DAYTON — Latest Federal Bureau of Investigation crime statistics show homicides nationwide are up by 30 percent in just a year. But now a new program, led by the Drug Enforcement Agency, is going after violent crime.
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The new directive, called Operation Overdrive, has been launched in 34 cities nationwide, including in Dayton, is a change in tactics to fight the use and sale of fentanyl and the other crimes that come from it.
“I’ve never seen a drug this deadly. The reason why the DEA launched (Operation Overdrive) is the high number of overdoses we’re seeing in the country”, Jared Forget, the DEA’s Special Agent in Charge of Operation Overdrive said.
From May 2020 to April 2021, over 105,000 deaths were linked to overdoses, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention statistics. Among men 18-year-old to 45-years-old drug overdoses are the leading cause of death.
But the surge of overdoses led the DEA to a surprising place: gun crimes and the amount of violence happening in cities across the country.
“We looked at, where we’re seeing the highest amount of violence. And then we also looked at the areas where we’re seeing a lot of overdoses and we mapped them together,” Forget said.
The research led the DEA and local police to work together more, move in on the threats, and try and take down the criminal networks in these areas. The DEA hopes Operation Overdrive leads to a drop in both violent crime and drug overdoes at the same time.
But even as the DEA starts this crackdown, agents are starting to notice the deadly amount of fentanyl is showing up in clusters in cities.
“This is the number one priority. We had 14 people that went down on an overdose on a city block or, you know, when several city blocks, and nine people ended up dying. So it’s, it’s almost like a mass casualty event or a mass shooting,” veteran DEA Agent Michael Rosemond said.
The DEA said Operation Overdrive is only in its first phase and will eventually be expanded to more cities and eventually across the county.
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