DUPAGE CAR OWNERS NOTIFIED IF VEHICLES USED IN DRUG DEALS

In their battle against the drug trade, DuPage County narcotics
investigators this year took a new tactic: tattling.

Over several months this summer and fall, officers with the DuPage County
Metropolitan Enforcement Group took down the license plate numbers of
suburbanites who drove to a Chicago neighborhood to buy heroin.

Then each of the registered owners received a letter, notifying them their
vehicle had been used in a West Side drug deal.

"A lot of them were really thankful we wrote them letters," DuMEG director
Mark Henry said.

DuMEG worked with Chicago police, who accompanied the DuPage officers on
trips in July and August to a West Side neighborhood where police learned
suburban residents often go to buy drugs. Police recorded the license plates
of more than 30 DuPage County vehicles involved in suspected drug deals.

In September and October, Chicago police posed as heroin dealers and
conducted reverse stings in the neighborhood, bordered by the Eisenhower
Expressway, Roosevelt Road, Cicero Avenue and Independence Boulevard.

Roughly 40 DuPage residents, mostly adults, were arrested, Henry said.

In all, DuMEG mailed 70 letters to car owners in nearly every town in DuPage
County, Henry said. Some went to parents, who called police to ask for a
description of the driver to determine which of their children was involved.
Others learned a friend who borrowed their car had lied to them.

The investigation was spurred by a rise in heroin use in the county in 1998,
the year two youths died of heroin overdoses in Naperville and Lisle. DuPage
Sheriff John Zaruba and Naperville Chief David Dial, chairman of DuMEG,
pushed for the operation.

"We know we have had some heroin coming into our county, and Naperville
certainly is not immune," Dial said Wednesday. "We think the more the public
knows about the problem, the better able they'll be to cope with the
situation at their homes."

The operation is ongoing, Henry said.