Sunday, July 26, 2015
By Joe Gorman
YOUNGSTOWN
It’s a form of higher education that few enter.
The cost is very high: your freedom and, in some cases, your life.
That’s how Youngstown police Chief Robin Lees describes the world of drug dealing in the wake of the indictments of 37 people July 16 for their role in a ring distributing heroin in the city.
Police began rounding up the suspects Tuesday, and 27 were arraigned in Mahoning County Common Pleas Court on Thursday for their roles in the ring. Several of those arraigned are well known to law enforcement not just as dealers but as users as well.
Lees, who has worked in various narcotics units for most of his law-enforcement career, said people who deal drugs regularly go through a process he equates roughly to getting an education.
With their first arrest, they earn their high school diploma, he said. With arrest No. 2, they receive their bachelor’s degree.
Every subsequent arrest is another rung on the ladder of “higher education,” toward a graduate degree.
“With each arrest, they learn how they got caught,” Lees said. “They study the techniques the police use, and they learn how to market themselves better and their product. There’s few that get out of it.”
Prosecutors say about a dozen people were the main distributors in the ring, and they face charges such as engaging in a pattern of corrupt activity and trafficking in heroin.
Among those in the ring are Ashanti Bunch, 39, of Lansdowne Boulevard and Michael Cain, 37, of Cherry Hill Avenue, who were sentenced in 2001 as part of the infamous Ayers Street Playas street gang for their criminal activity, which included drug dealing. They were each sentenced to two years in prison for engaging in a pattern of corrupt activity.
Bunch has a criminal record stretching back to when he was 16. In 1995 he was charged with felonious assault for his role in the murder of another drug dealer.
He and his two co-defendants were found not guilty by a jury, who reports said urged Bunch and the pair on trial with him to make drastic changes in their lifestyle before they wound up dead or in prison.
After 2001, Cain stayed off the grid until a 2012 trafficking-in-heroin charge, for which he received probation.
Bunch was much more busy after 2001, court records show. In 2006, he received an 18-month prison sentence for weapons and drug charges, and in 2009 he received a three-year prison sentence after pleading guilty to four fourth-degree felony counts of drug trafficking.
The man investigators say is the leader of the ring, Terrence Rushton, 32, received a 15-month prison sentence in September 2013 for trafficking in heroin,
Greg Wilson, a detective with the Poland Township Police Department who headed the investigation for the Mahoning Valley Law Enforcement Task Force, said some members who were indicted have been under investigation for years. He said people who sell drugs and get arrested return to the drug trade for one simple reason.
“It’s easy money,” Wilson said.
Lees said those in the drug trade will often return because it’s what they know.
Mahoning County Assistant Prosecutor Martin Desmond, who is prosecuting the cases along with the state attorney general’s office, said the key to stopping repeat drug-dealing offenders is to take away the incentive for them to deal.
He said longer prison terms can get them off the streets temporarily, but when they get out of prison they go right back to the drug trade because it’s what they know and it’s easy.
“Obviously, the longer the sentence you can give them, the longer they won’t be on the street selling drugs,” Desmond said. “But you can’t make them stop doing it.”
Part of taking away the incentive also means drying up the market for drugs, Desmond said.
“As long as there’s a demand for it, they will try to make money doing it,” Desmond said. “There’s not a lot you can do to rehabilitate someone if they don’t want to be rehabilitated.”
Desmond said he would like to go back to the old sentencing system, in which defendants might receive a sentence of five to 15 years, and even if they are released from prison early, they are still under supervision and they know someone is watching them.
Now, once their prison time and a short period of supervision ends, they often are unsupervised.
But the dealers are not just well known to law enforcement. Continuing a trend started in December when 57 people were indicted on state and federal charges involving another heroin ring, authorities also charge those addicted to the drug as well. One of those charged is Katie Grist, 29, of Market Street. She faces four fifth-degree felony counts of possession of heroin and a single fourth-degree felony count of possession of heroin.
Since she turned 18, she has spent a portion of almost every year behind bars.
In 2012, Grist was one of six people indicted for their role in a burglary ring, in which members of the ring burglarized homes and then sold the items to get money to buy drugs. She was sentenced to four years in prison in that case, and has also served prison sentences of a year and 16 months for other crimes. She also has served several county jail sentences.
Records show she has violated probation four times and for all the charges she has faced, only three times has she been arrested on drug charges. Her charges mostly are tied to stealing to get money to buy drugs.
The degree of felonies for the charges Grist now faces mandate probation unless certain criteria are met because the Legislature wants to keep low-level felony offenders out of prison to ease overcrowding. Desmond said he has prosecuted Grist at least four times and what makes a lot of her crimes worse is that she has stolen from family members to support her habit. That also makes it harder to punish an addict because oftentimes a family member will not want a harsh sentence for their loved one.
Desmond said most drug offenders do not belong in prison but need to be in a treatment facility. By getting them off drugs, they not only dry up the market but stop committing crimes to support their habit, he said. He added that when dealing with a defendant who is a drug user with no record or a minor record, he usually agrees to work out a sentence stacked more toward treatment than punishment, but he added that for repeat offenders, he has to look at punishment as well to protect the public.
“You can only help someone for so long,” Desmond said.
But as always, prosecutors and police have different opinions. Lees and Wilson both said significant, long-term sentences are needed to halt repeat drug offenders. Lees said the type of sentences that need to be doled out should be like a sentence someone gets for murder, in the 15-to-25-year range.
“A significant jail sentence is the only deterrent,” Lees said.
“Until someone puts their foot down and puts them in prison for a significant amount of time, they’ll continue doing it,” Wilson added.