes, he is compelled to tell the defendants,
“We are at war.”
In the 25 years that he has been involved in the criminal justice system, Hillsboro Municipal Court Judge David H. McKenna said he has not seen anything like the recent “epidemic” of heroin activity.
“It’s a whole different playing field, it seems like,” McKenna said.
“Heroin is crossing all socioeconomic lines, levels of education, it doesn’t seem to make any difference. I have seen college-educated people, children from prominent families in the community – it’s all a matter of public record. This has become so widespread.”
McKenna said that over the past year he has been trying to increase public awareness of the growing issue, because through his courtroom observations, he does not see a sector of the public that has gone untouched.
“It’s becoming an epidemic in our community, and I’m getting frustrated because I’m really surprised when I talk to people, it’s like they have never heard that there is a heroin problem,” McKenna said. “Unless they’re under 25 and then it’s like, ‘Of course, everyone knows it’s there.’”
‘You have to have a siege mentality’
Just as state laws and law enforcement have begun to curb the outbreak of one drug, another has risen to take its place.
“It’s the nature of the heroin offenses, in part, that is so disturbing to me,” McKenna said. “Anybody who has been around here for the last dozen years, meth has been a problem for a while. We have gotten meth to where it is not nearly as rampant as it used to be. The first few years I was judge, I signed dozens of warrants for meth labs. In recent years, I have signed only a handful. Heroin has just exploded in the last couple of years. In particular, it’s such a different type of drug. Meth always seemed to be a ‘poor man’s drug.’ I hate labels, but it was, and it has always been a drug that turned up in more poverty-ridden neighborhoods and families. With heroin, it doesn’t follow those old traditional patterns.”
Defendants who go through Hillsboro Municipal Court regularly get drug screened, and McKenna said that people regularly fail them. For months, he has been telling them the same ominous words.
“I tell them that we are at war, and they are on the wrong side. They are now a prisoner of war, if not a casualty of war,” McKenna said. “You have to have a siege mentality. That is the only way we are going to handle this.”
Many family members who see their loved ones battling addiction are not helping fight back, according to McKenna. Rather, they deny and enabling the problem.
“We don’t have enough room in the jail,” McKenna said. “I’m not trying to lock everyone up because of it, but it’s like a lot of people who are getting the heroin are getting it by stealing from their families, and the family members are trying to overlook it at first until they get to their wits’ end. With meth, due to the socioeconomics of it, there wasn’t much to steal so they reached the end of their rope much faster. With a lot of the families I see now, they make excuses for them, and are in denial that there is a problem. That’s part of the problem – people are failing to recognize it until it’s way too late.”
Cutting off the head of the snake
McKenna said that once a defendant has pleaded guilty to a crime in his court, he asks a lot of questions to try to get to the root of their problems.
Seeing more than 50 cases a day, he said that he doesn’t have the “luxury” of a monthlong presentence investigation, so he asks direct questions to the
defendant. He said that in most cases, they give surprisingly honest answers. With other crimes and other drugs, he and law enforcement agencies have been able to establish trends or identify a main source. Heroin has not proved to have an easily identifiable root.
“There doesn’t seem to be any type of centralized distribution like there has been with other drugs,” McKenna said. “It isn’t like our traditional drug crimes, because there has not been an identifiable pattern to root out the snake and cut off its head. It’s almost like the mythical Hydra – you cut off the head and two more pop back up.”
Law enforcement agencies in Highland County have been stepping up their efforts to combat the concentrated increase.
“Heroin used to be unknown in the law enforcement community,”McKenna said. “Heroin used to be known as a ‘city drug’ or something that you see in
movies about New York or Los Angeles. But it is here.”
Highland County Sheriff Ron Ward said that he agrees with McKenna, and that he, too, has seen the number of heroin-related cases skyrocket in recent years.
“Ten years ago, we would have one or two cases a year,” Ward said. “Now we are seeing multiple cases a week, either through possession, trafficking or heroin overdoses, and some of those have resulted in deaths.”
According to Highland County Coroner Dr. Paul Terrell, he has seen the frequency of overdoses increase. Terrell said that he estimated there were at least five heroin-related deaths in Highland County in 2010.
“What I have heard in talking to people in the medical profession is that there are a huge increase with overdoses,” McKenna said. “It’s fairly common that before I get a defendant in the courtroom on new heroin charges, they have gone through the emergency room before going to jail.”
“We are trying to take as proactive an approach as we can from a law enforcement standpoint,” Ward said. “Why the courts are seeing more cases is
because Highland County law enforcement have taken a priority stance on heroin. We are looking at it more in our covert operations in the past trying to key in on the heroin problem and how it’s being brought in from the bigger cities.”
