Addiction, Gluttony – Day 149 of Project 365 originally uploaded by purplemattfish
Two weeks ago, after reading through recent and historical Dakota County Criminal Complaints for adults, I came across two narratives which covered adults involved in two separate heroin overdose cases concerning minors. Intrigued and under the impression that real news is hard to come by in the summer, I dug even further than my preliminary research and made some phone calls and found that teen heroin use is definitely on the rise in Dakota County.
I first contacted the Dakota County Attorney’s office, the same county attorney who was reprimanded by the Minnesota Supreme Court and recently fined $900 as well, and asked if they had noticed a recent rise in the number of teen heroin cases that came through the county. Community Relations Director Monica Jensen said that while they have not seen an uptick it could possibly be due to the fact that the cases just never came to them. She instead referred me to the Dakota County Drug Task Force and New Connection Programs in Hastings to get information direct from the “trenches”. While quite helpful, I have to wonder if this was an attempt at staying out of the limelight following the public reprimand handed down so very recently especially after an anonymous tipster told me flat out that the Dakota County Attorney’s Office believes there has been more cases of teenage heroin use lately.
I contacted the Dakota County Drug Task Force first and eventually spoke with an officer there who said that he has seen a rise in teen heroin use in Dakota County recently. He believes it may be following the cyclical supply trends that they routinely see with drugs like meth and cocaine but that heroin use is a problem because of its addictive qualities and thus once someone is hooked the continue to seek it out from their suppliers. I never did get through to the New Connections Program contact I was given even after multiple attempts but after seeing yet another arrest related to adult heroin use, this time in Rosemount, I figured that the criminal complaints would help to back up the Drug Task Force’s comments on their own.
So while there was some speculation and more questions asked than answered in my last post, it would definitely seem that heroin use amongst teens is on the rise with adults fueling the fire. A disturbing trend to say the least and one that I hope will cause local city councils to up the levels of public safety personnel and force police departments to reconsider poor decisions on which “crime” they choose to monitor.
Now that there is confirmation from yet another criminal complaint and the Dakota County Drug Task Force, do you think that more should be done to prevent teens from gaining access to this extremely dangerous drug? Should the Burnsville Police Department be sitting on a street corner counting honking horns and recording license plate numbers of protesters instead of tracking down drug use amongst residents? Whatever you think, go ahead and comment on as I’d love to hear what you have to say!
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July 7th, 2009 at 9:42 am
I had no idea there was a problem here in Dakota county. Is it just me or do you also not hear much happening in the south metro when it comes to crime, drugs or otherwise.
July 7th, 2009 at 9:47 am
I’m sure the Burnsville PD doesn’t exactly want you to know that they are chasing down war protesters instead of drug peddling assholes. With the local media printing what is hand delivered to them instead of doing any real legwork (afterall, the summer is a slow time for hard news) of course these types of stories are not going to see the light of day.
But fuck me, an alligator in a pond in Eagan, that’s fucking important shit to know about people.
July 7th, 2009 at 9:57 am
Reading the “whole story” which contains a whole 6 sentences, seems anti-climatic. But please… Animal Control on vacation?!? What the hell! Aren’t they a public service, just like the police?
The alligator probably just wanted some potato salad and to light some sparklers.
July 7th, 2009 at 12:01 pm
Come on Bill, there is no hard news in the summer, and these downer stories you keep brining up really detract from the busy schedules our South Metro “journalists” must keep to maintain thier high standards and journalistic integrity.
How can they be expected to take the time to research and report on things like this when there is a new ice cream truck to report on? Or a very popular south metro cross walk to do stories on.
July 7th, 2009 at 12:34 pm
Aw shucks…I misread the headline as “Team Heroin Problem” and thought we were going to get another article about the decision making of our local Mayors, Councils and government officials.
July 7th, 2009 at 12:37 pm
Maybe we need more commercials with Rachel Leigh Cook smashing up a kitchen.
July 7th, 2009 at 12:37 pm
Now Chad, haven’t you been paying attention? The journalists have told us time and time again that stories about pink ice cream trucks and police with broken fingers are really what people want to read. I mean, there is nothing more dangerous to the residents of the South Metro than an isolated once-pet alligator swimming around in a drainage pond. As if teenage drug use and adults causing children to OD would really affect them any. We’re just a bunch of conspiracy theorists after all…
They have also told us that they have done the studies and those studies have shown that this is what they need to do to succeed. The fact that they were once doing hard hitting journalism 25+ years ago is what caused readership to drop so sharply in the last 10. It has nothing to do with the fact that they aren’t writing anything worth reading except to a handful of people who don’t give a shit one way or the other about the newspaper.
July 7th, 2009 at 1:00 pm
Does anyone here have *any* evidence that focusing on hard news like this is going to increase their readership?
