Thread: Heroin is returning to area, officials say (Illegals)

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Heroin is returning to area, officials say
Task force seized 3 pounds since July

By Kay Stewart
kstewart@courier-journal.com
The Courier-Journal

Heroin is re-emerging in the Louisville area, the result of Mexican drug-traffickers marketing to a new generation, federal law-enforcement officials say.

Since July, a drug task force of federal and local police has confiscated more than 3 pounds of heroin with a street value of about $200,000, including 2 pounds recently in nearby Charlestown, Ind.



Such amounts were unheard of in recent years, said Tony King, resident agent in charge of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration office in Louisville.

While Louisville police and health officials haven't seen a noticeable surge in the drug's use, King said the recent confiscations could foreshadow problems.

An annual National Drug Threat Assessment report released in October said Mexican heroin circulating in western states was spreading east of the Mississippi. It said abusers of opiates prescribed as painkillers, such as OxyContin, might be switching to heroin, as efforts to curb prescription-drug abuse take hold.

"Heroin took a backstage for a while," King said, "but now it's being marketed again to a new generation."

Before this year, heroin in the Louisville area "had all but disappeared," King said. The local drug task force didn't handle a single heroin trafficking case in 2005, he said.

But this fall, three illegal Mexican immigrants, Omar Robles-Munguia, 28; Francisco Rodriguez-Lopez, 32; and Rogelio Garcia-Mendez, 34; all of Louisville, were indicted on federal charges of participating in a heroin distribution conspiracy that carry a possible life sentence and deportation.

Seized in those arrests was "black tar heroin," so named because it looks like hot asphalt, said King, adding that it can be injected or smoked.

An undercover officer arranged to purchase more than a pound of heroin for about $54,000 from Robles-Munguia in six transactions from July through October, according to affidavits.

Affidavits said undercover officers also observed the sale of small amounts to customers throughout the city.

In one undercover buy, two suspects stored heroin in small balloons they spit out of their mouths, an affidavit said. Each dose was selling for $20, King said. In other buys, larger quantities, wrapped in balls of black tape, were handed to officers.

The three were arrested Oct. 13 at The Summit shopping center in eastern Jefferson County during an undercover buy, according to the affidavits, after one of them complained about a van -- the DEA surveillance vehicle -- parked nearby.

In another Louisville case, Alejandro Robels-Gomez, 31, an illegal immigrant from Mexico who lived in Indianapolis, pleaded guilty Nov. 28 in U.S. District Court to heroin trafficking.

He faces five to 40 years in prison and deportation. Chief U.S. District Judge John Heyburn III has scheduled sentencing for March 6.

Robels-Gomez admitted possessing with the intent to distribute more than 50 grams of heroin with a street value of about $5,000 Aug. 12.

Lab results determined the heroin was 69 percent pure, Assistant U.S. Attorney Robert Kilmartin said.
Regional problem

Officials say heroin cases are increasing in Southern Indiana and Northern and Central Kentucky.

In Indianapolis, 12 defendants await trial in U.S. District Court on charges of participating in a major heroin distribution ring.

John Dowd, chief of the drug prosecution unit for the U.S. attorney's office in Southern Indiana, said it has prosecuted several heroin cases in the past three or four years.

"We probably hadn't done two or three heroin cases in the six or eight years before these most recent ones," he said.

On Nov. 21, 10 people from Clarksville, Ind., and two from Louisville were among 13 people facing federal charges of being involved in a drug ring stretching from Chicago to Atlanta. Officers found 2 pounds of heroin in a car trunk in Charlestown.

Most of the heroin seized in Charlestown was white powder labeled "China White," a type usually injected or snorted and imported from South America, the Middle East and eastern Asia, King said.

Dowd said the suspects, about half of whom are illegal immigrants from Mexico, already had been indicted under seal at the time of their arrests on drug-trafficking charges relating to cocaine and methamphetamine.

Jim Liles, director of the Northern Kentucky Drug Strike Force, composed of local law enforcement officers who police four counties, said they've seized more than 9 ounces of heroin this year, "more than in the last five years total."

Sgt. Ken Holstein of the Covington Police Department said arrested street prostitutes have had needle marks and had been using "not only crack but heroin. It is definitely back. There is no doubt."
No synthetic reported

Capt. Don Burbrink of Louisville Metro Police narcotics, said its officers have seized amounts totaling less than a pound in the past year, mostly from individuals who had it for personal use.

There has been no report in the Louisville area of heroin containing fentanyl, a powerful synthetic opiate blamed for more than 100 deaths last year and earlier this year in several cities, including Chicago and Detroit, King said.

Janice Cunningham, a substance abuse supervisor for the Louisville Health Department, said its methadone clinic, where heroin addicts are treated, has not seen an increase in clients.

But she noted an increase in younger heroin users -- those 21 to 28 years old. The median age of the 186 addicts being treated at the clinic is 41, two years younger than in 2004, she said.

Across Kentucky, 274 people received treatment for heroin use in a state center in the year that ended Sept. 30, compared with 218 the previous year.

Reporter Kay Stewart can be reached at (502) 582-4114.

They've had a alot of heroine here from Mexico and alot of deaths as a result of it. Not overdoses....it's tainted in some way.