ANTI-DRUG PROGRAM LAUNCHED IN BELOIT

Beloit - Police Friday unveiled a sweeping new anti-drug effort that
includes establishing a drug tip hotline and having an officer
assigned solely to monitor information about drug activity in the city.

With community leaders in attendance nodding their approval, Police
Chief Richard Thomas said at a news conference that the hotline will
pay for tips leading to drug arrests, much like the CrimeStoppers
program does for other crimes.

"With the drug hotline, we can be sure this information doesn't fall
through the cracks like it may have done sometimes in the past," he
said.

As part of the new effort, a veteran drug unit detective, Joe
Kreitzmann, will be the department's drug intelligence officer. Thomas
said he knows of only two other departments, Appleton and Green Bay,
that have an officer devoted to collecting drug information and
disseminating it to other officers to aid them in curbing drug
trafficking.

Thomas said the department has joined the Mid States Organized Crime
Information Center and the National Drug Pointer Index. Those two
organizations will give the department access to a central database to
get up-to-date information on drug trafficking and gang activity.

The anti-drug plans include enforcement of the city's noise ordinance,
with officers specifically cracking down on loud vehicles or loud
noise from vehicles. This is expected to cut down on the number of
people loitering and congregating to distribute drugs.

Thomas also said the department will no longer take stolen car reports
involving so-called drug vehicles.

"We find people loan their cars to drug dealers and when they don't
bring them back, they expect us to treat it like a stolen car report
and find and recover their vehicle," he said. "We will no longer take
reports and recover cars when the person says they loaned their car
voluntarily and it wasn't returned."