There were three separate drug buy/busts conducted by Northfield police officers and members of the South Central Drug Investigations Unit last week. Last Sunday, I had the opportunity to participate in the most recent drug arrests. That one resulted in the seizure of cash, drugs, and the arrest of four individuals
My thanks to Officers Barlau and Gigstad and Sergeant Ted Berg for their assistance. Thanks goes out to Deputy Smith of the Rice County Sheriff’s Department for his assistance as well.
What I observed yesterday reinforced my belief that the good working relationships between the various Rice County law enforcement agencies is a win-win situation for everyone. Through good communication and participation, we make a bigger impact on criminal activities in and around our community. The assistance of other agencies and the drug task force provides the personnel and resources necessary to successfully complete drug investigations and make the arrests.
Finally, the fact that we continue to take cocaine and meth away from dealers intent on coming to Northfield to sell the stuff tells me we can’t get complacent. It is necessary to continue to be vigilant and continue to make it difficult and risky to conduct illegal drug sales and distribution.
There are two types of dealers who we encounter in this area. The first ones are people who live here and either distribute the drugs themselves, distribute through others or often go into the cities and bring back the drug to sell themselves. In the case of Meth, if is often manufactured nearby. The other type is the individual who has contacts in Northfield who use “middlemen” to contact prospective buyers.
I’ve recently been asked why we “encourage” people to come here to sell drugs.
The answer is we don’t.
It is not the intent of law enforcement to deliberately seek out people to come to any community to sell drugs. Those who come here have local contacts who either seek out our agents or our confidential informants thinking they are willing buyers. We also learn of these activities through third parties who are exposed to the drug selling through a friend or family member.
It is important to note that we do not establish the selling pattern, we interrupt it in the hopes of preventing the sale to someone else in the community.
We will also continue to work on education.
There is a DARE Program at St. Dominic’s School in Northfield and our Northfield DARE Officers can assist in other programs in the schools from pre-k through high school and other youth venues. We will continue to provide informative training sessions for parents, employers and community members about the various drug issues and drug identification. This includes doing everything we can possibly do to keep schools and other places kids gather drug free. This includes alcohol and tobacco use.
We will continue to work with health care, prevention and treatment organizations to provide support and information as needed. This will include having a drug recognition expert officer trained by next summer if possible.
I will continue to provide you with as clear a picture as I possibly can as to the extent of the drug and violence issues we face both on a local, regional, state and national scale.
Northfield’s success in prevention to date stems from the community’s willingness to actively engage is the issues. There are great opportunities out there through mentoring programs, volunteer programs in the schools, attending the parent communication forums , signing up for the Parent Communication Network e-newsletter and a myriad of other activities.
A good example of the level of concern I’ve experienced took place at a recent meeting I had with a number of downtown business people. They were interested in various approaches to dealing with property crimes and vandalism. It would have been really easy for them to simply demand the police “handle it.” They didn’t do this. Instead, this group of enlightened business people discussed the options of prevention, and offered their assistance to me. They showed a genuine interest to support Northfield kids and the community.
Today a lot of people are going to exercise their civic responsibility and participation in our community by voting. I would encourage you to continue that spirit of participation beyond the voting booth by staying informed and involved when it comes to crime prevention and issues of community safety.