The recent arrest of a trio of alleged drug dealers is evidence of the increasing importance of the illegal drug investigations being conducted by the Columbia River Drug Task Force.
"They should be charged with murder," said Chelan County Sheriff Mike Morrison in an exclusive interview with KOZI, following the arrest of Luis Fernando Garcia, 32, of Malaga, Kevin Pina-Gaona, 30, of Wenatchee, and Jessie William Pina, 27, of Wenatchee. "They are selling a poison to our community that is taking people's lives and they should be held accountable for it."
NCW Life reported Thursday that there have been two more arrests in the ongoing investigation. Maria Teresa Verduzco, 39, of Cashmere and Rosa Gloria Ramirez, 31, of East Wenatchee have been jailed on similar charges of distribution of fentanyl and methamphetamines. The Chelan County Prosecutor has yet to file formal charges.
"We're going to fight this and we're going to overcome this battle," the Sheriff added, when speaking of the illicit drugs' suspected involvement in at least 10 overdose deaths in the past few weeks in the Wenatchee area. "We're seeing it getting worse, and unfortunately Washington State really has to step back and figure out how we can approach this differently because we're not following the national trend where the numbers (of drug overdoses) are going down, they're increasing, and how many citizens is too much."
Alarmed by the 32 drug overdose deaths that have so far been reported this year in Chelan County, a request for more state financial support will be made during the upcoming legislative session.
At the request this year of Wenatchee Police for the Sheriff to assume the supervisory role of the regional drug task force, Sheriff Morrison has asked the county commissioners to allow him to make staffing changes. In the meantime, the Sheriff has appointed Sgt. Chris Foreman to lead the task force.
On the Chelan County Sheriff's Office podcast, "A badge and a mic", Sgt. Foreman said the most recent drug arrests were accomplished through constant and diligent surveillance.
"One of our detectives was able to essentially launch a six-month investigation into a gang, drug dealing organization, and started doing different surveillance techniques to start watching them; figure out where they were going, where they were going to get their drugs, who they were dealing to, and then identified a stash location," Sgt. Foreman detailed. "We were able to recover decent amounts of fentanyl powder, fentanyl pills, methamphetamine."
Court documents obtained by NCW Life indicate two shotguns and five handguns were also recovered.
"This is a testament to teamwork and partnership with our federal counterparts, the amount of people involved and the guns," said Foreman. "We're looking at taking this case federal, that means they're looking at longer jail time so they will be out of our community for a longer time."
Watch and listen to "A badge and a mic", the Chelan County Sheriff's podcast, here.
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