Negative Impact
The Mexican border is more than 1,200 miles away from Kentucky. Still, drug cartel activity in that country has had a direct impact on the Bluegrass State, according to Department of Criminal Justice Training (DOCJT) Instructor Walt Ridener.
“All the heroin, meth, and fentanyl, if it is not 100 percent (attributed to Mexican cartels), it is awful close,” Ridener said. “It’s way up there.”
Threat Assessment
Ridener’s claim is supported by the Drug Enforcement Administration’s (DEA) 2020 National Drug Threat Assessment (NDTA).
In the nearly 100-page NDTA, the DEA reported that, “Mexican transnational criminal organizations (TCOs) are the greatest drug trafficking threat to the United States; they control most of the U.S. drug market, have established varied transportation routes, have advanced communications capabilities, and hold strong affiliations with criminal groups and gangs in the United States.”
Additionally, in 2020, heroin of Mexican origin accounted for 92 percent of the total weight of heroin analyzed under the Heroin Signature Program (HSP). It marks the seventh consecutive year that Mexico has been identified as the primary source or origin for heroin encountered in the United States.
The DEA uses data from the HSP as an indicator of the geographic origins of heroin available at the wholesale level in the U.S.
Spoked Wheel
Using Lexington as an example, Ridener said drug traffickers could go just about anywhere.
Common distribution methods include the interstate system using various vehicles including, personally owned vehicles (POVs), rented vehicles, and semi-trucks with tractor-trailers. Additionally, the POVs are often retrofitted with concealed compartments to hide drugs.
“It is coming in through the highways,” he explained. “Lexington is a hub of a spoked wheel. You’ve got I-75, I-64, the Bluegrass Parkway, the Mountain Parkway, U.S. 27, 25, and 68.
Department of Criminal Justice Training (DOCJT) Instructor Walt Ridener (Photo by Jim Robertson)
“I remember a few years ago, one of my DEA buddies told me they were seizing $1.2 million every two or three weeks,” he continued. “That was money coming out of the central Kentucky area. That is just what he saw. There’s probably 10 times that amount going through this area.”
Recalling a case he worked on in 2007 as a member of the Lexington Police Department’s drug unit, Ridener said evidence supports cartel influence in Kentucky.
“It was the Todd Howard case out of Lexington,” he said. “We saw him throw a couple of kilos (of cocaine) out of a window, and we got a search warrant for his car and found nine more kilos. We got him to roll. The feds came, took over and assigned a task force officer.”
The Howard case led the Lexington Police Department to the Flores twins, who were in direct contact with the Sinaloa cartel and Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman.
“We were only two or three layers from the main person in Chapo,” Ridener said.
Tools
Ridener said there are tools law enforcement agencies can use to help quell the rising drug surge in Kentucky.
One of those tools is partnering with federal agencies.
“As local officers, we can’t bring federal charges against someone,” Ridener said. “You have to work with our federal law enforcement partners. Many agencies will have task force officers with the DEA. The local officer will need to get a hold of one of those guys. They will take your case and adopt it in such a way that the charges will become federal.”
Federal charges carry more weight in the judicial system, Ridener added, as someone convicted on federal charges must serve 85 percent of the prison sentence.
“Let’s say you get 10 years in a state prison, they may serve two or three years, but in the federal system, they’ll have to serve eight and a half years,” Ridener said. “It’s much stiffer.”
Additionally, partnering with a federal agency could also benefit the local agency in the area of seized assets.
There is much more money from illegal proceeds at the federal level that can be seized, Ridener said.
“If you want a part of that money for your agency, you have to have an officer attached to the task force with these federal agencies,” he stressed.
Another tool is to employ interdiction methods, and it all begins with the proper training.
DOCJT offers the Kentucky Drug Techniques course, where a four-hour block is dedicated to drug investigative techniques. In addition, DOCJT has brought in experts on Mexican cartels in a 40-hour course called Mexican Drug Cartels and Narco Saints, which was last taught in 2019.
