TRAFFICKING Massive police effort led to drug arrests

Ink stamps on the packages of heroin are a type of advertising.
By PATRICIA MEADE
VINDICATOR CRIME REPORTER
YOUNGSTOWN -- For Joseph Rolla, seeing heroin users run to be first in line to make a buy "was like watching kids line up for the ice cream man."
Rolla's surveillance, from a discreet distance, was needed as the Mahoning Valley Law Enforcement Task Force built its case against drug traffickers working the New York-Youngstown corridor. Two closely knit operations supplied this area with heroin and cocaine, mostly heroin.
A kilo (2.2 pounds) of high-quality heroin can cost $300,000 and when cut and sold on the streets can easily bring a profit of three times that amount. A kilo of crack costs $35,000.
Rolla and Robert Patton, Youngstown patrolmen and task force members, talked about the case that resulted this month in the federal indictment of 73 men and women -- 57 from Youngstown and surrounding communities, the rest from New York.
As Rolla described the scramble to the seller's van, Patton remembered that, unfortunately, Rolla's van was a near match.
"Joe's had buyers follow him and beep," Patton said, grinning.
The officers then described how sales were made, with pagers, pay phones and cell phones.
How this works
Customers called their dealer's pager and entered either a return number or their customer code identification and dollar amount.
The dealer's pager, for example, might show the incoming call as: "#12 -- 120," meaning customer 12 wanted to buy $120 worth of heroin, six bindles.
A bindle of heroin, roughly the size of the head of a wooden kitchen match, represents one $20 dose. A bundle equals 10 bindles.
Once the seller got the page, he would call the customer back and set up a meeting place, typically parking lots at Big Lots on Midlothian Boulevard, KFC on South Avenue or Check N Go on Center Street.
It wasn't unusual to see four or five cars assemble in the designated parking lot, waiting for the van to pull in. Once it did, the buyers would follow the van to a quiet side street nearby, then trade their cash for a fix.
Some heroin users need only a $20 bindle to keep them high all day. Others need a bundle to sustain the euphoria.
While they waited in parking lots for the "ice cream man," buyers were on alert for police, Rolla said.
Not so after they had their drugs.
"They'd be so focused, a single-track mind, until they could get to a place to ingest it," Patton said.
Patton recalled pulling over a car then knocking on the window, trying to get the driver's attention. The driver had a tourniquet around his arm and a heroin-filled syringe poised over a vein.
"He turned to me and, without rolling down the window, said, 'Yeah, ya got me' and kept shooting up!" Patton said. "That's how bad he wanted it."
Users can also smoke or snort the drug, known on the streets as smack, H, skag and junk. Heroin, a highly addictive drug, is processed from morphine, a substance found in the seedpod of the Asian poppy plant.
Some users experiment with snorting a few times and then start shooting up. It's not long before they're injecting it.
Longtime investigation
Bob Magnuson, head of the MVLETF, praised the efforts of the unit that exists through grant money and officers on loan from surrounding law enforcement agencies in Mahoning, Trumbull and Columbiana counties. He said drugs cross all socioeconomic lines and drug crimes exist in the affluent suburbs and inner-city neighborhoods.
The massive indictment this month had its roots in an investigation that began in 1996. The indictment was the result of a 2-year-long investigation by the New York and Cleveland FBI, which has an office in Boardman, MVLETF and the bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.
Local defendants live in Youngstown, Boardman, Campbell, Brookfield, Girard, Struthers, Poland, Austintown, Lowellville, Leetonia, Hubbard, Niles, and Sharon and Sharpsville, Pa.
"If not for the wire, this group would still be operating," Patton said. "We also got lucky with informants -- a lot from suburbia, people who had never been in trouble before."
Court-ordered wiretaps allowed the interception of calls to seven cellular phones and two pagers. Three of the cell phone lines originated in New York.
Patton said the wiretaps led all the way to Stivet Salcedo in New York.
Over the years, members of the Salcedo family maintained homes in Youngstown. The "main guy" in the Dominican Republic, the founder of the drug business, also profited from drug sales, likely $15,000 a month, Patton said.
It was a family business, passed down from father to sons and cousins, Rolla said. The Youngstown area, he said, was franchised out.
"They looked at it as a legitimate business," Patton said. "That's why the money always flowed back to the founder."
Brand recognition
The heroin, stamped with a brand name such as "candyman," arrived from New York in minivans equipped with secret compartments operated by hydraulics. The stamp was a form of advertising; users associate good or bad heroin by the brand stamp.
Rolla said the hydraulics used to open secret panels engage after a sequence of operations, such as pushing the door lock then the rear defroster button and so forth.
He said drug couriers often traveled with women and children to New York to pick up drugs to make it look like a family outing, thinking they'd appear less suspicious to police.
Rolla and Patton said heroin was brought to town every two weeks or so, depending on demand.
The trafficking ring mostly dealt with heroin, which Rolla and Patton said is in big demand now because it's cheaper than the painkiller OxyContin, an opiate analgesic. An OxyContin pill can sell for $80.
Patton said doctors prescribe too much OxyContin for patients with, say, back injuries. The patients then sell on the streets what they don't need.
"I was surprised at how young some of the heroin users are," Rolla said. "I always associated heroin with an older crowd, but these kids are in their 20s."
To get money to support their habit, some of the young addicts shoplifted at malls, engaged in check scams or ripped off their parents, he said.
meade@vindy.com