(WBIR - KNOXVILLE) One place looms over all others today when area police and prosecutors talk about heroin: Detroit.
It's become a prime source of the drug in Tennessee, Kentucky, Ohio, West Virginia and western Pennsylvania.
The Motor City is an ongoing focus of investigations by the Knoxville Police Department and prosecutions by Knox County District Attorney General Charme Allen's office.
On Wednesday, federal drug officers and U.S. attorneys from the area including the Eastern District of Tennessee met in Detroit for a "summit." They pledged a special emphasis on cracking down on a Michigan pipeline that has been enriching dealers and ensnaring addicts in the Volunteer State and nearby states for the last several years.
Heroin use locally and nationally knows no economic or social barrier. It takes in middle class and affluent people as much as it takes in poor people, according to KPD Sgt. Josh Shaffer, a supervisor with the department's Repeat Offenders Squad.
Everyone from young athletes to attorneys to store managers have fallen under its spell here, Shaffer said. While investigating a heroin case recently in Lonsdale, police encountered a grandmother from West Knoxville with a needle in her arm, he said.
It can be anyone, he said.
"If you want to see what a heroin addict looks like, go to the Food Court at West Town Mall," Shaffer said. "That's what a heroin addict looks like."
In Knox County courtrooms, some 18 Detroit-related dealers have been sentenced and imprisoned over the last 18 months.
CHEAP AND AVAILABLE
In Knoxville, the Detroit heroin pipeline opened up when dealers from there discovered a hunger here for prescription opiates such as oxycodone. Michigan dealers supplied pills to eager opiate addicts.
Interstate 75 made for an easy means of delivery.
Up and down I-75, dealers have stopped in towns and sold their wares, according to Shaffer.
Like traveling salesmen, dealers found they could stop off at motels off Merchant Drive, make a delivery of a certain allotment of pills and then head on down the road, selling more pills in other cities.
The market changed, however, as pills became more expensive. Supplies began to shrink.
Tennessee gained a reputation as having one of the worst prescription pill problems in America. As a result, public pressure resulted in the shutdown of pill mills, clinics where some doctors had freely written prescriptions for users. Florida cracked down on its notorious wide-open pill mill market, eliminating another supply source. Pharmaceutical companies took steps to make pill abuse harder.
Heroin proved cheaper to produce. Detroit dealers and local users quickly figured out the drug, an opiate just like oxycodone, offered an appealing alternative, said Shaffer.
"So it's, 'We've got these pills or -- this is cheaper,' " he said.
Detroit isn't the sole source of heroin. KPD and the District Attorney General's Office last year worked a heroin sales conspiracy out of Chicago that took down a number of players.
But it remains the prime source, according to Sean McDermott, spokesman for the Knox County District Attorney General's Office who also prosecutes drug cases.
Heroin ends up being sold in the Knoxville market a couple different ways. There are independent dealers who have their own network of customers, according to Shaffer.
And there are more sophisticated operators who recruit family members to come down to Knoxville, set up shop and create a support network, said McDermott.
"They don't want to sell out of where they live, so they'll set up a trap house," McDermott said. "They'll put the trap house in another person's name. They'll cover their bills."
Whether intentional or not, the dealers are following a basic business model, much like a company does when it sets up a salesman with a product territory, he said.
Rickey "Key" Brown Jr., 32, is just one example of a dealer who discovered Knoxville's lucrative market. He recruited family members including his mother, Helen Mancill, 55, to set up shop locally.
They even opened a restaurant, Chalmers Grill and Night Club, 513 N. 17th St., that served as a front for heroin sales. Helen Mancill grew up in Detroit on Chalmers Street, thus the origin of the name, McDermott said.
The business was just across the street from the Medic Regional Blood Center, around the corner from Squire's liquor store and a block or so away from the Joy of Music School. It was also within easy walking distance of the University of Tennessee campus and apartments where UT students live.
The network thrived, sending back money and guns to Detroit, until police and prosecutors shut down the conspiracy. On court order, Chalmers was shuttered last year.
Brown received an eight-year prison sentence. Mancill got a 10-year term, part of which she is now serving in the Knox County Jail.
Several people with Detroit ties have been sentenced this year in Criminal Court.
In May, Detroiters Eddie Ross Taylor, 32, and Christopher Jackson, 35, were sentenced in Knox County for their roles in a separate heroin conspiracy.
