Law enforcement agencies in Wisconsin, upper Michigan teaming up to stop rural drug activity

Law enforcement officials in northeast Wisconsin and the Upper Peninsula of Michigan are trying to combat a perceived notion among drug dealers that doing business in rural areas is safe and easy. In response, agencies are partnering to become educated about drugs in their regions, and beef up patrols and crack down on drug activity, Nathan Phelps reports for the Green Bay Press-Gazette. (Shawano County Sheriff's Department photo: A deputy carries seized marijuana plants)

"We have intelligence coming out of the Wisconsin state prison system that some of your rural communities are really open markets,"Capt. Tom Tuma of the Shawano County Sheriff’s Department in Wisconsin told Phelps. "Part of that is the perception we don’t have the law enforcement resources that some of the larger jurisdictions do . . . and that’s why you’re seeing these partnerships form between agencies. We’re trying to send a clear message that ‘We’re on to you,’ we’re going to work it aggressively and we’re going to try to deter them from further exploiting the rural areas of central Wisconsin."

The results have been a sharp increase in arrests, Phelps writes. Officials working together in Wisconsin's Marinette County, population 41,000, and Michigan's Menominee County, population 23,000, made 76 drug-related arrests in 2013, up from 50 in 2012. Last year, 39 of those were for heroin, use of which is rising in many places. In Wisconsin, heroin-related arrests rose from 267 in 2008 to 672 in 2012, an increase of 152 percent, and 408 arrests were made in the first six months of 2013, according to information from the state Department of Justice.

Crossing borders hasn't been a problem for rural law enforcers, some of whom have made drug arrests as far away as Chicago and Milwaukee, Phelps writes. Detective Sgt. Gordon Kowaleski of Shawano County told Phelps, “You have to look at it as a regional problem. Then it’s up to the individual agencies to form task forces and working groups and to work together to address it. It’s not a problem that is isolated in Shawano County; it’s all throughout the Wisconsin—including northern Wisconsin.”

Law enforcement and legislators say stopping drug activity in rural areas starts with "community support and diversion programs aimed at getting help to users," Phelps writes. "Teaching the public to look for signs of possible addiction is another tool law enforcement uses to try to get ahead of the problem." Tuma told Phelps, “The big danger in a lot of communities is ignoring it and then one day, three or four years from now, they wake up and have lost total control of their community, and the property crime rate is through the roof. When you wait for that point, it’s too late. Now you’re going to dump millions of dollars into something you should have been addressing all along." (Read more)