SUNBURY — SUNBURY — Law enforcement agents from throughout Northumberland County spent Thursday rounding up 50 suspected street-level drug dealers in a raid one said cuts to the core of community crime.
“Street-level drug dealers are the pipeline of what goes on in a community,” said Randy Feathers, regional director of the Bureau of Narcotics Investigation of the state Office of Attorney General. “If we don’t clean up the street dealers, we have major problems.”
Thursday’s raid netted 26 suspects from the Shamokin-Coal Township area, 16 from the Sunbury area, one from Milton and one from Watsontown. Four Sunbury suspects are still at large, as well as two from Milton.
Charges filed Thursday stemmed from the possession and delivery of heroin, cocaine, crack cocaine, marijuana and prescription drugs, including Vicodin, Percocet, morphine, Oxycontin, Oxycodone, Lortab, Endocet, Dilaudid and methodone.
“One thing all of these drugs have in common is that they are highly addictive,” Northumberland County District Attorney Anthony Rosini said. “Our experience has been that individuals who become addicted to drugs commit other crimes, including selling drugs to support their habits, and also thefts, burglaries and even robberies to obtain money to pay for the drugs they crave.”
Perhaps the most dramatic example of that was the arrests earlier this fall of 11 Sunbury area residents accused of taking part in a two-county burglary ring that city police said was fueled by heroin addiction. The burglaries are estimated to have cost homeowners up to $200,000 worth of possessions.
“The widespread proliferation of drugs in a community lowers the quality of life for the members of the community as the rest of us become the victims of the crimes these drug addicts commit,” Rosini said.
The majority of those arrested Thursday are local residents who obtained drugs from others outside of the community, Rosini said.
“The larger question I hope these drug roundups raise is ... what can the community as a whole do to stop this demand for drugs?” Rosini asked, and pointed to the need for more funding for drug treatment and counseling. “Everyone involved in today’s drug sweep knows that simply putting drug dealers in jail will not solve our drug problem.”
Feathers asked residents not to assume the drug problem in the Central Susquehanna Valley is worse than elsewhere in the state simply because of the number of drug arrests.
Thursday’s raid was the fourth major drug sweep in the past year, resulting in the arrests of nearly 100 suspected drug dealers.
“There are communities with as big or bigger drug problems than here,” Feathers said. “We have been very aggressive in attacking it.”
That has been due, in part, Rosini said, to the Northumberland-Montour Drug Task Force, which receives funding from the state Office of Attorney General, allowing smaller police departments within Northumberland and Montour counties to participate in long-term drug investigations.
“It becomes a money issue,” Rosini said.
Not only do departments have to pay for the hours required to conduct drug investigations, but many of the arrests Thursday stemmed from controlled drug buys in which confidential informants were given anywhere from $50 to $640 in cash to purchase illegal drugs under police surveillance.
“If we didn’t have the funding, we wouldn’t be able to do these long-term investigations,” Rosini said.
“These are people who may lead us to other people in the future.”
Suspects arrested from the Sunbury area were arraigned Thursday by District Judge Carl Rice and confined to the Northumberland County Prison on either $100,000 or $150,000 bail.
Preliminary hearings have been scheduled for Tuesday and Wednesday before Rice.
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50 caught in Valley drug sweep
Most are called street-level dealers
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