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HEROIN MOVES INTO SUBURBS

Haddon Heights Police Chief Ron Shute can't say if the recent overdose death in his town was even due to heroin.  So he sure can't say if the death owed to the tainted heroin that has reportedly killed 19 Camden County people in recent months.

But the message is clear just the same.  Drugs are bringing more death to the suburbs.

Of those 19 deaths, police said, all involved people picking up the tainted heroin from dealers working neighborhoods throughout Camden.  And of those 19, 12 were from the suburbs, according to Acting Camden County Prosecutor James Lynch.

In an interview this week, Lynch expressed amazement that the heroin trade in the city seems to have accelerated since news of the tainted killer heroin first broke in April.

"It's bizarre," he said.  "We get the impression people are coming in to take advantage of the extra strength of the product."

Tests have confirmed that the deaths have been linked to the ingestion of heroin laced with a substance called fentanyl, a synthetic opiate used to treat cancer patients in extreme pain.  Veterinarians, officials said, have been known to use a formulation of the drug to immobilize large animals The U.S.  Justice Department has issued an advisory saying fentanyl is 50 times more powerful than heroin itself.

"It is very powerful," Lynch said.  "It requires only a small amount to have lethal effects."

According to Lynch, local, county, state, federal and Philadelphia law enforcement officials have joined in a region-wide crackdown to root out the sources of the killer drug.  Early last week, Lynch's office had arrested a total of 80 people attempting to buy drugs in Camden, and later in the week, authorities seized "a large quantity" of heroin while arresting three mid-level dealers during pre-dawn raids in nearby Chester, Pa., another tough inner-city community.  In May, law enforcement officials reported recovering 1,300 bags of fentanyl-laced bags of heroin at a home in Camden.  Authorities said the home belongs to a reputed member of the "Latin Kings," one of the nation's largest gangs of Hispanic criminals, which the New Jersey State Commission of Investigation recently identified as a prime mover of heroin in this region.

"From 1990 through 2005, at least nine clandestine fentanyl laboratories were seized in the United States," said the Justice Department Advisory.  "However, sensitive intelligence related to ongoing law enforcement operations indicates that Mexico likely is the source of at least some of the fentanyl associated with these recent overdoses."

One fentanyl lab shutdown by law enforcement in 2003 was located as close as Newton Square, Pa.  Indeed, South Jersey is hardly alone as a target of the killer heroin purveyors, authorities said.  Fentanyl-laced heroin has "been linked to hundreds of fatal and nonfatal overdoses across the Midwest, Northeast and Mid-Atlantic regions of the United States since late 2005," according to the Justice Department advisory.

Seventy deaths have occurred throughout the entire Philadelphia region, authorities said.  There have even been cases of investigators finding fentanyl laced into cocaine.  Lynch said there is only one way to avoid such dangers.  "A key point to remember is that when you come into an environment to buy any kind of a substance you know literally nothing about, you can expect that the person you are buying it from is a criminal, who's not worried about how it's cut, or what's in it.  He's not worried about the consumer.

It's a complete crap-shoot." Heroin was once restricted to only the Hispanic sections of North Camden and Cramer Hill but Lynch said open-air drug markets catering to all illicit tastes can be found throughout Camden.  Drug fatalities have been traced directly to such middle-class communities as Blackwood and Oaklyn, and meanwhile, Haddon area officials have braced themselves to more intensely monitor drug activity in their own backyards.  "I always feel the pressure.

The pressure is always there," said Haddonfield Police Chief Rick Tsonis, referring to the challenge of crime encroaching from the inner-city.  "The moment you stop feeling the pressure, it comes and takes you over," Tsonis added.  "And we try to stay in front of it through the quality of our proactive, preventive patrols."

Haddon Township Police Chief Joseph Gallagher said he wasn't aware of any heroin-related deaths in the township, but said his department is always monitoring the local drug situation among adults as well as young people.  To protect young people, he said, the township has school resource, juvenile and community policing officers.

"We meet once a week and talk issues, particularly drug issues," he said.  "We've seen some heroin use; not a lot, but we've seen it."

Such is also generally the case in Haddon Heights, according to Shute.  "I read the paper and it's all around us, with the big supply seeming to come out of the city, with the customers living out here in the suburbs," Shute said.  "We have to stay ahead of it and our best way of doing that is through drug education, such as the DARE program."

Like the other towns in the Haddons, the Heights is free of any serious street crime, but occasionally somebody passing through can bring or cause trouble, he said, noting there have been two local drug overdoses in recent months, one fatal.

"Very, very seldom do you hear about people from our town going there to Camden and I want to keep it that way but drugs are a societal problem that knows no boundaries," Shute said.  "If we're very vigilante, maybe we can deter them from coming here.  It's a never-ending process."