COPS WIN SMALL BATTLE, BUT U.S. IS BLOWING DRUG WAR

Tim Trevier is a big man with 15 titanium earrings, a diamond nose
ring, a leather do-rag and a modified fu manchu. If you saw him on the
street, you'd look twice, but it would never cross your mind that he
is cop.

At 42, he has been a police officer 19 years. A lieutenant in the
Bureau County Police Department, he is currently detailed to the
Illinois State Police drug task force headquartered in La Salle.

Trevier's work takes him into the rural communities of La Salle,
Spring Valley, Ottawa, Utica and Peru. Compared with the urban
landscape of Chicago, this is another world. It is small town America
with main streets and a mix of mostly modest homes and farmland.

Just as Tim Trevier doesn't look like a cop, this bucolic setting
doesn't look like the site of a heroin epidemic, but it is. For the
last three years, more and more high school students and young adults
have been jumping into their cars and driving 90 miles to Chicago's
West Side to score dope.

Heroin today is purer, cheaper and more addictive than it has ever
been. Just 10 bucks for a "blow." User-friendly, you can snort rather
than shoot it. But in no time, you'll be using a needle. And needing
to buy multiple "blows."

And though purity is one of heroin's big selling points, purity kills.

"I talked to a nurse at Illinois Valley Community Hospital in Peru,"
said Trevier, "and she said at one point they were averaging four and
five overdoses a week. Our young people are dying from this drug,
bottom line. And if they are not dying, they are either incarcerated
or going to be incarcerated."

Sgt. Dorothy Knudson agrees. At 41 she runs one of the Narcotics and
Gang Investigation teams for the Organized Crime Division of the
Chicago Police Department.

When you ask her about her work, she tells you bluntly, "I love it
sometimes, other times it rips me apart."

What Knudson can't tolerate, she says, are the stereotypes about
heroin, the notion that it's restricted to poor, black inner-city
neighborhoods and not white, wealthy suburbs or middle-class rural
communities. She's seen people from Tinley Park to Wilmette show up on
the West Side to buy heroin.

Four months ago Trevier, Knudson and their respective colleagues began
a joint operation to put one small dent in this utterly daunting
problem. Their target was Daniel Funches, whose street name was "Tony."

"Tony," an Unknown Vice Lord, is considered by police to be the go-to
guy for La Salle and Bureau counties, allegedly supplying an estimated
90 percent of the heroin that is making its way into those rural
communities.

At dawn on Tuesday, Trevier and his team joined Knudson and 60 Chicago
officers. Armed with sledge hammers, battering rams and bullet proof
vests, they descended on the West Side. "Tony" was one of 12 targets.
Ten carloads of cops surrounded his graystone apartment building at
15th and Kedzie.

By 7:45 a.m. "Tony" and most of the other targets were in custody.

In so many ways, Tuesday's bust was a model operation. Standing out
there on the street, it was hard not to be impressed with the
efficiency and professionalism of the officers involved. But at the
end of the day we all have to ask ourselves what exactly is being
accomplished in the war on drugs?

Right this minute some poor farmer in Afghanistan under the leadership
of U.S.-supported warlords is growing a field full of poppies in order
to feed his family. Afghanistan is functionally a narco-state, now
producing 87 percent of the world's opium, more than it did under the
Taliban. And though the Defense Department is now trying to be more
aggressive in attacking this problem, it's too little way too late.

Here at home, heroin is seeping into all of our communities whether we
want to admit it or not. Down in Bureau County, state Rep. Frank
Mautino (D-Spring Valley) has proposed new, tougher legislation based
on the number of "blows" or doses of heroin, in a person's possession.
He's doing his best to scare straight the users and dealers in his own
community. I don't blame him for trying, but it's like sticking a
finger in a crumbling dike.

Until we address the contradictions between our foreign and domestic
policy when it comes to drugs, we will lose this war. Until we deal
with addiction as forcefully as we do incarceration in this country,
we will keep losing this war. And even the most dedicated and talented
members of law enforcement like Tim Trevier and Dorothy Knudson are
doomed to fail.