The below column originally appeared in the South Philadelphia American in 1998:
South Philadelphia has its share of the drug
problem, to be sure, but we are blessed in comparison to the
"Badlands" of North Philadelphia.
"Operation Sunrise," the joint
Philadelphia and federal government counter-drug action mounted to combat the
severe drug issue in the Badlands and elsewhere, was the idea of Philadelphia
Deputy Police Commissioner Sylvester Johnson and Lawrence P. McElynn, the
Special Agent in Charge of the Philadelphia Office of the Drug Enforcement
Administration (DEA).
I spoke to McElynn about the anti-drug operation
recently when he was my guest on Inside Government, a public affairs radio program that I produce
and serve as an on-air host. The radio interview program, sponsored by the
Philadelphia Federal Executive Board, airs on Sunday mornings at 6:30 on WMGK
102.9 FM and repeats at 7:00 on WPEN 950 FM.
"When Deputy Commissioner Johnson was
appointed, we met at a diner and had a discussion about making a real
partnership between the DEA and the Philadelphia Police Department to address
the drug problem," McElynn told me on the air. "Our focus was to go
to an area in the city that had the biggest problem and create a task force to
operate there."
McElynn said Johnson took it a number of steps
further, realizing that they had to deal with much more than just the drug
problem in trying to return the neighborhood back to the people who live there.
Johnson brought in a number of other departments that could two cars, seal
houses and remove graffiti. But both agree that drugs remain at the core, noted
McElynn. Drug addicts steal, rob and murder to make money to buy drugs.
"Normally, you drive up to the neighborhood,
roll down your window, you give them money, someone gives you heroin, and you
drive away," McElynn said. "But two days after Operation Sunrise, it
took us six hours to find someone to sell us heroin. But the real test will be
in the long run. The drug traffickers are testing us, waiting to see how strong
our commitment is. But we're here to stay."
McElynn said the DEA agents are working at
different levels in Operation Sunrise. Some of them are visibly assisting the
police officers and some are operating covertly to develop information that
will take the operation to a national and international level. A classic case of
partnership, McElynn said.
"Drugs are coming at us at every level of
sophistication. Drugs are coming in commercial cargo shipments in the thousands
of pounds and people are bringing pounds in suitcases," McElynn explained.
McElynn recounted an incident they had recently
where someone had swallowed 99 condoms tied with dental floss and filled with
10 grams of heroin each.
"High purity levels, high demand and high
availability, plus low prices, always cause addiction to rise. There are
probably a million addicts in the U.S., up from 600,000," McElynn said.
McElynn said that the marketing strategy of the
drug traffickers is to have high quality heroin at low prices and addict as
many people as they can, and then over time lower the quality and raise the
prices. Heroin is the most serious health threat in the U.S., McElynn told me.
"There has been a dramatic shift in control
of the drug market in the U.S. in the past couple of years. Right now, the
Colombians sit at the top. They are in charge of cocaine traffic in partnership
with the Dominicans coming through the Caribbean basin and the Mexicans coming
through the western and southwestern part of the U.S.," McElynn explained.
The Colombians have also started to take over the
U.S. heroin market, forcing out the Southeast Asian traffickers, McElynn added.
"Users have a romantic notion of heroin being
the chic thing to do, something that is fashionable as portrayed by parts of
the media, but they are being sold a bill of goods that just isn't so. When the
drug takes hold of you, life becomes unbearable."
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