The first arrest occurred shortly after noon when an off-duty police officer spotted what he believed was a drug transaction involving a person in a white Volkswagen Jetta. A patrol officer pulled over the Jetta and found several hypodermic needles and a bag with heroin residue in the car. The driver was then issued summonses for possession of heroin paraphernalia and possession of a hypodermic needle, and released.
Only a few hours later, while conducting surveillance of known heroin traffickers, members of the Selective Enforcement Team spotted the driver of a white Volkswagen Jetta – whom they later determined to be the same individual arrested earlier in the day – meeting with one of their surveillance subjects. When officers stopped the Volkswagen this time, they found that the driver had ten wax folds of heroin.
This time he was charged with possession of heroin and possession of heroin paraphernalia, and this time he was lodged in the County Jail.
There is, many assert, an epidemic of heroin use in the suburban region in which these arrests occurred. That an arrest would not deter someone from continuing to seek heroin in the same town in the same car on the same afternoon only underscores that assertion.
