Representative Mike Gallagher and Brown County Sheriff, Todd Delain, work together to combat fentanyl in Brown County. May 1, 2023.
GREEN BAY, WI (WTAQ) — In 2022, 60% of the fentanyl seized in Brown County came through the United States Postal Service.
Representative Mike Gallagher says that currently, if a United States Postal worker finds fentanyl in the mail, they usually just simply dispose the drugs.
“That’s good and keeps drugs out of the community,” said Representative Gallagher. “But it’s missing a critical opportunity to get upstream of the problem and identify the people who are shipping or receiving these illegal drugs.”
“The closest TFOs located near Green Bay and all Northern Wisconsin are the Madison and Milwaukee branches, who are hours away from the crisis in the northern half of the state. In 2022 alone, the DTF seized almost 10,000 grams of fentanyl substances, with 6 out of 10 pills containing a lethal dose. Increased coordination between the postal system and local law enforcement can make a big impact on these numbers and prevent Wisconsinites from consuming this deadly opioid.”
“The problem is they [The United States Postal Service] have a lot of different things to investigate. Because of that, there are situations that could be further investigated that they just don’t have the resources to do,” said Brown County Sheriff, Todd Delain. “We can form that partnership, where they have a seizure and they can call the task force officer and say ‘hey, we have a seizure, we will send it on to you to further your investigation.”
If an agreement is made, Sheriff Delain would federally deputize one of his deputy’s to start the task force officer position in as soon as a few weeks. Green Bay would then be the third city in Wisconsin with a task force officer, in addition to Madison and Milwaukee.
Comments