It’s called a feedback loop. They lose readers (for a variety of reasons), so they find out what the ones who are left want to read and what they can get for cheap, and then they run those stories. Cycle repeats ad infinitum. It happens in all forms of media, not just news.
Should they cover this stuff more? It would be nice, but at the same time unless they get a decent ROI on the time and effort they spend, it’s not a rational business decision for them.
July 7th, 2009 at 1:09 pm
Tim,
1. It took me all of 15 minutes to do the base research necessary to do both stories (I suppose that doesn’t include the 30 minutes it took me to develop the scraping script to pull down the Dakota County Criminal Complaints once a day and archive them — something I did over a year and a half ago).
2. It took me 30 seconds to read an e-mail from someone who suggested I contact the Dakota County Attorney’s Office for comment as they should have provided me with the evidence I needed.
3. It took me all of 20 minutes to call the Dakota County Drug Task Force and speak to an officer there *and* make multiple attempts to New Connections Program.
4. It took me about 30 minutes more (total) to type them up.
I’m all for giving credit where it’s due but man, you’re making it seem like this was tough work when it really wasn’t. I’m sorry but if a JOURNALIST does not have 65 minutes over two weeks to handle a story of the utmost importance to the safety of the younger residents of our city, then they should just rename themselves “puffers”, take a fucking paycut, and stop bitching that their livelihoods are being swept out from under them.
July 7th, 2009 at 1:28 pm
Not sure what it is going to take to get people and citizens of the county upset about the rise in crime / herion use in the county and more specifically Burnsville with the reduction of police when crime is on the rise. What I see is the mentality of just ignor it, it will go away, if you do not acknowledge the problem, there must not be a problem!
Guy breaks into a home, injures a 9 month old, and then threated to kill the home owner.
http://www.twincities.com/dakota/ci_12745045?nclick_check=1
http://services.co.dakota.mn.us/InmateSearch/Details.aspx?PIN=0905738
http://services.co.dakota.mn.us/complaintSearch/complaint.aspx?ID=8492
July 7th, 2009 at 1:33 pm
Derrick’s playing devil’s advocate. He believes there *may* be an interesting story here … but non-the-less …
Are we sure there *is* a story here?
• So far, Bill, you have the Dakota County Attorney’s office saying they don’t see it, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist …
• You have just *three* complaints, with at least one of them being “historical” …
• And you didn’t put into context what the task force officer seeing is a *rise* even means. Are we talking about three cases compared to one, or 60 cases compared to 12?
A conspiracy theorist may suppose this is just the *media* fanning the crime flames in order to get people to buy and read more newspapers.
Just food for thought. It is pretty interesting.
July 7th, 2009 at 1:35 pm
Well I have a couple of ideas what will get the public’s attention:
1. A Burnsville PD press release, reprinted in the local media, about how the pink cow ice cream truck was keyed with the words, “Heroin rules!”
2. The Burnsville City Staff sends out a press release about how the hanging baskets, looking to be approved at tonight’s City Council meeting, were torn down and stripped of their wire hangers to clean out the glass pipes used to “chase the dragon”.
July 7th, 2009 at 1:36 pm
Yes and stop playing the devil’s advocate. I’m tired of it.
July 7th, 2009 at 1:55 pm
Derrick, here is a story for you.
April 2009 Stats from the Burnsville Police Department
( I am sure if you contacted Monica Jensen as I have in the past, she would be very happy to assist you with obtaining these numbers by city in Dakota county as all that is posted by the county is year end numbers.)
http://www.burnsville.org/DocumentView.aspx?DID=69
Serious crime is on the rise in Burnsville from 2008!!
Murders: YTD 2008 :1 YTD 2009: 2
Rapes: YTD 2008 :6 YTD 2009: 12
Robbery: YTD 2008 :8 YTD 2009: 15
Aggravated Assult: YTD 2008 :8 YTD 2009: 15
Burglary Residential: YTD 2008 :36 YTD 2009: 53
Arson: YTD 2008:0 YTD 2009: 2
Narcotics: YTD 2008:117 YTD 2009: 161
With the access you have why don’t you press for the May report from the Burnsville Police Department and write a story using the May numbers on these facts?
As a peasant citizen of Burnsville, I am waiting for the city to post the May crime numbers.
You may also want to look at the number of criminal charges for 2008 in Burnsville compared to Eagan in which has a larger population and ask some probing questions on why Burnsville charges are significantly higher than surrounding cities. (Or again ask Monica for more recent numbers in 2009 to put more merit on these numbers in your article).
http://www.co.dakota.mn.us/Departments/Attorney/Reports/default.htm
You can then tie this to the reduction of officers in Burnsville in the event the feds do not fund the citie’s request to backfill the three eliminated positions through the stimulus funds.
