Fentanyl Part 7: Law Enforced?

“Here is the cold hard truth — we could increase prison sentences by 10-fold, cut them in half, then triple them, and all those changes would do absolutely nothing to protect our families and loved ones from future fentanyl tragedies.”

— Taylor Pendergrass, ACLU Colorado

The East Baton Rouge District Attorney’s Office is on the fifth floor of the Baton Rouge City Hall building at 222 St. Louis Street. This building also houses the mayor’s office, city hall, the clerk of court’s office and the public defender’s office, to name a few.

My interview with East Baton Rouge District Attorney Hillar Moore and Jon Daily, the deputy finance director and director of special projects for the DA’s Office started at 8 a.m. on an unusually hot and muggy Wednesday in August. I arrived about 15 minutes early and unknowingly rode the elevator up with Daily, who I realized was Daily when we both got off on the fifth floor.

Daily is an energetic Certified Public Accountant who has been working with the district attorney’s office since 2017. His LinkedIn profile reads “strategic, multifaceted, malleable, reliable, authentic, passionate and experienced.”

Within five minutes of sitting down, he had already handed me a printout of a power point presentation: “Some talking points on fentanyl, overdoses and EBR Parish, in no particular order,” told me about his past issues with addiction and used the words “co-occurring disorders” multiple times.

And it wasn’t even 8 a.m.

Daily’s passion and energy are not overkill. There’s an immediacy when it comes to fentanyl awareness. He is in recovery and understands the pain of those suffering from addiction. Daily is also the boots-on-the-ground guy for the DA’s office, he does all of the street outreach and works with local activists on public campaigns to provide information and harm reduction resources to those suffering from addiction. While I have spent only a few months researching this drug, Daily has spent years investigating its deadly effect on people in East Baton Rouge Parish.

For example, while heart disease and cancer are still the leading causes of death in our country, people are more likely to die from an opioid overdose than from a car crash or gun assault, according to statistics from the National Safety Council. And in 2017, Louisiana’s overdose rate was 24.5 per 100,000 people, 13 percent higher than the national average, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. And it rose more than 50 percent from 2019 to 2020, according to the CDC.

I was intrigued by Daily’s early morning energy and passion related to Fentanyl, and as soon as Moore arrived promptly at 8 a.m., we all sat down in his office.

Moore has been the district attorney for East Baton Rouge Parish since 2009. He has a full head of gray hair and a soft, almost raspy voice. I get the feeling that he doesn’t enjoy being in the spotlight, but he understands that it’s part of the elected position.

Moore was recently featured in the Netflix documentary, “I Just Killed my Dad,” about an abused teenager from Baton Rouge who allegedly killed his father in self-defense, and Daily was excited to tell him about the recent ratings this August morning.

“It’s number three on Netflix,” Daily said. Moore just shrugged his shoulders.

“I don’t watch TV,” he said.

He reads. A lot. His conference table is covered in studies and paperwork and printed out power point presentations. His bookshelves are filled with books. This is the third time I have interviewed Moore and every time, he offers me something to read.

This time was no different.

“If you want to understand how we got here, read this,” he said, tossing me the book, “Dreamland: The True Tale of America’s Opiate Epidemic,” by Sam Quinones. I jotted down the title, checked it out from the library the next day and finished it two days before I started writing this story. The book explains how prescribed OxyContin infiltrated small rural towns and suburbs in the United States while at the same time heroin began its rise, originating from one small Mexican county. The simultaneous explosion of both powerful narcotics – one an opioid and legally prescribed in pill form and one an opiate and illegally sold by a Mexican drug cartel – shaped the trajectory of the last 26 years. Fentanyl is the third phase of painkillers, a cheaper, more potent, and illicitly manufactured opioid.

“Ninety-eight percent of all users started out addicted to pain pills,” Moore said, adding that the fentanyl in East Baton Rouge Parish comes from China, Russia and Mexico.

