Eleven arrested in blue drop heroin overdoses

MARION – MARMET has arrested 11 people in connection with the recent deadly heroin overdoses in Marion, Police Chief Bill Collins said Thursday evening.

During a press conference about two hours earlier, he announced that MARMET had made nine arrests, adding that he expected more arrests to follow soon. The latest two arrests were made on Mound Street. He did not provide names or arrest reports for the people arrested, saying the information is part of an active investigation. He said the people were local residents with some ties to Chicago, the source of the heroin.

All of them were arrested on charges of drug trafficking, and Collins said a person who is charged with trafficking is a supplier; he also said some had recent past convictions or charges for narcotics.

Collins said there have been 27 reported overdoses in the city, and Sheriff Tim Bailey said there have been five in the county as well, including the two fatal overdoses of 19-year-old Bailey Witzel and 31-year-old Christopher Wolford last week.

Without naloxone, Collins said, he's confident there would have been over 30 overdose deaths.

"It's been unbelievable, the last seven days. ... I get a page every time on my phone that we have an overdose, and my phone's been going off consistently every day and into the evenings," Collins said.

As police began responding to the overdoses, they posted warnings on Facebook, which Collins said has been effective.

"Since this started last Wednesday, the MARMET drug task force, which consists of officers from the Marion Police Department, Marion County Sheriff's Office and Marion County Prosecutor's Office, has been working around the clock to try to target and apprehend people that are directly responsible for selling this blue drop heroin," Collins said.

Blue drop heroin is the street name for the heroin, but law enforcement officials began using the term as well as the spike of overdoses began.

Collins said state laboratory tests show the heroin contains a high concentration of fentanyl. Because of that, merely touching the bag holding the drug can be dangerous.

County Prosecutor Brent Yager said possessing amounts of fentanyl greater than the legal limit is a felony on its own.

The Drug Enforcement Agency lists fentanyl as a schedule II narcotic, with penalties for possession of 40 to 399 grams and over 400 grams, as well as 10 to 99 grams for fentanyl analogue.

Yager said if it can be shown that an individual's felony drug trafficking led to a death, that person can be tried for involuntary manslaughter or murder. In two past cases, he said, text messaging was used to connect a drug dealer to an overdose victim.

When the heroin with fentanyl is injected, there is one symptom — the victim quits breathing, Collins said.

"Somebody that overdoses goes into a respiratory distress, they quit breathing. Shortly thereafter, their heart stops beating. Shortly thereafter, their brain cells are no longer active," Collins said. "You only have a certain amount of time to get Narcan (a commercial name for naloxone) to that person. I think that's why you would see deaths in the county rather than the city because people live so far out, and it takes longer for (an emergency) squad to get there."

Mayor Scott Schertzer said police and emergency services have been working every day to save lives and find the people selling the blue drop heroin, but he and other officials said they need state and federal help.

He said more rehabilitation options are needed, but Marion has seen an increase in options in the past five years, including outpatient services and work by churches.

"We feel like we're fighting this battle by ourselves, we feel like one hand is tied behind our back," Schertzer said. "This is a national epidemic — where are the feds? This is a statewide problem — where is the state? They cut our local government funding in half over the past two years. That's over a million dollars while they sit on nearly $400 billion in a rainy day fund while we fight this drug epidemic in our community."

Local officials have been in communication with the Ohio Attorney General's Office, and Bailey said he'd met with a member of Attorney General Mike DeWine's staff that morning.

Jill Del Greco, spokeswoman for the attorney general's office, said Ohio's Bureau of Criminal Investigation has an active task force on heroin but can only get involved at the request of local authorities. Del Greco said if there is an active BCI investigation, she can't confirm or comment on it.

Schertzer said federal authorities had helped in the past, and he also spoke about community action on local heroin use.

"A small fraction of our community that we're dealing with is consuming 99 percent of our resources and our tax funding for our safety forces," Schertzer said. "We cannot allow this small fraction of our population to define Marion, Ohio. This is not who we are. This is not Marion."

"I'm swimming in the ocean without a life preserver," Collins said of needing more staff to investigate and conduct undercover drug purchases.

Bailey also said there is only so much his office can do with two deputies and two investigators.

Collins said the department's priority is to find the drug sellers and take them off the street.

"It's our job to save lives. It's the fire department's job to save lives," Collins said. "It's not for us to judge who's using it and who's not using it. We do our effort in trying to take enforcement action and put people in jail that are selling."

"We understand people that use (heroin)," Bailey said. "They need treatment. What we don't like are these people that are bringing it to Marion, dealing it — they need to go to jail."

Collins said officials have received a greater amount of cooperation in finding drug dealers who sold the blue drop heroin.

"Most of (the overdose victims) are very forthright about where it came from and, to use a quote from one of the addicts, when she took it and it hit her, it was like the Fourth of July," Collins said. "She knew she was checking out right before she did, and so unless they're there with the Narcan within five, six minutes, it's not going to end well."

After overdoses, though, victims can have a different outlook on life and want to turn their lives around.

"The vast majority don't want to be an addict," Collins said.

Collins said the past eight days have been difficult for Marion law enforcement.

"We become numb to a lot of things because we do them so often," he said. "This is probably one of those things that you never get used to. When you show up and someone's not breathing and you know they're going to die unless they get assistance from the squad, it's something that everybody takes home with them every night."