SPRING VALLEY'S RESPONSE TO HEROIN, METH STUNTS PROBLEM

Heroin, cocaine and methamphetamine, drugs once considered inner-city
fare, are showing up in the Illinois Valley, alarming residents and
local police.

Spring Valley, which gained some notoriety after making a public
response to the problem public in the summer of 2003, still may have
a dangerous reputation but former police chief Doug Bernabei said the
city has made great strides since joining the drug task force.

Three years after residents clamored to join Illinois State Police
Zone 3/La Salle Drug Task Force, both Bernabei and task force
commander Juan De Leon say the city's drug problem is reasonably under control.

Heroin became a problem in Spring Valley in 2002, with officers
encountering it for the first time during traffic stops and overdose
cases turning up at area hospitals.

"We were making arrests and discovering things we had never seen
before ... It snuck up on everybody," Bernabei said. When parents
started to realize their own children were using the drug, he said
the community got serious about chasing it from their borders.

In July 2003, Spring Valley residents met in the city hall to discuss
the problem. People came because they knew someone who was in trouble
or they were afraid it would touch their lives, and Bernabei said he
knew the police department would need help. Controlling the flow of
illegal drugs wasn't part of his officers' regular training.

De Leon had approached him with a grant to commit one full-time
officer to covert investigations and the department joined the task
force in December 2003.

Bernabei had been impressed with the task force's impact in nearby communities.

"It's incredible, the work they've done to address the problem from
Ottawa to Princeton," he said.

Since the department joined, task force agents have made 62 felony
arrests in Spring Valley, according to the city's case agent, who
asked that his name not be used due to the nature of his job.

Investigations have resulted in 18 drug-related arrests in Spring
Valley and the seizure of 11.55 grams of heroin, 80.43 grams of
cocaine, $22,077 in cash and other items valued at $23,681. In that
same period, Spring Valley police reported 15 drug-related felonies
and 71 misdemeanors, including possession of drug paraphernalia. In
the three years prior to introducing the task force, Spring Valley
officers reported only eight felonies and 95 misdemeanors.

De Leon said the task force has the power to be more effective than
independent police departments because of the different training and
tactics agents use.

"We don't put people out there cold because narcotics is a different
kind of police work," De Leon said. Officers go through a two-week
basic narcotic training through the Drug Enforcement Administration,
as well as attending an investigative school and clandestine
laboratory dismantling school, and attend yearly seminars.

Among the first things new agents learn is how to blend in rather
than relying on his image as an authority figure. The undercover
agent already had some experience on a violent crime task force with
the FBI in Will County, infiltrating an outlaw motorcycle gang there
and working with "some of the best, literally in the world,
undercover guys," he said.

He doesn't do covert work in Spring Valley because after years with
the police department, his face is too familiar to many.

"You evaluate things a lot more in the undercover world," he said.

Having traded in his uniform for faded jeans and worn T-shirts, the
agent finds his targets in bars, through introductions by informants
and search warrants, and "knock and talks," when a tip leads him to
confront an alleged dealer.

"I hate to call it luck, but to a degree it does take a certain
amount of luck and timing," the agent said.

Once officers make an arrest, De Leon said they work to turn
defendants into informants, using the promise of reduced sentences to
encourage them to reveal their contacts.

"It's a game of tag -- as soon as you get arrested, you're it," De
Leon said, explaining the chain that helps turn a one-time bust into
a meaningful investigation. De Leon views the officers' work as a
sort of game as well, a chess match he's been playing since the task
force was created in 1986.

The task force's growth since then is another asset for local
communities, whose small police departments don't allow them to
maintain their own undercover teams. By dedicating one full-time
officer to the task force, a community gains access to the knowledge
and experience of all its members, an added benefit when
investigations cross city borders.

According to Bernabei, there's no question the task force has
improved the situation in Spring Valley, which he said has been
"quieter from a police standpoint" than it had been since 1991, long
before heroin appeared.

Since joining the task force, Bernabei said, "It's been like night
and day -- not to say it's 100 percent corrected, but we've made a
major, major dent in the heroin trade and heroin use."

No official would claim the drug problem has been resolved, or even
that it could be completely eradicated. De Leon said the task force's
goal is to control drug abuse and doesn't reasonably hope to end it.
Because of the ease with which residents obtain drugs from outside
the area, he said arrests aren't the only, or even the most
important, measure of the task force's success.

Instead, De Leon looks at community response. When he receives fewer
calls asking the team to investigate a residence and more calls
thanking them for arrests, he said he knows they're doing their job.
The Spring Valley case agent says that's starting to happen.

"When I first went in the task force, we had no shortage of targets
and it was usually heroin," he said. Since then, he's started picking
up more cocaine and tips on heroin have "come to a screeching halt."

He said heroin overdoses also have declined significantly, but that
could not be confirmed because local hospitals do not release the
numbers of heroin addicts they treat.

Officers are now working to keep methamphetamine from establishing a
foothold in the Illinois Valley, but De Leon said that's less of a
problem because it's a "user community" without many large-scale dealers.

The Spring Valley case agent credits the task force and Spring Valley
police with the decline in trade.

"I think there was a clear-cut message from Spring Valley that if you
come here and deal drugs, you will be caught," the agent said.