Terrible Tragic Epidemic

DRUGS AND VIOLENCE ON THE RANGE

VIRGINIA -- It starts with petty theft.

The guy next door, laid-off from work and bored, decides he could use
something to help get him through another monotonous day.

He's 19 and broke, and drugs are as easy for him to get as
liquor.

He thinks, well, I don't think my neighbor locks her car. Maybe she
keeps her C.D.s in there. He grabs them that night and sells them to
buy marijuana.

The drug dealer takes it further. He gets the young man hooked on
methamphetamine, a relatively cheap and very addictive drug. He gives
the kid more and more of the stimulant on "credit."

The young man grows paranoid and agitated -- side effects of long-term
meth use -- and is afraid to work or even steal to support his habit.
He closets himself in his home and takes his worries out on his
family. The situation turns abusive.

His dealer starts pressuring him for the money he owes. Threats aren't
working so he steals the young man's property to pay part of the debt.

The young man gets desperate and thinks of the only quick way to pay
off the thousands he owes -- robbery. So, one day, sufficiently
supported by methamphetamine's false confidence, he grabs a gun, goes
to a gas station and demands money.

Hallucinating, paranoid and having muscle spasms, the hold-up goes
wrong and he shoots and kills the clerk.

He flees.

Later, realizing what he's done and suffering the depression often
induced by long-term meth use, he kills himself.

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It's a hypothetical story, but one that has been repeated time and
again in various forms throughout the country.

Sometimes the drug is cocaine or LSD, sometimes the addict is a woman
and it's her young children who suffer, and sometimes it ends with the
addict in prison, murdered or suffering an impoverished life until the
drug itself kills him or her.

Any way it's told, though, an epidemic of drugs and drug-related crime
and violence is infecting society, and the Iron Range is no exception.

"Drugs and alcohol are part of the largest percent of the people we
have in the jail, whether they've committed crimes against people or
property," Virginia Supervising Deputy Sheriff John Malovrh said. "If
we could take drugs and alcohol out of the equation, we'd
significantly decrease the population in the jail."

The hypothetical is also representative of the area as a whole. The
Iron Range, like the young man, is progressing in the degree of its
drug use and related crime.

Drugs and violence "go hand in hand," Boundary Waters Drug Task Force
Coordinator and Investigator Evans said. He could not give his first
name due to involvement in undercover operations. "We're finding that
when we respond to domestics, there's meth there. Or one of (the
parties present) will complain that their girlfriend or boyfriend has
been on meth. It used to be alcohol but it's meth now."

He said that the switch has happened over the past three to five years
because methamphetamine, which keeps users awake for days and makes
them irritable and aggressive, is readily available and relatively
cheap.

And crimes have escalated with the type of chemicals people are
using.

The number of felony filings at the St. Louis County Attorney's Office
in Virginia has exploded since 1999. Just a few years ago, Assistant
County Attorney Gordon Coldagelli handled all the felonies.

That is now impossible. He has started sharing the workload, taking on
only the serious felonies, including drug charges, violent crimes and
burglaries.

He has issued 139 felony cases so far this year. That does not include
cases that were pending from 2003 or felony-level property crimes,
which are handled by another attorney in the office.

Compared to that, Coldagelli filed 180 cases in 1998, including those
pending from 1997 and felony-level property crimes.

"I'd be confident saying, if I made a conservative estimation, that 65
to 75 percent of those are somehow related to drugs," he said about
his current cases. "In most of my filings, the one common thread is
methamphetamine. The charges are either directly related to meth --
possession, use or dealing -- or the crime is committed while people
are under its influence or it's a property crime" to support their
habit.

Stealing is often the first drug crime to infiltrate an
area.

"You always have thefts and burglaries to help them (drug users)
obtain drugs -- the property crimes," Malovrh said. "But the
people-on-people crimes, what you might call violent crimes, happen
when these people are under the influence."

When drunk or high, a user's common sense doesn't kick in like it
might otherwise, Malovrh said. They might launch irrational attacks or
not back down from or get out of situations as they usually would.

"But the good news is, the truly random act of violence is still
relatively rare," he said. "Typically, a victim of a violent drug
crime has some type of relationship with the user, whether it's a
domestic situation, a girlfriend or boyfriend or a friend."

The number of violent assaults between drug dealers and users has also
exploded from Minneapolis to northern Minnesota recently, Evans said.

"They are mind-altering drugs," Coldagelli said. "It's easy to see how
people under the influence of drugs would engage in an act they
wouldn't otherwise engage in. But what's even more troubling to me is
drugs being behind other crimes, the crimes that drug debt or drugs
were at the bottom of.

"Now we're getting that type of violence. Those types of cases are
what I've seen on the rise."

Officials have also noticed an increase in dealers stealing an
addict's property to cover the drug debts owed them.

"Guys are trying to rip each other off or they're not paying their
debts off," Evans said. "It's all about the money. It might be about
the drugs at the end of the line, for the user, but it's hard to
fathom how much money -- they can make more in a month than I can in
five years of work."

But with that pay-off comes risk, both from law enforcement and fellow
drug criminals. Drug laws and penalties have become very stringent,
Evans said, but that hasn't stopped drug crime and related violence
from spreading, even into Minnesota's secluded, sparsely populated
Northland.

"We have everything, every problem, every situation that they have in
the Twin Cities, but it just happens here less frequently," Malovrh
said.

But, Coldagelli said, the Iron Range still has a few more rungs to
descend before it hits bottom.

"What I haven't seen yet, and it surprises me I haven't seen any yet,
is armed robberies. Burglaries and car prowls are up, but pawn shops
. are more wary of taking things in."

Local pawn shops get lists of stolen items to watch out for, North
Star Gun and Pawn Manager Bob Peterka said. If a piece of stolen
property turns up at the shop, it is confiscated by police and Peterka
hopes for restitution, but that comes on a case-by-case basis.

"We do our best to try to ask people, if they look suspicious, where
they got the item they're trying to pawn and how much it cost," he
said. "The chief of police wanted me to ask everyone where they got
their stuff, but like they're going to say they stole it. We just try
to go by intuition."

With pawn shops on the lookout for stolen items, that source of
revenue for drug users and addicts is drying up, Coldagelli said. That
could lead them to turn to "the next quickest way to get cash --
holding up a liquor store" or other business.

The Northland has already seen one string of robberies that was likely
drug-related, he said. Two men held up convenience stores in Virginia,
Cloquet and Duluth on Feb. 9 and 10. The men were armed with guns in
each case.

That could be just the first case in the area's newest drug-crime
trend.

"I have a very real concern that instances of armed robberies and
aggravated robberies will go up," Coldagelli said. "And that increases
the possibilities for tragic consequences."

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Part 2 of the Drugs and Violence series on Monday will address the
recent dramatic rise in methamphetamine use on the Iron Range and its
effects.