OHP’s drug interdiction efforts praised

When it comes to law enforcement tactics intended to take illegal drugs off the streets, the highways can’t be overlooked. After all, drug traffickers aiming to maximize their profits often seek to transport their products to peddle in distant places.

And a common delivery method is by motor vehicles that travel state and U.S. highways as the quickest way to reach far-flung cities and towns.

Faced with that reality, we were pleased to read a recent News-Herald story about how the Ohio Highway Patrol’s enhanced efforts to detect and seize illegal drugs are yielding some impressive results.

In fact, the Ohio Highway Patrol has taken more drugs off of the state’s highways for the first half of 2017 than what it seized in the comparable period of 2016.

“The OHP has stepped up enforcement, there’s no doubt about that,” said OHP Lt. Robert Sellers.

In our opinion, the OHP deserves credit for a commitment it made in 2011 to start going beyond its core focus on highway safety and devoting increased attention to the criminal elements.

“Stop the cars, look at the safety, and then look beyond the plates,” Sellers said.

According to Sellers, the OHP has achieved tremendous success in its efforts to remove drugs and criminal elements from Ohio’s roadways.

If you’re looking for evidence of that success, consider this statistic: Since 2012, OHP troopers have seized $198,486,784 worth of drugs from the state’s highways.

Or check out the increases in cocaine seized, in three northern Ohio counties and statewide, by the OHP during the first six months of 2016 versus the same time frame in 2017.

• From January through mid-July in 2016, the OHP removed 99 grams of cocaine from Lorain County roadways. During the same time period in 2017, they removed 8,361 grams, for an 8,365 percent increase.

• For the same duration in 2016 in Lake County, they seized 4 grams of cocaine. In 2017, from January through mid-July, the numbers soared to 1,004 grams, resulting in a 24,696 percent increase.

• In Cuyahoga County for January through mid-July 2016, troopers confiscated 804 grams of cocaine, compared with 952 grams in the same stretch of 2017, for an increase of 18 percent.

• Statewide, troopers seized 38,440 grams of cocaine during the first half of 2016 and 67,563 grams during the same time period in 2017, for an increase of 76 percent.

“We haven’t won the war on drugs yet, but we are making progress,” Sellers said. “That is evident by the amount of drugs taken off the roads.”

While the OHP has made significant strides in drug interdiction by working hard at it, we also feel that the agency knows the importance of working smart in this endeavor as well.

Like all other law enforcement agencies, the Ohio Highway Patrol has to stay on top of changing trends in drug trafficking.

According to Sellers, OHP studies those trends — such as methods of transporting drugs — to stop narcotics from coming into communities.

Looking at seizure reports is another way to tell what is trending.

On a local level, OHP commanders look at those trends so they can be aware of what the problems are in their area and to know how to attack these issues.

One thing that stands out is often cocaine distribution and use tends to increase at the same time as heroin, Sellers said.

According to Sellers, that can be attributed to drug dealers having made it in the heroin market and starting to traffic other drugs to increase their sales.

Sellers said there’s no way of pinpointing if all of the drugs that were confiscated by the OHP were heading to communities in Ohio, but they were targeted for communities somewhere.

“The drugs are getting into our communities and to get here, they have to travel across our roads,” he said.

“We are the frontline of fighting drugs, stopping it before it gets to the communities.”

Clearly, the efforts of law enforcement agencies at many levels — ranging from city police departments to county drug task forces to the federal Drug Enforcement Administration — are needed to wage a full-scale battle against drug trafficking in the United States.

In the Buckeye State, though, we believe statistics prove that the Ohio Highway Patrol is playing a valuable role in detecting and seizing illegal drugs being transported on our state highways.

We commend the OHP for stepping up drug enforcement and urge the agency to keep this initiative as a high priority.