The case began when KPD Officer Phil Jinks developed information that people from Detroit were using Greyhound buses and rental cars to shuttle the drug from Michigan, according to the District Attorney General's Office. They used a number of motels for their operations as well as the Steeplechase Apartments on Central Avenue Pike, not far from I-75's Merchant Drive exit.
Jackson got a 15-year sentence, Taylor a 12-year term.
In June, Detroit native Khari Keyatou Jones, 38, pleaded guilty to four counts of selling heroin in a drug-free zone. He'd sold heroin to a confidential informant working for the FBI in an alley near 2229 Mississippi Ave., not far from the Western Heights housing development and Beaumont Elementary Magnet School.
A KILLER DRUG
Knoxville area investigators have been tracking Detroit heroin dealers for the last several years.
In July, Detroit area authorities announced the problem had gotten so bad there that they were stepping up enforcement efforts, including staging a series of raids. Suburban users are driving into Detroit from places such as Oakland County to score in a notorious blighted neighborhood, according to police.
The problem is similar to what authorities have seen here in East Tennessee. Users who favored prescription pills have begun switching to heroin.
In Oakland County, heroin-related deaths have risen from 18 in 2012 to 61 last year, according to the Oakland County Medical Examiner's Office. So far this year there have been 19 confirmed heroin deaths there, although officials suspect the true number is higher.
For example, in 2012 in Oakland County there were 316 deaths tied to all opiates, whether it was heroin, oxycodone or some other variety. Last year, opiate deaths tallied at 324.
National and regional figures show a rise in deaths related to heroin and opiate abuse.
Heroin overdose deaths in the U.S. tripled from 2010 to 2013, according to the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Eastern District of Tennessee, citing the most current figures available.
Across the country drug overdoses exceeded 43,000 last year. Heroin use doubled from 2007 to 2012, according to figures released last week, and deaths in the Midwest including Michigan and Ohio are up 62 percent.
In Kentucky last year, there were 1,087 drug overdose deaths, compared with 1,010 in 2013, according to a July report from the state's Office of Drug Control Policy. Of 795 deaths in which autopsies determined that drugs were to blame, almost 30 percent were attributed to heroin. In 2013, the same death rate was about 32 percent, according to Drug Control Policy figures.
'EXPORTING OUR PROBLEMS'
U.S. attorneys from Tennessee as well as Michigan, Kentucky, Pennsylvania and Ohio last week announced they were starting a cooperative effort with federal and local authorities to curtail heroin sales. They say they will focus on the obvious pipeline that exists between Detroit and outlying cities such as Knoxville, Lexington, Ky., and Cincinnati.
"We know in Michigan that we've seen a huge spike in prescription pill abuse," said U.S. Attorney Barbara McQuade of the Eastern District of Michigan last week at a press conference. "We've also seen a serious resurgence in heroin as addicts turn to that as a cheaper alternative for their opioid addiction. That has resulted in some very significant problems in Michigan, and we seem to be exporting our problems to other states."
DA Allen's office already cooperates with federal prosecutors and agents in local heroin investigations. They anticipate that will continue. They have compared notes to see which office could get the most amount of time for a defendant on a case, said McDermott.
The District Attorney General's Office also is trying to track local heroin deaths and overdoses, although it's an imperfect chore right now.
For example, said McDermott, last year there were 204 drug overdose deaths in Knox County. Of that number, 24 were confirmed to be solely from heroin or another opiate, and 44 represented the use of heroin and some other drug. They're still waiting to get forensic results on dozens of other deaths.
This year, there already have been 144 overdose deaths reported, and the office is checking on how many are related to heroin or another opiate, McDermott said.
Prosecutions are expected to continue. McDermott cannot discuss cases that may develop.
"We can say that we are actively pursuing these cases," he said. "Anytime that we can establish a conspiracy, we're going to prosecute those cases."
Shaffer said it's hard to tell if heroin use is still on the rise in Knoxville, is at its peak or is beginning to drop. Heroin and opiate sales and abuse are certainly a prime focus of KPD investigations today, he said.
"We don't know if we're at a plateau or if we're on the other side," he said. "But you have to keep fighting."
It would be a mistake for police to assume trafficking is abating locally, he said, when in fact, "It may be the beginning."
The Detroit Free Press contributed to this report.
