Rising gang activity fueling the drug trade in SC's Lowcountry, police say - Charleston Post Courier

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Pressed into pills, cut into cocaine, packaged into bricks and loaded into tractor-trailers bound for South Carolina — each day staggering quantities of narcotics flow into the Palmetto State.

While drugs and the violence they can bring have long dogged communities, law enforcement officials say the problem has intensified significantly over the past five years in a cycle fueled by growing gang activity and rising demand for the illicit substances they peddle.

The violent crime rate during 2020 was so alarming it prompted State Law Enforcement Division Chief Mark Keel to hold his second ever news conference since taking the post in 2011. 

Keel cited preliminary statistics that showed South Carolina recorded the highest number of homicides since record keeping began in 1960, and said his agency’s analysis showed 2021 could be an even more violent year than 2020 if the current trend holds.

The state's top cop pointed squarely at gang and drug activity for the sharp spike in violence. 

“Our communities themselves are victims of drugs being brought into their neighborhoods,” Keel said. “No family who’s lost a loved one … can be told that there are no victims in drug crimes."

In the Charleston area, where authorities have noted a significant increase in drug activity, police are also growing increasingly concerned but say they have a coordinated and comprehensive approach they believe will tamp down the violence and make the Holy City safer.

"Drugs are what the gangs use to fund themselves," said Charleston Police Capt. Andre Jenkins. "These guys have connections into what we call the hub cities like Atlanta, New York, Baltimore and Chicago. They're going directly to the source now."

A drug hot spot

In June 2016, Charleston police made one of the largest drug busts in the city's history. 

A six-month investigation unveiled a network of current and former College of Charleston students who funneled hundreds of thousands of dollars of cocaine, pills and other narcotics into downtown. 

The ring operated a factory-grade press that stamped out pills by the thousands using chemicals ordered through the internet from China and other sources. They got cocaine from suppliers in Georgia and marijuana through the mail from states where cannabis is legal. 

Students and other young people made up their steady supply of customers. 

In the years since, police officers like Jenkins said Charleston's drug trade has grown more serious and insidious. 

The city's three main drugs of choice are marijuana, cocaine and counterfeit pills like Xanax and Adderall, he said. The ongoing, nationwide opioid epidemic also presents unique challenges and concerns. 

"The (suppliers) want to sell fentanyl because it's cheaper and they can make more on it," Jenkins said.

Fentanyl, a synthetic opioid some 50 to 100 times more powerful than morphine, is making its way into other drugs. 

In April, Charleston police put out an alert saying the department was seeing an increase of fentanyl being mixed with heroin, cocaine, marijuana and pressed into black market pills meant to be passed off as prescription drugs like Xanax. 

The hidden opioid content can have deadly consequences, police said. 

"Often the user has no idea they're ingesting fentanyl," they said. "What they believe is their normal dose has the potential to be far more potent than they intended. Taking illicit drugs or narcotics tainted with fentanyl can lead to coma or death within minutes."

Fighting the drug trade

In the past year, federal officials designated Charleston County as a High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area, a mark that both indicates the severity of the narcotics problem in the Lowcountry and provides significant resources to authorities trying to tamp it down, according to Jenkins. 

The Charleston Police Department has officers that serve with several federal task forces. 

"With those guys along with our narcotics detectives and our Field Intelligence Unit, we're investigating them," Jenkins said. "We're trying to get those cases adopted at the federal level."

While the drug trade impacts many people across socioeconomic classes, the violence brought by dealing is all too often concentrated in Charleston's disenfranchised communities, he said. 

"This is a problem that didn't start overnight, but we're committed to working to get these guys locked up," Jenkins said. "We've seen a huge increase, and that's pushing a lot of our violent crime here because these guys are now not only committing violent crimes against each other because of money, but also with the territory. It's destroying our communities day in and day out. These guys have issues with each other and they shoot on sight."

In North Charleston, police are working to address both drug supply and demand through community policing efforts, school resource officers, neighborhood resource officers and regular patrol operations, said Lt. Joseph Niemiec, of the department's street crimes bureau. 

"They provide the one-on-one mentoring as well as resource sharing to help people who want to make those changes," Niemiec said. "Programs like the Cops Athletic Program provide the one on one contact with youths to help steer them away from gangs and drugs."

