203 Arrests in Tempe AZ

It may be that the most jarring piece of information in this news article is that there has been undercover work going on for over 15 months (not 15 years as reported in one of the news articles.) 15 months is a long time to work at any one task. One can imagine that a number of new bridges and highways and schools could be built across our state with a time period like that. It is sad to think that so much time and effort and cost is necessary to fight the sale of illegal drugs that are ruining our society.

And yet, this undercover work was fruitful in the long run. Called “Operation Crank Call”, the target was an offshoot of the dreaded Sinaloa drug cartel, one of the most powerful drug dealers in the whole world.

The second jarring piece of information is that nearly eight million dollars in cash was seized. Hopefully all of this money will be put to good use in fighting the crimes that brought the cash to the dealers. Federal officials also say that over 1200 lbs of drugs were collected, and forty-four guns were seized. The drugs included marijuana, cocaine, heroin, and meth. Some of the drugs were headed to St. Louis, Kansas City and Chicago; the connection in St. Louis is being analyzed carefully.

As is often the case, the entire case was kick-started by a traffic stop. A patrol officer in Tempe pulled over a known drug user and found more drugs than would usually be the case for a quick $100 meth deal. The Tempe narcotics detectives began working with the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA). Tempe Police Chief Tom Ryff said that, "It got us into some things where we really didn't anticipate the level of activity within our county."

Arizona Attorney General Tom Horne added, "It's frankly an obscene amount of drugs and money. Those numbers reflect the horrific scope of the drug-trafficking problem in our community."

This is the worst news of all: there are more drugs in our neighborhoods than we can even imagine.