DCSO joining KSP drug task force
The Daviess County Sheriff’s Office and Kentucky State Police regularly interact on investigations.
But that cooperation will be enhanced through the sheriff’s department entering into a formal agreement with the Kentucky State Police Drug Task Force.
It will be the first time DCSO has been part of the task force since Sheriff Brad Youngman took office, and it seems a perfect fit with the drug investigation unit Youngman established, which includes three drug detectives.
“By joining this task force, it’s going to increase our cooperation with the Kentucky State Police,” he said. “We share a lot of territory with them, and it enables us to work together more closely. One of my deputies will be sworn in as a task force officer for state police. It will give that deputy more geographic territory. They’ll be able to go, more or less, anywhere in the commonwealth of Kentucky to do a drug investigation. But we’re not going to send them clear across the state unless KSP needs a lot of manpower there.”
While DCSO’s drug investigations may rarely stretch across the state, they commonly go beyond Daviess County’s boundaries, and Youngman said that will provide flexibility.
“Truth is, a lot of our drug cases do cross county lines, especially into our neighboring counties, so it frees us up a little bit to be able to operate in other areas,” said Youngman, who is also pleased with having an additional funding stream to support undercover drug operations. “That’s really going to help us. A lot of times we do have to purchase drugs to prove that someone is trafficking them. Right now we use money we take from drug dealers to do that. KSP is going to be able to provide funding for us to make larger purchases so we don’t deplete our funds as quickly.”
More funds would allow DCSO to target higher-level dealers.
“Sometimes when you’re building a case against someone who deals in large quantities, you obviously want to take them down, but if they don’t typically sell smaller quantities, that could be a red flag to them that some guy they barely know is wanting to buy just a little bit,” Youngman said. “There’s also enhancements and higher penalties for higher amounts, but the reality of that is we don’t always have the money in our drug fund to go out and say, ‘Let’s go buy multiple pounds of something.’ It does open the door to more possibilities for us.”
The agreement will also give DCSO the ability to borrow a variety of surveillance equipment the department doesn’t possess, in addition to opening the lines of communication between the law enforcement agencies.
“I think since 9/11 there was a lot of focus put on law enforcement sharing information,” Youngman said. “But when you talk about sensitive investigations, you have to protect that information from getting out, and drug investigations would be in that category, where you don’t exactly tell everybody everything you know.
“But with this situation, when you’re on a task force, you’ve been checked out by that other agency, and they say, ‘Hey, we trust these people, and we have the same goals here,’ so we can kind of share more information.”
Youngman said methamphetamine remains the most common illegal drug in the area, but fentanyl continues to be seen mixed into a variety of drugs, and that presents even greater danger.
“That’s where you hear about fentanyl poisoning; it’s not an overdose, because the person didn’t realize they were taking fentanyl,” said Youngman, who noted that deaths by fentanyl poisoning can be seen as a point of pride within the drug dealer community, with it demonstrating a high potency — despite the very real chance of a fatal encounter. “We’re seeing fentanyl in just about everything we recover. Drug dealers try to put it in there to increase their stature within the drug world, that they have the best product out there, so it increases their sales.
“But it’s very dangerous, and it’s very sad — cold hearted.”
Youngman believes the agreement with KSP, which is in the final stages of being completed, will pay dividends on the street.
“We do work with the state police about every day, but this opens doors,” he said.