McKenna, Ward and Terrell all say that low prices of heroin have made it more readily available to people in the Highland County area.
“I think one of the reasons we are seeing more cases is obviously because of the spike in usage,” Ward said.
McKenna said that heroin, “has gotten incredibly cheap. You can get a dose for 10 bucks now, and that puts it just as cheap as meth, and in some cases, cheaper than coke.”
Ward said that the usage does not appear to hit one age group more than another, but that in general, both males and females in the 17-30-year age range seem to be going through the system the most.
“I think it has become a drug of choice,” Ward said. “There are many reasons behind that. It could be the ease of the marketability. It’s fairly easy to conceal, and there are various opinions on the high of it. Some of it is the draw of the high. And it is extremely addictive.”
Patterns of use and bringing the drug into Highland County seems to almost be an an individualized basis, according to the judge.
“From what I’ve observed, there’s not a lot of active trafficking,” McKenna said. “These young people are getting together 100 bucks, 200 bucks, and are going to Dayton or Cincinnati and buying it off a street corner, coming back to Highland County and using it, and then doing it all over again. Heroin is the number one drug driving things and it’s just increased to an amazing amount. It’s becoming a serious crime in the villages.”
Lynchburg Police Chief Brandon Wooten said he’s seen the epidemic, too. “I’d say that at least the last two years I’ve seen it rise,” Wooten said. “You used to see the high rise in meth. It’s gone almost above and beyond the meth use.”
Wooten said trying to pinpoint what has caused the increased use is difficult, and that there doesn’t seem to be one factor.
“I wish I did know what was causing it,” he said. “If I did, maybe it would help us find more ways of combating it.”
At this point, policing the growing drug activity has been mostly reactionary, according to Wooten, but the village is trying to take a proactive step with the development of a K-9 unit.
“I think that any drug use has to do with a person’s situation,” Wooten said. “Most people wouldn’t be using the stuff if they had good jobs instead of sitting at home all day doing nothing.”
Wooten said that the issue has affected the way officers approach some situations due to the prevalence of needles and syringes among suspects.
“We’re more cautious and more aware,” Wooten said. “Especially when we’re going over training with officers who haven’t been on the street that much,
that they need to be on the lookout for needles. We’re also starting to get into more drug interdiction training, to start looking for and seeing the signs of this activity.”
McKenna said, the physical signs can easily be seen in the streets of Hillsboro and the villages in Highland County.
“If you ask some of the cops or people who walk in the alleys around town, you don’t have to walk in them too many times before you see a syringe,” McKenna said.
During the Dec. 13 meeting of the Hillsboro City Council meeting, a group of residents spoke out about the need for additional officers in the Hillsboro Police Department. Residents Lisa Keys and Janet Fair have formed a neighborhood watch program, and said that they and their neighbors have found syringes in their yards and in their mailboxes.
Additionally, McKenna said that he is hearing from landlords who have had to change the way they approach cleaning houses and apartments when a
tenant has vacated, due to to the presence of needles. Instead of dealing with issues of cleanliness or pet damages as they have in the past, “they’re afraid of reaching their hand in something and getting stuck by a needle.
“What is happening in a lot of those cases – and this is the one of the things that makes it different from other drugs – is the frequency in which
they are being charged with the possession and trafficking is much lower than with people who are getting charged with felonies involving meth or cocaine, because it’s a totally user-driven epidemic. I’m getting people all the time who are getting busted with needles, but they have already used all the drugs.”
“Before I came to Hillsboro I was a prosecutor in Louisville, so I have ived and breathed criminal law for 25 years,” McKenna said. “I have never had this feeling of frustration. I’m not trying to be a prosecutor of drugs.
I’m just trying to protect the community I live in.”
McKenna said that he regularly gets letters from inmates asking him to help them, asking for programs that can cure additions, but McKenna said
that while there are agencies such as FRS Counseling and Family Recovering Services, “there is not any magical program that is going to be an easy fix and cure everything.”
The only thing he knows to do is to make people aware, and try to get the community behind an effort to combat the problem, because most likely, someone they know is being affected.
“People need to start paying attention and realizing that their children, their nieces and nephews, their grandchildren are being exposed. It’s never happened to previous generations like it has in the last five years. All these people are getting exposed to it. If we can get hundreds of eyes out there, maybe we can make it a little harder to spread,” McKenna said. “I don’t know how else to solve it. I came here 20 years ago. I like Highland County. I wanted to raise my family here. This is one of the biggest threats I have seen in a long time.”[[In-content Ad]]
“We are at war.”