I wanted to understand what law enforcement is doing to eliminate fentanyl from the streets of Baton Rouge.

I had my list of questions prepared for Moore and Daily.

What is being done to combat this drug?

What are the sentencing guidelines?

How do you get it off the street?

How is it affecting other crime?

Is it as bad as it feels?

The first four questions required complex answers. The last one was crystal clear.

“Yes,” they both replied, almost in unison.

Back to the first four questions.

The illicit drug industry is all about supply verse demand. When the prescription monitoring program kicked in, limiting the number of opioids prescribed, pill mills dried up in Louisiana and across the country, leaving a void in product for those suffering with addiction. Heroin became a cheaper and easier substitution. When fentanyl arrived on the scene as an even cheaper and easier substitution for heroin, the demand for that grew. Well-organized drug cartels thrive in a climate ripe with police distrust and a nation-wide shortage of police officers on the street. Those elements plus a world filled with technology make it difficult to arrest and prosecute drug dealers.

“No one cooperates anymore,” Moore said. “We know everything is done digitally. When someone dies, the evidence is right there. You order a pizza by phone. You order heroin by phone, but it’s different now. Twenty to 25 years ago, people cooperated. But now the distrust of the police, people afraid to die and who don’t want to seem like a snitch, that’s all part of it. I don’t see that changing in a long time. If we don’t get digital evidence, it’s hard to make a case.”

In August 2020, LSU’s Social Research and Evaluation Center released the study, “The Criminal Justice Response to the Opioid Crisis in East Baton Rouge Parish: Current Actions and Future Considerations.” Daily handed me a copy of the report during the interview.

The study highlights the 2020 state of the opioid crisis in EBR, looks at current and future of the IPS grant to respond to the crisis and lists recommendations for criminal justice practitioners regarding the opioid crisis in the community.

IPS stands for Innovative Prosecution Solutions for Combatting Violent Crime. It was awarded to the DA’s office in October 2018 to “reduce opioid-related deaths by fostering inter-agency collaboration to disrupt local opioid supply chains, educate the community about the dangers of opioid abuse and addiction, and provide support for individuals with opioid use disorder.” Its partner agencies include: Baton Rouge Police Department, Drug Enforcement Administration, East Baton Rouge Coroner’s Office, East Baton Rouge Parish District Attorney’s Office, as well as the EBRPDA Crime Strategies Unit, East Baton Rouge Parish Emergency Medical Services, East Baton Rouge Sheriff’s Office, Louisiana Board of Pharmacy – Prescription Monitoring Board, Louisiana Department of Corrections – Probation/Parole, Louisiana State University, U.S. Attorney’s Office and the U.S. Postal Inspector.

The report is a 40-page comprehensive guide for criminal justice and community officials to combat opioid use in East Baton Rouge parish. I read it on a flight to New York in August, highlighting and underlining most of the document. It’s incredibly thorough and offers I5 recommendations for criminal justice practitioners in the field.

This detailed list includes (verbatim from the report):

1.     Strengthen community partnerships to expand access points.

2.     Expand prescription medication disposal programs.

3.     Expand community education efforts.

4.     Support the expansion of effective treatment and harm reduction efforts.

5.     Publicize the Good Samaritan Laws.

6.     Bolster prevention efforts.

7.     Implement departmental protocols regarding possession and use.

8.     Continue to utilize federal law enforcement levers.

9.     Identify and monitor social networks using social media data.

10.  Develop a forensic certification-based Collegiate Internship Program.

11.  Provide appropriate referrals to drug court.

12.  Establish a prison take home naloxone program

13.  Establish a leave behind naloxone program.

14.  Provide insight regarding overdose hotspots.

15.  Implement a Public Health and Safety Team (PHAST)

According to Mark Armstrong, Chief Communications Officer with the Mayor’s Office, the city of Baton Rouge has helped facilitate meetings with local business leaders and law enforcement that “led to the creation of a special fund established to support the DA’s Office IPS program aimed at combatting the opioid crisis.” The business community has stepped up to help the district attorney’s office, raising private money to hire two additional forensic investigators to gather digital evidence. But there are still policing issues in our community.

