BROWN COUNTY, WI (WTAQ-WLUK) – For the Brown County Drug Task Force, a bust of more than 1,000 fentanyl pills is not out of the ordinary, but it used to be.
The opioid didn’t even register on the county’s radar until 2016.
Last year, the task force seized more fentanyl than all other years combined, and in the first quarter of this year, the task force has already seized more than all of 2020.
“The Mexican drug cartels are the largest supplier of the drugs that we’re seeing here,” said Brown County Sheriff Todd Delain. “Now with the border being open, kind of returning to normal, they’re sending it over.”
Delain tells FOX 11 a combination of more drug activity and good investigative work by the task force led to 155 arrests in the year’s first quarter. That is almost 50 more than the average (106.3) for the same period over the past three years.
Increased arrests are significant progress, but law enforcement officials say they are just a start. Drug activity is well known to bring more violence. But also with fentanyl, the task force says 40% of the pills have lethal potential.
“Every day we wait, there’s a chance somebody else can die, so the sooner we get going on it, the sooner we might be able to save somebody out there,” said Pat Buckley, the chair of the Brown County Board of Supervisors.
Buckley recently suggested exploring the possibility of adding more officers to the drug task force, which currently has 18 officers. 12 are from the county, 4 from Green Bay Police and one each from the police departments in De Pere and Ashwaubenon. However, the county pays for 16 of the 18 positions. Green Bay covers the other two.
“I look at what we can do from a county standpoint and I do know with having the opioid lawsuit money coming our way that this is what it should be used for.”
What Buckley is referring to is between $4 million and $6 million the county estimates it will receive, after attorney fees, as part of national opioid epidemic settlement.
Buckley says the county should see if Green Bay will match any additions made to the drug unit.
“I’m certainly supportive of increasing the capacity of that unit,” said Chief Chris Davis of the Green Bay Police Department. “As a practical matter for us, in the city right now, that is going to be really challenging just because I’m down 16 sworn officers right now from our authorized strength.”
Davis tells FOX 11 his department needs to get closer to full strength before they can discuss moving officers to the county drug unit. He currently has 12 vacancies in his patrol division and four open detective positions.
“It’s really challenging for us to meet demand for service in terms of calls and investigations and other things we need to do inside the city.”.
Even if the county can add officers on its own with the opioid settlement money, some still question the feasibility.
“I’m all for more drug task force,” said Randy Schultz, a Brown County supervisor and retired employee of the sheriff’s department.
“Those poor guys are working their butts off around the clock and they’re just touching the tip of the iceberg. We need more there, but however, nobody wants to talk about the rest of the system. We can’t keep the jail staffed. If we put on more drug task force, there’s going to be more arrestsThe district attorney’s office, you go from ADA’s office to ADA’s office there and there’s piles and piles of cases there waiting to be addressed.”
Brown County District Attorney David Lasee reports there are about 3,500 cases that have been referred to his office within the past three years that have yet to be reviewed. He says it’s 500 more than the usual backlog.
Lasee says he believes filed cases, that are pending in the courts right now, are higher than they’ve ever been, as a result of the pandemic.
Governor Tony Evers recently allocated 2.5 temporary attorney positions to Brown County’s district attorney’s office to help with the backlog.
“If we make the arrest, it still has to go through the criminal complaint and be charged, right?” said Delain. “It’s going to slow down in the court system if they don’t have attorneys to charge it or to have attorneys represent those that are charged or have been alleged to commit this crime.”
More arrests also means more inmates for the county jail, which currently has 28 openings for correctional officers out of 149 positions.
“That has been a nagging problem for going on two years now and that bothers me,” said Schultz. “We should have better response to that problem than what we have at this time and I don’t know why that is. I’m going to find out, but we need to address that along with these other problems.”
The shortage of correctional officers is to a point it’s going to cost taxpayers at a time when the county is also dealing with increased gasoline and medical costs.
“We’re right there,” said Delain. “We’re at a point where we’re within days picking where we’re making decisions whether to ship out or open. We’re right there right now.”
Delain says the problem of paying to ship inmates to other counties or paying overtime for corrections officers to man reopened jail pods is related but independent from adding officers to the drug unit. He hopes both can be addressed, but it will mean adding to other areas as well.
“And there’s the other part of it for those that are users that end up in the system. Are we using our criminal justice division for diversion and our specialty courts and other things and are we sending some people to human services for treatment to try to address it, to cut down on that demand.”
It’s a demand authorities promise to keep chipping away at, with additional resources or not.
Delain says he’s confident his department would be able to hire additional officers to accommodate an expansion to the drug unit.
He says they currently have six sworn officer positions open, but are in the process of being filled.
Meanwhile, Green Bay has an ongoing marketing campaign, using American Rescue Plan money, to help fill its openings.
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