July 7th, 2009 at 1:59 pm
2 as opposed to 1 murder? That’s not evidence!
Twice as many rapes but really on 6 more?! Bullshit I say.
7 more robberies bringing the total to 15? Who cares?! There are alligators in ponds in Eagan!
2 arsons?! Probably deserved it.
44 more narcotics arrests? At least we’re not Minneapolis!
July 7th, 2009 at 2:19 pm
Funny, Bill.
Good angle, Thought Leader.
I’m not suggesting you should do the work of the reporters, but have you considered sending this kind of information in an email to the reporters who cover your community.
They may find it interesting and there’s a good chance they don’t read this blog.
Reporters and news organizations gladly take story ideas.
July 7th, 2009 at 2:56 pm
Will you guys shut up!
I’m trying to concentrate on reading Pan-O-Prog articles and a hard-hitting expose on what a retiring Burnsville facilities and rec center manager is going to do now.
July 7th, 2009 at 4:08 pm
Here’s a link to a piece I did last year that ran in all our editions. It’s certainly something Thisweek should do every year.
http://www.thisweeklive.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=3758&Itemid=2
Following the publication of the article we added a public safety/crime information page to Thisweeklive.com. Check it out here:
http://www.thisweeklive.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=blogcategory&id=154&Itemid=1826
From my perspective as a reporter who spent considerable time researching and cold calling police and crime analysts, the article received zero public feedback. I checked our records online and to date this story has gotten 350 page impressions. In stark contrast, Andrew Miller’s story about the opening of Lakeville’s Brunswick Zone XL (http://www.thisweeklive.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=4630&Itemid=2) has gotten 1073 page impressions to date.
We see where reader interest is. However, as a journalist, I am committed to covering all the important stories, and not by virtue of their popularity or pageviews …or lack thereof. And, we need to be doing these stories on a regular basis if we want to earn our paychecks. Readers may pick up our papers for some of the fluff, but I believe they respect our role as watchdogs and trend spotters. If we abdicate that duty, we should not be called journalists.
I applaud you Bill for digging on this story. I got passionate about journalism because of stories like this. But, these stories require even more digging than Bill’s likely got time to do, lots of context and dogged reporting that doesn’t take the city’s talking points. Burnsville’s April 2009 Stats are eye opening and I will make sure we at Thisweek follow up on them.
This discussion is a great one to be hosting on your blog Bill. I for one take it as fuel for making our publications better.
July 7th, 2009 at 4:19 pm
Sorry MSPD, I will shut up. I will see you then at the Pan-O-Prog Parade on Saturday at 5:30. Hopefully no one knows I will be at the parade on Saturday and rob my home while I am out and add to the count of residential burglaries. By the way, I would retire too if I was Gary Harker after his mismanagement of the contractors in the building of the PAC!! He should have been fired!! Take a look at all of the Supplemental Agreements, rework, cost overruns and breaches of contracts that the contractors were not held accountable for!!
“It was rewarding, frustrating, accomplishing, a pain in the butt, nerve-wracking,†Harker said of the PAC job. “It was every adjective I could think of.â€
“He brought it in virtually on time and on budget,†Deputy City Manager Tom Hansen said.
Virtually?? I wish I got paid and could keep my job for “virtually” doing my job.
July 7th, 2009 at 4:44 pm
Jeff, great response. Thank you for taking the time to post it.
July 7th, 2009 at 4:55 pm
I don’t think Burnsville is alone in this… it would be interesting to see the same figures from 08 and 09 in Eagan, AV, Savage, and of course in Bloomington, Inver Grove Heights and maybe even Faribault and Northfield.
a 10% unemployment rate, and an even higher one probably among the peak criminal age group 15-30 years old, probably is directly proportional to an increase in the statistics…
keep informing.
July 7th, 2009 at 6:39 pm
I’m in the criminal age group!
July 19th, 2009 at 11:09 am
More criminal complaints out of Dakota County relating to Heroin OD: PDF, TXT.
PDF, TXT.
The accused were 26 and 21 respectively.
September 4th, 2009 at 8:08 am
An article out of Northfield appeared on the Star Tribune related to a heroin related OD leading to homicide charges: http://www.startribune.com/local/south/56676577.html
December 30th, 2009 at 8:30 am
18 year old in Hastings with a heroin problem: http://services.co.dakota.mn.us/ComplaintSearch/complaint.aspx?ID=9181
January 12th, 2010 at 12:37 pm
http://wcco.com/local/heroin.twin.cities.2.1420869.html
January 22nd, 2010 at 7:32 am
[...] summer, when news was apparently really difficult to come by, I was able to discern that heroin use was rising rapidly in Dakota County. After doing some preliminary research on the topic and being told by a Thisweek News staffer that [...]