The Baton Rouge Police Department is short about 100 officers, Moore said. And most recently, the uptick in homicides has been alarming. As of Oct. 17, there have been 113 people killed in East Baton Rouge Parish, according to the East Baton Rouge Parish Coroner’s Office, including Devin Page Jr., a three year old who died in April when a stray bullet struck him while he slept in his bed on Fairfields Ave. And in September, Allison Rice, a 21-year-old LSU student, was murdered while sitting in her car, waiting for a train to pass on Government Street.

The Baton Rouge Police Department has also been dealing with internal issues – stemming from alleged corruption and illegal activities within the police department. While no one from BRPD would respond to my request for an interview, it’s fair to say that if police officers are arrested for alleged crimes, that eliminates more boots on the street to fight the actual crimes. And about a year ago, BRPD eliminated its narcotics division because of corruption within the department, which caused 600 cases within the district attorney’s office to be dismissed.

“Some didn’t give me heartburn,” Moore said. “But the ones that were gun and fentanyl and heroin-related, yeah, those gave me heartburn.”

Similarly, the Louisiana State Police and the East Baton Rouge Sheriff’s Office are not fully staffed. And this is not only a Baton Rouge issue. Across the country, police departments are having issues fully staffing their departments.

But the news is not all bad. EBRSO narcotics division has been an active force in the community, posting drug busts on social media every week or so, highlighting the amounts of fentanyl, other drugs and guns confiscated throughout the parish. And in July, Louisiana State Senator Mack “Bodi” White secured $1 million from the state’s general fund to help EBRSO combat human trafficking and fentanyl.

I was curious about the relationship between the BRPD and the EBRSO. I know both police agencies, along with the Louisiana State Police all belong to the Violent Crimes Unit, which shares data about homicides in East Baton Rouge Parish, but I wondered if they worked together to combat drugs. However, neither the BRPD nor the EBRSO responded to my request for an interview. I did not reach out to the Louisiana State Police.

I asked Moore about sentencing guidelines. If the police arrest someone, how hard is it to prosecute? The answer, like most everything in the legal system, is complicated. Different states have different sentencing guidelines which is also different from federal sentencing guidelines for possession and distribution. There are five different schedules of drugs in Louisiana, the first schedule of drugs is considered the most dangerous and most addictive. Heroin is a Schedule I drug. Fentanyl is a Schedule II drug. Depending on how much you have during the time of arrest and whether it is your first violation, depends on the sentencing guidelines, Moore said.

“It also depends on the history of the person arrested, some can get 10 to 20 years, but the average sentence is around five years,” he said. “It’s a balance for us. We can’t let everyone go. You can’t put everyone in jail.”

The issue with fentanyl is that it is so potent and dangerous, it can kill a user the first time it’s taken. An 18-year-old girl from Plaquemines Parish died after taking half a Percocet pill laced with fentanyl that she and her friend bought from a 22-year-old Gretna man. He pleaded guilty to selling fake pills and was sentenced to 20 years in prison, according to a Sept. 7 article on wlbt.com.

While it’s important to note that this synthetic opioid is an issue across the country with nearly every state in our country seeing an uptick in overdose deaths, Baton Rouge is experiencing it at a greater pace than most other states. Fentanyl poisoning is like an uncontrollable wildfire. It spreads and burns and destroys everything in its path. And while studies and recommendations are helpful in combatting this harmful drug, coordinated implementation, accountability, and enforcement are critical to eliminating it from Baton Rouge. And I wondered, does our city have all of those pieces in place?

The eighth part of this series, “The Activist” will be published Monday, November 7, 2022.

October 31, 2022