STATE'S ATTORNEY: HEROIN 'THE WORST CRIMINAL EVENT'

STATE'S ATTORNEY: HEROIN 'THE WORST CRIMINAL EVENT' Heroin is a snake. It does not separate teens from adults, the poor from the wealthy, or the innocent from the guilty. Anyone can be its prey should a person choose to risk its lethal bite. Heroin's allure, once thought to be a big-city illness, continues to spread among the people living in the small, serene agricultural cities and villages that make up the Illinois Valley, contributing to the deaths of 13 people between the ages of 15 and 49 since January 2003, according to records from coroner's offices in La Salle and Bureau counties. "It's the worst criminal event I have seen since becoming state's attorney in December 2000," said La Salle County State's Attorney Joe Hettel. Most hospital emergency room personnel throughout the Illinois Valley are unable to reveal how many overdose cases they have treated since January 2003. But officials agree heroin use has become a major concern. Heroin and other illegal drugs are rotting the Illinois Valley's workforce as well. Officials from Business Employment Skills Team, a nonprofit unemployment organization that uses federal grants to help educate the Illinois Valley workforce, says nearly half of all unemployed people between ages 18 and 25 refuse to take a pre-employment drug screen, and only half of those who agree pass. This is especially disconcerting for the Illinois Valley economy, considering nearly 10 percent of its estimated 30,000 population - stretching in an almost direct east-west line from Ottawa to DePue - lives at or below the federal poverty line and 15 percent of adults do not have a high school education, according to data compiled by the Illinois Poverty Summit and U.S. Census Bureau 2004 population estimates. "Heroin and all drugs are a concern for area employers," said BEST executive director Pam Furlan. "It's tough finding people who are willing to take a drug test or even pass one in the younger workforce." As heroin continues to tighten its noose, concerned residents and community leaders ask why their friends, family and neighbors still choose to play Russian roulette with a syringe or straw. But they will not surrender. Instead, police, community leaders and concerned citizens have organized for war. They've held prayer vigils, concerts, drug awareness seminars and a summit to organize their efforts. They are creating and joining community watch programs and anti-drug coalitions. A police chief and mayor plan to create their own drug task force. Illinois Valley Community College also has joined the fight, offering a continuing education course title, "Addictive Disorders," hoping, says the course's instructor, Sheridan Correctional Center assistant warden Adella Jordan-Luster, "to help the community understand the severity of addictions because awareness is the first step towards involvement." There are even billboards - purchased by a Christian group in Ottawa called "posted" - that face motorist coming into Ottawa's north, south, east and west entrances. The signs read: "DRUG DEALERS: You are entering a community where the people of faith have banned together to pray you out of business. We're watching. We're praying. We're involved." Know Your Enemy Chinese general Sun Tzu, who lived around 500 B.C., wrote, "...what enables an intelligent government and a wise military leadership to overcome others and achieve extraordinary accomplishments is foreknowledge. "Foreknowledge cannot be gotten from ghosts and spirits, can not be had by analogy, can not be found out by calculation - it must be obtained from people who know the conditions of the enemy" - translation of "Sun Tzu - The Art of War" by Thomas Cleary, 2005. Ann Meccia knows heroin. She's been addicted to it, and sold from 2001 to 2004, in her estimation, roughly $25,000 worth to people in the underground, illegal drug world that exists within the Illinois Valley's schools and barrooms. Most of her heroin sales took place after 2003, when heroin's popularity began to grow exponentially. Meccia's profits when to Charles W. Bartels III, 50, whom La Salle County prosecutors have dubbed the "Grandfather of Heroin." He was convicted in November 2004 of three Class 2 drug felonies and sentenced to the maximum 28 years in prison. Bartels currently is serving that sentence in Pinckneyville Correctional Center. "It's extremely bad in the Illinois Valley," Meccia said of heroin's popularity. "Remember, it always starts off small at first and then you become a victim. That one, 'What the hell, I'll try it' leads to addiction, then either death or jail." Finding heroin is easy and a well-known secret among users in the Illinois Valley, Meccia said. "All a person needs is a car and cash," she added. Most people drive up Interstate 55 to Chicago's west-side neighborhoods near the California Avenue and Jackson Boulevard intersection, Meccia said. Gang members control this territory where they make available a smorgasbord of illegal drugs including the favorites, crack cocaine and heroin. Each dealer controls a three-block area. They can be spotted loitering on street corners or near buildings and homes, sometimes wearing colors signifying what gang they are in. A purchaser drives slowly through the neighborhood with his or her window down and listens for the dealer to holler what he or she has for sale. If dealers yell "blows," then they have heroin. "Rocks" is for crack cocaine. At this point the purchaser gestures toward the dealer and places an order. It costs $10 for 1/10th of a gram of heroin, called a jab." There's also a special deal: $100 will get you 13 "jabs." After the order is placed, the dealer will tell the purchaser where to park and wait. If it's dark out, shut the lights off. If it's in the daytime, slouch in the seat. Both measures help keep the purchaser out of sight from police. The dealer will then run to his or her hidden stash, sometimes a hole in the ground covered by a random item. If the dealer doesn't have enough to complete the order, then he or she will run to the nearest supplier and make sure the transaction takes place. "I learned from people