Alongside community policing and education, the department continues to rigorously police individuals and groups associated with the drug trade, working with the 9th Circuit Solicitor's Office, local law enforcement agencies and federal partners to make strong cases against those who bring drugs and violence into the city, he said. 

Nick Bianchi, deputy chief of narcotics for the U.S. Attorney's Office for the District of South Carolina, said his office works closely with local agencies such as Charleston police to bring drug cases to federal court when possible.

Defendants can face harsher penalties at the federal level because of the way the law is structured, and because federal cases often rely on lengthy investigation that turn up substantial evidence against defendants that can be next to impossible to disprove. 

"We're primarily seeing the drugs coming into South Carolina," Bianchi said." We're not seen as a source location. … There's been success in making a big impact and disrupting and dismantling organizations. The key is to keep going, and use our resources and capabilities to keep that organization dismantled."

Drug trafficking activity is fairly evenly spread around the state, he said, with the greatest activity centered in South Carolina's large metropolitan areas — Charleston, Greenville, Columbia and Myrtle Beach. 

In recent years, South Carolina has evolved from being a minor stop in the drug trade into a secondary distribution and command and control area for drug trafficking organizations, said Chuvalo Truesdell, a special agent and spokesman for the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration in Atlanta. 

"South Carolina is a distribution center for both licit and illicit drugs in the Southeast United States, in large-part because of its geographic location and its vast transportation infrastructure," Truesdell said. "Consequently, the seaport of Charleston ... is a susceptible target for international drug trafficking."

Treating addiction

Although law enforcement plays a large role in combating the Lowcountry's drug trade, authorities all agreed that they will never solve the drug problem through arrests and prosecution alone. 

Facilities such as the Charleston Center, which offers comprehensive treatment for people with addiction to opioids and other drugs also play a significant role. 

While addiction to all drugs can swiftly have a negative impact on peoples' lives, the ongoing opioid epidemic remains a top concern for Charleston Center staff like Caitlin Kratz, program administrator of opioid treatment services. 

The center's staff have seen a significant increase in overdoses and overdose deaths, mainly involving fentanyl, Kratz said. 

"Patients say they're seeking out fentanyl," she said. "Three to four years ago, it was rare we'd see it. A lot of patients have multiple overdose histories. They'll have two or three overdoses before seeking treatment." 

While alarming, the numbers show one positive trend, access to Narcan. The medication, which can reverse opioid overdoses, is saving lives, Kratz said. 

"That's a good sign," she said. "Treatment is available if they're alive."

Kratz said she and her colleagues are busy continuing to break down the many barriers that prevent some people from treating their addiction. 

She continues to spread the message that addiction is an illness that requires medication and trained medical professionals to recover from.

The less social stigma there is around addiction, the more people she hopes will seek out treatment and the more lives will be saved, Kratz said. 

Significant progress has been made since 2016 and 2017, when the opioid epidemic first started flaring in South Carolina. 

"We were all at a loss," Kratz said. "Everyone was experiencing the epidemic in different ways and it almost was like we all came together to say, OK, how can I bring my expertise to the table to better help the community." 

She and others worked together to educate everyone from law enforcement officers to emergency room doctors and nurses on proper protocols.

With time, law enforcement recognized that arresting a person going through addiction wouldn't get them to stay clean, and hospital staff knew they couldn't release an overdose patient without a referral to treatment. 

"There was a huge willingness," Kratz said. "Everybody started feeling the impact. It's not so much siloed like it was before."

And she hopes to see those partnerships continue to grow over the next five years. 

Two of the biggest hurdles to treatment are affordability and access, Kratz said. 

"The reality is treatment is expensive, especially residential treatment," she said. "Not everybody can afford it." 

Of the roughly 334 patients being treated at her clinic, 150 of them are getting financial help, Kratz said. 

It's critical that state lawmakers continue to provide robust funding for her program and others like it around the Palmetto State, she said. 

While expenses are a significant challenge, access to quality care remains a massive hurdle to getting people treatment, Kratz said. 

Though located in Charleston, the center treats patients from as far away as Columbia and Georgetown, she said. Residents of rural communities who are in need of addiction treatment and counseling can find it hard or impossible to secure transportation to South Carolina's major cities, where the majority of facilities like the Charleston Center are based. 

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