Narcotics Cop: 10% Of Americans Use Drugs

Sgt. Andrew Douvries' 30 years as a narcotics officer have taken him to many places: West Side street corners where suburbanites buy heroin, the homes of teenage gang members and court rooms where judges hand out Class X sentences--some to graying Baby Boomers still hooked on drugs.

Last week Douvries, of the Cook County Sheriff's Police, came to Maine Township's Town Hall to talk about drugs in the area, which borders Niles, Des Plaines, Glenview and Park Ridge. He told about 30 people attending a Neighborhood Watch meeting how suburbanites get their drugs, why the U.S. can't kick its habit and why gangs focus on drugs.

“It’s all about being able to recruit people, and making money,” Douvries said of drugs and gangs. “Ninety percent of gangs make most of their money by narcotics trafficking.”

Marijuana, heroin and cocaine are the drugs most commonly sold in the north suburbs, according to Douvries and Deputy Commander Anthony Brzezniak of the Cook County Sheriff’s Police North Area Patrol Division, which is based in Skokie. The county sheriff’s department patrols only the unincorporated sections of the county, though the entire area is affected by drugs.

Better tools to fight drug sellers

To combat drug sales and use, Douvries and his colleagues on the county sheriff’s narcotics unit—there are 22 officers, who serve all of unincorporated Cook County—use technology, which has been improving to the point where very small cameras capture high quality video. When police making an undercover drug buy can show good video and audio in court,  he pointed out, that leaves little wiggle room for defendants.

“When we present evidence, 90 percent of the time the person does time in prison. We think it gets the person off the street,” Douvries said.  Illinois Class X laws, which apply to many drug charges, are helpful, he added, because they mandate a judge to sentence a defendant to a certain amount of prison time.

Recent court ruling affects narcotics investigators

When the U.S. Supreme Court ruled two weeks ago that police need a warrant to use GPS devices to track drug suspects’ movements to gather evidence against them, that hindered police trying to build cases against drug dealers, Douvries maintained.

“We can still do it, we just need a warrant,” he said, explaining that if police can  affix GPS devices to the cars of suspected drug dealers, the devices record the places they visited. The pattern of those travels around town could help establish a case against them.

Buying drugs in city, bringing them to suburbs

Many suburbanites travel to known drug hot spots on Chicago’s West Side to buy not only drugs for themselves, but to resell, Douvries said.

“You can buy a small package of heroin for $10 or $15, come back out here sell them for $30,” he said.

Many of those drugs find their way to suburban high schools.

"It’s happening at every high school, High schools don’t want to admit to it,” said Brzezniak.

Not like it used to be

For those who use drugs, prices have come down over the years, relatively speaking, Douvries added. People who earn $8 an hour can buy drugs and still pay their rent, unlike 20 years ago, when many drug users had to steal to support their habits.

“The people we arrest have nice cars  and money in their pocket. They’re not scraping by. This is something they do,” Douvies said. 

Many of those people are getting older. The most typical age for people in drug rehab is the Baby Boomer generation—people born between 1948 and 1964, Douvries said, surprising the audience.

Huge numbers use drugs

The demand for drugs—from all age groups—is at the root of the drug problem, he said.

“We accept the fact that on a regular basis, between 27 and 30 million people in this country use drugs,” he lamented.

“We’ve been stuck at the 30 million person level for many years--10 to 15 percent of our population."

That number of people may not use drugs every day, but they do use them, he said.

“The number one problem we have in this country is that most of the drugs trafficked in the streets in America are not produced in America. There are some countries that if they didn’t have narcotics, they wouldn’t have a gross national product,” Douvries complained.

“They tell our State Department, it’s your problem. You have a nation of consumers.”

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