Friday, October 16, 2009 10:32 PM CDT
Task force officials say funding now is more stable
By DAVE FOPAY, Staff Writer
dfopay@jg-tc.com
MATTOON -- After 20 years in operation, officials with the East Central Illinois Task Force think the drug enforcement unit’s future might be a little more secure with a new source of funding coming soon.
The federal grant that’s the main source of funds for the Mattoon-based unit and ones like it is at a stable level after being cut severely a few years ago. Task force Commander Tom Houser said the approximately $106,000 in federal funds will probably stay at that annual level for a couple of years, though it was reduced by two-thirds at one point.
A new state law, sponsored by area lawmakers Chapin Rose and Dale Righter, that will go into place at the first of the year will require people convicted of drug offenses to pay $25 fines that will go to a pool of money to be distributed to task forces. How much the ECITF might get isn’t known yet, but law enforcement officials on the task force’s board of directors say it will be welcome.
“The state has never contributed any money to the task forces,” Douglas County Sheriff Charlie McGrew said. “It allows us to get funding from people who are convicted.”
The task force started in 1989 and operates with officers from the Coles, Douglas and Moultrie county sheriff’s departments, the Charleston, Mattoon, Eastern Illinois University and Arcola police departments and Illinois State Police. Its agents investigate drug cases in those jurisdictions, with the various police departments paying salaries and the task force paying for equipment and other operating expenses.
The separate police departments would have a hard time if they each tried to do what the task force does because of a lack of manpower, equipment and time for surveillance activities, Coles County Sheriff Darrell Cox said.
“There is no way the individual agencies could accomplish what’s going on at the task force,” Cox said.
Houser said the ECITF also benefited from another $440,000 federal grant for methamphetamine enforcement that the task force was able to make last four years instead of three. The agency also gets about $50,000 a year from court-ordered contributions and drug-related property seizures, he said.
The task force made 205 arrests in the one-year period ending Oct. 1, and 137 of those were methamphetamine-related, according to statistics Houser provided.
A trend with meth cases has been toward what Houser called “one-pot cooks,” where a smaller batch of the drug is made in a single container instead of a larger-scale operation of a laboratory.
Recent laws that restricted purchases of cold medicine with pseudoephedrine, an ingredient that’s essential to make meth, are likely the cause, he said.
Illinois is working on a data base to better track people who go from store to store to try to buy enough cold medicine for the drug-making process. The three law enforcement officers all said they favor that approach, or at least giving it a try, before making pseudoephedrine available by prescription only, as some states have done to try to reduce methamphetamine manufacturing.
“It’s a small element of our society who’s abusing it,” Cox said. “We shouldn’t burden the 99.9 percent of our society who needs it because they have a cold.”
Contact Dave Fopay at dfopay@jg-tc.com or 238-6858.
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just watching wrote on Oct 17, 2009 12:23 AM:
I know for a fact the numbers are staggering.Don't tell me you want to milk the problem along with the other Ill state counties.
If you guys can get legislation to pass the law it should have in the first place, (prescription) none of these meth related crimes would even exist.Stop the problem not try to control it.I'm sure there's plenty more drug crimes the task force could focus on like the huge influx of crack or herion thats seems to be popping up all over now.The meth cycle needs to be stopped not controlled and the answers to that are simple and obvious.
Look at Oregons statistics 400 labs down to 20 because of a prescription law, thats HUGE.
I at least hope you still sign my petition. Thanks JW. "