“The first thing they need to do is get training on it, and not just from (DOCJT),” he said. “There’s the Drug Interdiction Assistance Program (DIAP), which is through the DEA. Desert Snow is another one. These programs teach people to look at the indicators of vehicles that may be hauling drugs. They also teach about indicators of deception and things of that nature. It is easy to do once you learn it.”
Interdiction Indicators
The flow of interstate traffic is one of several possible indicators. While the posted speed limit on Kentucky’s interstates is 70 mph, most drivers travel about 80 to 85 mph, he said.
By observing the traffic flow patterns, law enforcement officers can set a baseline for speed and pick up on anomalies that could indicate possible illegal activity.
“Suddenly, you have that car that sees the officer and the nose drops their speed to 70 to 65 or 60,” he said. “They’re trying not to draw attention to themselves (but by drastically slowing down, that is what they have done). That is what you focus on.”
A rapid reduction in speed doesn’t necessarily mean that vehicle is hauling drugs, but it is an indicator and, though it doesn’t give the officer enough probable cause to initiate a traffic stop, it should draw their attention, Ridener said.
“Once that draws your attention, you may want to get out behind it and stop it on a traffic violation,” he pointed out. “From that point on, you read the behavior indicators, such as deception, when you get out to talk to them. Build your reasonable suspicion based upon the level of deception. Also, you can get a drug dog to walk around the vehicle and see if it hits on anything.”
Ridener cautioned that once a traffic stop has been started, the officer is on the clock in terms of allowing the driver to leave.
“Once you have the traffic citation written, you’ve got to cut them loose,” he said. “You only have about 10 or 15 minutes (to get a drug dog out). Unless you have developed some reasonable suspicion to turn that vehicle into a Terry Stop.”
A simple “hunch” isn’t enough to warrant a Terry Stop, Ridener said.
Officers must have valid reasons that build on one another that allows them to develop reasonable suspicion. Those could be:
The driver slowed down when he saw the officer. This is an indicator that the person may be trying to hide something.
When questioned by the officer, the person could not indicate where they are going or coming from.
There are two or three cell phones in the vehicle.
They are coming from a source city or going to a source city (Source cities are large cities such as Chicago, Detroit and Atlanta. In Kentucky, those could include Louisville and Lexington).
“That’s how you build your reasonable suspicion,” Ridener said. “At that point, you’re justified to hold them.”
It is vitally important to make sure interdiction methods do not involve race, Ridener stressed.
“Don’t profile based on race,” he emphasized. “You should only profile on criminal behavior; that’s it. When you write your case up, you layer it like you’re building a foundation for a house. What was your first reasonable suspicion? What were your first verifiable facts? Race should never be a part of the equation.”
Being proactive in a way that doesn’t violate civil rights will go a long way toward a successful conviction, Ridener said.
Cartel Violence
While much of the cartel violence has stayed in Mexico, that doesn’t mean it won’t happen closer to home.
“The first thing you need to understand is your safety is the key point,” he said. “In Lexington, Louisville, or large agencies like those, the odds are you’re going to be pretty safe. But if you’re in a small agency with a handful of officers, and you’re going after a cartel dealer who doesn’t care much about human life to begin with, your safety is at risk.”
In this scenario, Ridener strongly suggested that smaller agencies should connect with a larger partners, whether its Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), DEA or the FBI or the Kentucky State Police.
But the most important thing to remember when dealing with the cartel is, an officer’s personal safety, Ridener said. Law enforcement officers must be situationally aware.
“They don’t play games,” Ridener said. “If they’re up here in Kentucky and they have a million-dollar load of drugs that (the dealer) is responsible for, that puts the dealer and their family at risk. If they lose that load of dope, who knows that will happen to them and their family. So, they may say they cannot let local law enforcement seize it. It’s happened many times where the officer was attacked and killed.”
Small Victories
The war on drugs is not something that will be won overnight, and it’s not a problem that police can arrest their way out of, Ridener opined.
“This is not about getting a trophy in the end,” he said. “Let’s say you got 10 pounds of meth out of a traffic stop. Is that the only dope coming into your community? No. But you’ve stopped 10 pounds of dope before it got into your community. Try to take the drugs out here on the highway before it gets to your community and divvied out to 10 or 20 local dealers.”