In the 25 years that he has been involved in the criminal justice system, Hillsboro Municipal Court Judge David H. McKenna said he has not seen anything like the recent “epidemic” of heroin activity.
“It’s a whole different playing field, it seems like,” McKenna said.
“Heroin is crossing all socioeconomic lines, levels of education, it doesn’t seem to make any difference. I have seen college-educated people, children from prominent families in the community – it’s all a matter of public record. This has become so widespread.”
McKenna said that over the past year he has been trying to increase public awareness of the growing issue, because through his courtroom observations, he does not see a sector of the public that has gone untouched.
“It’s becoming an epidemic in our community, and I’m getting frustrated because I’m really surprised when I talk to people, it’s like they have never heard that there is a heroin problem,” McKenna said. “Unless they’re under 25 and then it’s like, ‘Of course, everyone knows it’s there.’”
‘You have to have a siege mentality’
Just as state laws and law enforcement have begun to curb the outbreak of one drug, another has risen to take its place.
“It’s the nature of the heroin offenses, in part, that is so disturbing to me,” McKenna said. “Anybody who has been around here for the last dozen years, meth has been a problem for a while. We have gotten meth to where it is not nearly as rampant as it used to be. The first few years I was judge, I signed dozens of warrants for meth labs. In recent years, I have signed only a handful. Heroin has just exploded in the last couple of years. In particular, it’s such a different type of drug. Meth always seemed to be a ‘poor man’s drug.’ I hate labels, but it was, and it has always been a drug that turned up in more poverty-ridden neighborhoods and families. With heroin, it doesn’t follow those old traditional patterns.”
Defendants who go through Hillsboro Municipal Court regularly get drug screened, and McKenna said that people regularly fail them. For months, he has been telling them the same ominous words.
“I tell them that we are at war, and they are on the wrong side. They are now a prisoner of war, if not a casualty of war,” McKenna said. “You have to have a siege mentality. That is the only way we are going to handle this.”
Many family members who see their loved ones battling addiction are not helping fight back, according to McKenna. Rather, they deny and enabling the problem.
“We don’t have enough room in the jail,” McKenna said. “I’m not trying to lock everyone up because of it, but it’s like a lot of people who are getting the heroin are getting it by stealing from their families, and the family members are trying to overlook it at first until they get to their wits’ end. With meth, due to the socioeconomics of it, there wasn’t much to steal so they reached the end of their rope much faster. With a lot of the families I see now, they make excuses for them, and are in denial that there is a problem. That’s part of the problem – people are failing to recognize it until it’s way too late.”
Cutting off the head of the snake
McKenna said that once a defendant has pleaded guilty to a crime in his court, he asks a lot of questions to try to get to the root of their problems.
Seeing more than 50 cases a day, he said that he doesn’t have the “luxury” of a monthlong presentence investigation, so he asks direct questions to the
defendant. He said that in most cases, they give surprisingly honest answers. With other crimes and other drugs, he and law enforcement agencies have been able to establish trends or identify a main source. Heroin has not proved to have an easily identifiable root.
“There doesn’t seem to be any type of centralized distribution like there has been with other drugs,” McKenna said. “It isn’t like our traditional drug crimes, because there has not been an identifiable pattern to root out the snake and cut off its head. It’s almost like the mythical Hydra – you cut off the head and two more pop back up.”
Law enforcement agencies in Highland County have been stepping up their efforts to combat the concentrated increase.
“Heroin used to be unknown in the law enforcement community,”McKenna said. “Heroin used to be known as a ‘city drug’ or something that you see in
movies about New York or Los Angeles. But it is here.”
Highland County Sheriff Ron Ward said that he agrees with McKenna, and that he, too, has seen the number of heroin-related cases skyrocket in recent years.
“Ten years ago, we would have one or two cases a year,” Ward said. “Now we are seeing multiple cases a week, either through possession, trafficking or heroin overdoses, and some of those have resulted in deaths.”
According to Highland County Coroner Dr. Paul Terrell, he has seen the frequency of overdoses increase. Terrell said that he estimated there were at least five heroin-related deaths in Highland County in 2010.
“What I have heard in talking to people in the medical profession is that there are a huge increase with overdoses,” McKenna said. “It’s fairly common that before I get a defendant in the courtroom on new heroin charges, they have gone through the emergency room before going to jail.”
“We are trying to take as proactive an approach as we can from a law enforcement standpoint,” Ward said. “Why the courts are seeing more cases is
because Highland County law enforcement have taken a priority stance on heroin. We are looking at it more in our covert operations in the past trying to key in on the heroin problem and how it’s being brought in from the bigger cities.”
