JOLIET NARCOTICS UNIT RACKS UP ARRESTS IN FIRST YEAR

Raid Team: Gains Experience Battling Street-Level Drug Trade

JOLIET - The investigation went on for weeks. It led up to a day of
surveillance and planning that ended with nine men in body armor and
helmets, some masked, jumping out of an old bread truck and running
at a Second Avenue apartment somebody allegedly was selling drugs out
of.

A crowd had gathered on the corner after the men stormed out of the
truck and around the back of the house to the door of the basement
apartment. A girl watching from down the street laughed and called
out as a man and two teens were put against a fence to be searched.

"Ah," she said. "You're busted."

Two of them were busted - the man from the basement who went to jail
on felony charges and a youth who got a ticket for marijuana
possession and was released to his parents.

This was the work of the Joliet Narcotics Unit at the end of its
first year of existence.

In the raid a couple of weeks ago, the JNU officers made the arrest
and seized a pound of pot they found in the apartment's bedroom. They
also confiscated cocaine, a pistol, $746 cash from the arrested man's
wallet and another $9,000 stuffed in envelopes zipped up in a plastic
bag along with a photograph of a woman. It had been a good day.

It didn't start out that way. Only hours earlier, the JNU served a
search warrant at another apartment and had a lot less to show for it.

"This morning, we came up with a crack pipe, and now this," said
Joliet police Sgt. Brian Benton, head of the department's first
narcotics unit.

Working street-level narcotics proves frustrating at times, as in the
day's earlier raid. But there are hits along with the misses, and the
JNU has hit with frequency as it has grown in experience through its
first year.

In the course of its first 12 months, the unit made 86 arrests on 49
search warrants, seized $35,000 cash, 142 pounds of cannabis, 20.5
ounces of cocaine, 20 firearms and 10 motor vehicles. The marijuana
would have sold for $452,000 on the street, the cocaine for $172,000.

The proceeds from the seizures are broken down and distributed to
different agencies and offices involved in drug interdiction.

'Ground floor up'

The numbers for arrests and seizures have increased in frequency from
when the unit was first formed to battle the city's street-level
narcotics trade.

"We had to develop informants, we didn't have undercover vehicles to
begin with," Benton said. "It was from the ground floor up. I think
we were a few months in, and we were doing one or two search warrants
a week."

The members of the unit also had to undergo specialized training.
Benton, who had worked with the Metropolitan Area Narcotics Squad,
had the experience to do this.

"You don't learn in the academy how to do a controlled buy," Benton
said, noting that some of the members of the team had prior narcotics
experience before the Joliet Police Department launched its own unit
into the field.

Cooperative efforts

Lt. Patrick Kerr, who worked in MANS from 1979 to 1982 and then in
the Cooperative Police Assistance Team from 1983 to 1989, oversees
the JNU along with the department's Tactical Unit. The two teams
often work hand-in-hand, as they did at the recent drug raid on
Second Avenue.

Due to the manpower requirements for executing a search warrant,
Tactical accompanies JNU on raids. Tactical also conducts
surveillance and other tasks in narcotics operations.

"It's kind of a good combination between the two," Benton said.

While Joliet still has officers working in MANS, the department
formed its own narcotics unit to further concentrate on combating
drugs in the city.

"I believe our administration wanted to be able to have total control
over how to handle neighborhood concerns about narcotics complaints,"
Kerr said. "This way, their priority is our priority. Because of our
neighborhood planning concept, we are extremely responsive to
complaints."

But the Joliet unit and MANS still team up to tackle cases.

"Those guys are the consummate professionals," said MANS Director
Marty Shifflet. "We thoroughly enjoy working together.

"Back in the late '80s, I was an undercover agent with MANS, and Pat
Kerr was an undercover agent with CPAT, and we worked cases
together," Shifflet added. "It's ironic that 14 years later, I'm the
director of MANS, and he's the commander of the drug unit, and we're
still kicking in doors and locking up drug dealers."

The JNU also works closely with the city's Neighborhood Services to
clean out drug-infested areas. Through nuisance abatement, someone
selling drugs can be evicted.

"That has more impact than arresting someone sometimes," Kerr said.

With one year under its belt, the JNU expects even better returns on
its searches and raids in the future.

"I don't see any expansion right now, but these guys are more
efficient," Kerr said. "They'll get more work done.

"Our guys really have an esprit de corps," he added. "They want to
outdo the next guy."