Drug house raids and street dealer arrests have plummeted in Detroit this year, resulting in fewer drugs confiscated and fewer illegal firearms taken off the street, according to internal police documents obtained by George Hunter of the The Detroit News.
As of Sept. 7, the Detroit Police Narcotics Section executed 758 search warrants — down from 1,379 during the same period in 2013. Street enforcements by the drug unit have dropped from 423 last year to 258 this year. Firearm confiscations are down from 705 to 333, while the amount of cocaine, marijuana and heroin confiscated has been roughly cut in half.
The decline is attributed to a smaller police staff, disbanding of the Narcotics Section and old rules that are blocking neighborhood raids.
The sale of illegal drugs and the crimes that come with it have long been one of the city’s biggest problems. There are an estimated 10,000 drug houses in Detroit and the city gets an annual average of 4,000 complaints about drug houses to the 224-DOPE hotline, said Lt. Charles Flanagan, former head of the Detroit Police’s Narcotics Section, who now runs the Vice Squad.
At the same time, the number of police focusing on drugs has fallen. Last year, the Narcotics Section had six crews, each made up of eight officers and a sergeant, and two task forces with the FBI and Drug Enforcement Administration. Because of retirements and attrition, the number of officers assigned to the Narcotics Section was reduced to about half by the start of 2014. That reflects a drop in the overall number of police officers, which has plummeted from 3,126 in 2001 to 1,854.