who knew," Meccia said. "That's how everybody does it . It's word of mouth, and if you're too scared, all you have to do is give someone money and they'll make the trip for you." After the transaction is made, it's time to start using. Most start off snorting it out of a fear of needles. It takes about 10 minutes for the drug to take effect using this method. It also commonly causes people to feel nauseous. Using a syringe, however, it only takes seven seconds for the drug's effects to take hold and people rarely feel sick afterwards. "When I first heard about needle users I looked down on them," Meccia said. "Then I tried it once. It was like overcoming a fear of heights. After you do it once, it's no longer a problem." Meccia said when she began to shoot heroin, she would dump half a "jab" into a spoon and cook it using a lighter. When it melted, she would add water until it equaled about 30 cubic centimeters. It took her about a week, using twice daily, to become an addict, she said. At the peak of her addiction, she would cook four "jabs" and needed a 100-gauge needle to fill up 70cc to 80 cc, without much water. Eventually, the veins in her arms wouldn't accept a needle, so she resorted to shooting in her neck, forehead, groin, anywhere she could find a vein. "At one point I couldn't find any veins to use and I would cry," she said. Then a friend taught her a trick. "I actually stuck the needle in my eye," she said. "It just so happens that your eyeball is one really big vein." Luckily for Meccia, she was able to become clean during the majority of 2004 while serving a one-year prison term for forgery. Meccia is healthy now and happily married to a man who doesn't drink, smoke or use illegal drugs. She also has two stepchildren, and the 26-year-old is exercising in an attempt to get back into shape. She requested her whereabouts be withheld out of fear that Bartels' friends might find her. "I wasted 10 years of my life on drugs," she said. "I want people to listen to my story. You don't want to live like I did, and if you use heroin, you will live like I did." The War On Illegal Drugs The insane desire to pacify a heroin urge has caused crime to soar in the Illinois Valley and surrounding area. In 2004, about 10 percent of the 646 felony cases in La Salle County were heroin-related, according to La Salle County State's Attorney's Office records. In those cases, police filed 79 charges, which include a variety of battery, theft, heroin possession and delivery charges. La Salle County State's Attorney's office records also included the charges of resisting a peace officer, deceptive practice, endangering life/health of a child and forgery. Of the 104 felony cases in Bureau County, 25 percent were heroin-related. No heroin-related criminal charges were filed in Putnam County in 2004. All of these cases are cited by state's attorney's office records in La Salle and Bureau counties as having heroin involved either as a direct reason for the charge or as a motive. "The problem is the nature of the addiction," said Bureau County State's Attorney Pat Herrmann. "It's so strong that it's tough for people to break it." Law enforcement officials have learned heroin users and dealers in the Illinois Valley do not mind making the 190-mile round trip to Chicago to purchase the illegal drug. "The addiction is so bad that many of the cars we confiscate now have 200,000 to 300,000 miles on them because they drive up to Chicago so much," Hettel said, adding that gas station drive-offs along interstate 80 and 55 have increased during the past two years. Ottawa police chief Brian Zeilmann said heroin use in Ottawa has become such a problem that he and Ottawa Mayor Bob Eschbach plan to create a drug task force within the department. The task force would be separate from the already active Illinois State Police Zone and La Salle Task Force. Zeilmann said once more tax dollars become available, he and city leaders will begin moving the plan forward by hiring additional police officers. "Our own task force will make us less reliant on the area task force because, honestly, those guys are too busy to get to everything," he said. Zeilmann also had conversations with Hettel about finding additional charges to bring against all illegal drug dealers. What they found is a rarely used charge buried deep within Illinois state statutes, called drug-induced homicide. It's a Class X felony that carries a sentence of 6-30 years. "If we can attack the dealer any way we can, we will," Zeilmann said. And those volleys will come in the criminal courtroom, where Hertel pledges to make an example of nearly anyone who contributes to a person's drug overdose death. "It's a wonderful sentencing arrangement when you're talking about some drug dealer who is peddling to our kids," he said. "If we get in that situation with a known drug dealer, we will use it without question and ask for a very lengthy prison term." Part of the reason for Hettel's tough rhetoric against drug dealers is personal, he said. He has a 9-year-old-child who soon will face peer pressure to use illegal drugs. "I spend a lot of time talking to parents about what they can do for their addicted child," he said. "It's depressing to know that whatever they try to do, their chances aren't that good because the addiction to heroin is so strong." Every Wednesday morning Hettel examines his updated criminal caseload. Recently he says, it seems that on average nearly half of the stack is heroin-related cases that predominantly involve people between the ages of 15 and 21. "It's disheartening to see so many young people affected," he said. "When you see how many kids are using heroin it compels you to look for answers." Regrettably, those answers point to an unbeatable war on illegal drugs when the good guys will not win. "It can't be stopped," Hettel said. "The country has been fighting drugs for years. At some point heroin will peak out and then decline. The question is how much damage heroin will cause all of us before it does, and how many unproductive members of society we'll be left with when it's done."









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