County needs more support

Heroin users come from all economic levels, an officer said.
By D.A. WILKINSON
VINDICATOR SALEM BUREAU
LISBON -- Law enforcement officials say Columbiana County needs more people, money and community involvement to deal with its growing drug problem.
Detective Sgt. Brian McLaughlin of the county sheriff's office and director of the county task force said recently that to deal with drugs, the unit should expand from its present seven officers to 14 officers.
Local departments pay the salaries of the officers they assign to the task force. McLaughlin said the task force is now up to strength after being short-handed.
McLaughlin's comments came after the task force seized 1,453 doses of heroin in 2005. That's almost seven times the total amount of heroin it seized from its formation in 1994 through 2004.
The task force's 137 new cases in 2005 was almost double those in 2004.
The task force also seized 1,182 grams of crack cocaine in 2005, almost as much as it seized from 1994 to 2004.
Task force officers are from the sheriff's office, Salem, Columbiana, East Liverpool, East Palestine, Lisbon and Liverpool and St. Clair Townships. The officers from Columbiana and East Palestine work part-time.
The task force is supposed to handle drug investigations in the county, although patrol officers will come across drugs in their work, according to county Prosecutor Robert Herron.
The prosecutor has been speaking out about the rise of heroin use in the county. Others, including law enforcement officers, have been speaking in schools.
Herron said the influx of heroin "is countywide."
Funding
The task force is trying to reverse its shrinking federal funding. The federal funds that pay for equipment and other expenses has dropped from $61,000 in 2001 to $24,000 in 2005.
Sheriff David Smith said that by uniting more counties, individual county task forces can get more federal money.
Columbiana County's task force is tied to Mahoning County's for funding. The two counties have a population of about 360,000.
Smith said more money is available to task force groups with a population of more than 500,000. He wants to add Carroll, Jefferson, Belmont, Harrison and Tuscarawas counties to Columbiana and Mahoning counties. All the counties have a total population of more than 700,000.
Smith was unsure how much money is available or how much the counties would seek for cameras, surveillance equipment, vehicles and other items in 2007.
The task force seized $118,193 in cash in 2005, along with 27 guns, six vehicles and a boat. But McLaughlin said the vehicles are sold at auction, the guns are destroyed and a portion of the money goes to drug education.
The task force spent just $16,750 on drugs and intelligence last year while removing $1.5 million in drugs from the county.
Smith said the task force's limited budget limits the amount of drug buys.
"If we run short or there is a large purchase, we see if the Drug Enforcement Agency has money available," Smith said.
Moving in
Factions from Michigan and New Jersey, as well as Cleveland, Columbus and Youngstown are all trying to get a piece of the drug market in the county, enforcement officials said.
"There are a lot more new faces new in town," McLaughlin said.
Two factions shot it out on St. Clair Avenue in East Liverpool late last year, he added.
The task force deals mostly with people at the lower end of the economic scale. But when it comes to users, McLaughlin said, "It's everybody. Some are 12 years old."
But the problem did not sneak up on the county. The task force sent officers for training about heroin use in 1996, after the county's first heroin case.
In the late 1990s, national law enforcement and drug treatment agencies and the media began to -- and still are -- predicting increased heroin use in rural areas. The increase was attributed to new producers that drove down the cost of the drug.
Smith said, "Salem is going through a shock factor. Heroin was in East Liverpool 10 years ago. Now it's in Salem."
wilkinson@vindy.com