McKenna, Ward and Terrell all say that low prices of heroin have made it more readily available to people in the Highland County area.
“I think one of the reasons we are seeing more cases is obviously because of the spike in usage,” Ward said.
McKenna said that heroin, “has gotten incredibly cheap. You can get a dose for 10 bucks now, and that puts it just as cheap as meth, and in some cases, cheaper than coke.”
Ward said that the usage does not appear to hit one age group more than another, but that in general, both males and females in the 17-30-year age range seem to be going through the system the most.
“I think it has become a drug of choice,” Ward said. “There are many reasons behind that. It could be the ease of the marketability. It’s fairly easy to conceal, and there are various opinions on the high of it. Some of it is the draw of the high. And it is extremely addictive.”
Patterns of use and bringing the drug into Highland County seems to almost be an an individualized basis, according to the judge.
“From what I’ve observed, there’s not a lot of active trafficking,” McKenna said. “These young people are getting together 100 bucks, 200 bucks, and are going to Dayton or Cincinnati and buying it off a street corner, coming back to Highland County and using it, and then doing it all over again. Heroin is the number one drug driving things and it’s just increased to an amazing amount. It’s becoming a serious crime in the villages.”
Lynchburg Police Chief Brandon Wooten said he’s seen the epidemic, too. “I’d say that at least the last two years I’ve seen it rise,” Wooten said. “You used to see the high rise in meth. It’s gone almost above and beyond the meth use.”
Wooten said trying to pinpoint what has caused the increased use is difficult, and that there doesn’t seem to be one factor.
“I wish I did know what was causing it,” he said. “If I did, maybe it would help us find more ways of combating it.”
At this point, policing the growing drug activity has been mostly reactionary, according to Wooten, but the village is trying to take a proactive step with the development of a K-9 unit.
“I think that any drug use has to do with a person’s situation,” Wooten said. “Most people wouldn’t be using the stuff if they had good jobs instead of sitting at home all day doing nothing.”
Wooten said that the issue has affected the way officers approach some situations due to the prevalence of needles and syringes among suspects.
“We’re more cautious and more aware,” Wooten said. “Especially when we’re going over training with officers who haven’t been on the street that much,
that they need to be on the lookout for needles. We’re also starting to get into more drug interdiction training, to start looking for and seeing the signs of this activity.”
McKenna said, the physical signs can easily be seen in the streets of Hillsboro and the villages in Highland County.
“If you ask some of the cops or people who walk in the alleys around town, you don’t have to walk in them too many times before you see a syringe,” McKenna said.
During the Dec. 13 meeting of the Hillsboro City Council meeting, a group of residents spoke out about the need for additional officers in the Hillsboro Police Department. Residents Lisa Keys and Janet Fair have formed a neighborhood watch program, and said that they and their neighbors have found syringes in their yards and in their mailboxes.
Additionally, McKenna said that he is hearing from landlords who have had to change the way they approach cleaning houses and apartments when a
tenant has vacated, due to to the presence of needles. Instead of dealing with issues of cleanliness or pet damages as they have in the past, “they’re afraid of reaching their hand in something and getting stuck by a needle.
“What is happening in a lot of those cases – and this is the one of the things that makes it different from other drugs – is the frequency in which
they are being charged with the possession and trafficking is much lower than with people who are getting charged with felonies involving meth or cocaine, because it’s a totally user-driven epidemic. I’m getting people all the time who are getting busted with needles, but they have already used all the drugs.”
“Before I came to Hillsboro I was a prosecutor in Louisville, so I have ived and breathed criminal law for 25 years,” McKenna said. “I have never had this feeling of frustration. I’m not trying to be a prosecutor of drugs.
I’m just trying to protect the community I live in.”
McKenna said that he regularly gets letters from inmates asking him to help them, asking for programs that can cure additions, but McKenna said
that while there are agencies such as FRS Counseling and Family Recovering Services, “there is not any magical program that is going to be an easy fix and cure everything.”
The only thing he knows to do is to make people aware, and try to get the community behind an effort to combat the problem, because most likely, someone they know is being affected.
“People need to start paying attention and realizing that their children, their nieces and nephews, their grandchildren are being exposed. It’s never happened to previous generations like it has in the last five years. All these people are getting exposed to it. If we can get hundreds of eyes out there, maybe we can make it a little harder to spread,” McKenna said. “I don’t know how else to solve it. I came here 20 years ago. I like Highland County. I wanted to raise my family here. This is one of the biggest threats I have seen in a long time.”[[In-content Ad]]