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Trumbull County on ‘record pace for drug cases,’ prosecutor says
By Ed Runyan
WARREN
Of the 47 people indicted Tuesday by a Trumbull County grand jury, 24 had drug charges.
That number is not terribly surprising to Prosecutor Dennis Watkins, who said the county is “on a record pace for drug cases.”
So far in 2014, 39.62 percent of the cases presented to a grand jury were drug cases, “which is a record number,” Watkins said.
“That’s a high number of drug cases; the highest I’ve seen.”
Even the total number of criminal cases of all kinds has risen — with 950 last year, which tied the previous high set in 2005.
Watkins said he believes drug use is a big reason why the total number of cases is rising — especially break-ins and robberies, which in many cases are committed to feed someone’s drug habit.
Chris Becker, assistant prosecutor, noted that the last four aggravated-murder cases he has tried involved drugs.
David Martin got the death penalty for killing a 21-year-old Warren man and attempting to kill a 29-year-old woman.
He had bought marijuana from the woman and smoked it with both victims before shooting them.
“Louis Mann killed his mom and dad to satisfy a habit and get high,” Becker said.
“Richard Clark had drugs in his possession,” Becker said of another man who was convicted of murder last year.
Eugene Henderson and Eugene Cumberbatch were convicted of killing 11-year-old Lloyd McCoy Jr. and Marcus Chaney, 26, in 2009 in Warren. They fired the fatal shots to kill Chaney over drugs they thought Chaney had stolen, Becker noted. McCoy was hit by accident.
Watkins said Ohio law considers heroin possession the least-serious felony, punishable by a year or less in prison, but he remembers in 1984, when he first became county prosecutor, the penalty for heroin possession was 10 to 20 years in prison.
He recalls that one defendant with multiple heroin-possession offenses got a prison sentence of 40 to 80 years.
“There’s a need for stricter enforcement; more incarceration,” Watkins said, especially for those who commit drug crimes along with other crimes and those who are repeat drug offenders.
Of the 23 drug cases in the grand jury report, 17 of them were investigated by the Warren Police Department, which has stepped up drug enforcement when it created its Street Crimes Unit about 15 months ago.