Ohio unveiling efforts targeting drug trafficking

KANTELE FRANKO

Asso­ci­ated Press

COLUMBUS — New efforts to crack down on drug traf­fick­ing in Ohio include the intro­duc­tion of leg­is­la­tion tar­get­ing hid­den com­part­ments in vehi­cles and changes in how dri­vers can use the State High­way Patrol hot­line, which will get a new number.

Author­i­ties are using a mul­ti­fac­eted approach to try to stop peo­ple from trans­port­ing ille­gal drugs through Ohio and to its com­mu­ni­ties, said Lt. Anne Ral­ston, a patrol spokes­woman. Last year, troop­ers seized nearly 6 mil­lion grams of ille­gal nar­cotics and con­tra­band val­ued at more than $69 mil­lion and made more than 6,000 drug arrests.

“When we look at how drugs are mov­ing across the U.S., Ohio is really in the thick of this,” she said. “A major­ity of the routes that drugs are tak­ing either go through or to Ohio.”

State Sen. Jim Hughes, a Colum­bus Repub­li­can, intro­duced leg­is­la­tion this week to make it a fourth-degree felony if a hid­den metal com­part­ment for stash­ing drugs is found inside a vehi­cle. Offend­ers could spend 18 months in prison or be fined $5,000.

He said the patrol approached him with pic­tures of the com­part­ments and told him the leg­is­la­tion was needed. He said traf­fick­ers some­times place the com­part­ments inside gas tanks or some­where along the under­side of the vehi­cle as they move drugs across state lines.

“I had no idea,” he said Fri­day. “It’s very cre­ative, unfor­tu­nately, to get by law enforcement.”

Ral­ston said cur­rent law makes it tough for law enforce­ment offi­cers to pur­sue charges if they dis­cover a hid­den com­part­ment but no drugs inside it, she said.

Mean­while, troop­ers are turn­ing to the pub­lic for help. The patrol will encour­age dri­vers to call its hot­line not only when they need help or spot an impaired dri­ver, but also to report drug activity.

More than 125 exist­ing blue signs posted along Ohio high­ways instruct trav­el­ers to dial 1–877-7-PATROL if they need help, but the patrol is replac­ing that num­ber with a sim­pler one, (hash)677, at no extra cost to phone users. Part of the rea­son­ing is that it can be tough to dial the old hot­line when but­tons on some mod­ern phones aren’t labeled with let­ters in the tra­di­tional style of older phones, Ral­ston said. On cell­phones with but­tons arranged like a stan­dard com­puter key­board, for exam­ple, hit­ting the let­ter “P” isn’t nec­es­sar­ily the same as punch­ing in a “7,” as it would be on older phones.

The patrol will rein­force its anti-drug mes­sage by putting signs at entrances to the state along major routes, warn­ing trav­el­ers that “Drug Traf­fick­ers Go to Prison.”

The switch in hot­line num­bers won’t affect how those calls come in for regional dis­patch­ers, who are get­ting extra train­ing to han­dle any new drug activ­ity reports.

When such calls come in, dis­patch­ers will route them to the patrol’s crim­i­nal intel­li­gence unit unless they require an imme­di­ate response from a trooper or local law enforce­ment, Ral­ston said. A call about a dri­ver spot­ted using drugs behind the wheel likely would prompt author­i­ties to fol­low up imme­di­ately, but a tip about more ambigu­ous sus­pi­cious activ­ity would likely be routed to the intel­li­gence unit and could be used to help iden­tify trends.

The hot­line project, which includes replac­ing the phone num­ber on the blue high­way signs, is cost­ing the patrol more than $22,000. It’s pay­ing for the project with funds from col­lected from pre­vi­ous cases, such as cur­rency seized in drug busts.

The patrol also plans to increase its col­lab­o­ra­tion with other law enforce­ment agen­cies, includ­ing more so-called “shield details” in which law enforce­ment sat­u­rate a geo­graphic area for a set time to tar­get traf­fic prob­lems and crime in that area.

Posted by AP News on Feb 24 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.