The Knight Museum and Sandhills Center played host to a meeting of several law enforcement agencies on March 9, all sharing in the goal to combat the spread of methamphetamine throughout the state of Nebraska.
Representatives from the FBI, the DEA, the US Attorney and Nebraska Attorney General Doug Peterson met with area agencies regarding the issue. Peterson explained that this new collaborative push to fight meth came from a discussion between several agencies.
“The discussion was, this meth problem has impacted every community in such a detrimental way, and how can we better coordinate the fight from a statewide basis,” said Peterson. “It was easy to target Omaha and Lincoln, and maybe some other pockets, and with those pockets, we typically have task forces, joint, federal, state, local, but frankly, it’s a statewide problem, border to border. It doesn’t matter the size of the community.
Peterson explained that federal officials bring critical intel to the discussion from the national and international perspective. He said he hopes this collaborative effort will serve as a force multiplier.
“We don’t want a bunch of law enforcement agencies operating in silos,” Peterson said. “We can strengthen their investigative methods. We can strengthen their abilities as far as our litigation. We’re trying to strengthen the state, because we know the industry, from the drug cartels, is sophisticated, and they’re producing a lot of meth. Unfortunately, there’s an appetite for meth in Nebraska.”
Peterson said this effort will consist of a three-pronged approach: prevention through education, developing treatment and strengthening law enforcement.
Alliance Police Department Chief Phil Lukens said the meeting provided important information, as well as the ability to connect with other law enforcement agencies that are fighting similar battles.
“We’re very excited about this ‘Life or Meth’ initiative where we can be sharing information among all sorts of law enforcement agencies,” said Lukens. “We can continue to be talking with one another, as well as getting the resources so that we can provide the support that they need. There are cases we talk about where we want to be able to just provide rehabilitation for people.
“There are also individuals that are creating extreme dangers in our community and beyond,” Lukens said. “We don’t just see Alliance as our community, but we see the Panhandle and beyond as our community, and we want to be reaching out to everybody to make sure we’re doing everything we can to keep our communities safe.”
Lukens explained that the Alliance Police Department already has several community-driven programs in place to help give aid to those who are struggling with addiction. He explained that those people who need help to overcome the addiction can reach out for treatment. Those individuals, Lukens said, would be given amnesty if they turn over their drugs and paraphernalia in exchange for seeking to break the addiction.
“Since we’ve enacted that, we’ve had a couple of people utilize that service so that they can get their life more consistent with what their desires are,” said Lukens.
Alliance was one of seven stops throughout the state, Assistant Special Agent in Charge of the Omaha Field Office of the FBI Phil Lenz explained. He said these meetings show a unified front on all levels and leads to the sharing of intelligence.
“That intelligence leads us to bigger cases that goes interstate, and potentially international,” Lenz said. “Why would we focus in on the rural communities? Well, first, we started this off with a drug forum in Kearney. That conference that we led had many individuals from the task forces across the state. However, a lot of the rural communities could not go to that conference. So, we took the initiative to meet across the state; to inform, to educate, to provide intelligence and talk about resources. With that, methamphetamine is a growing threat. It’s the number one drug threat in the state of Nebraska.”
Lenz said they are witnessing more drug trafficking leaders making moves in rural communities.
“It is paramount that we go out to these rural communities and talk to the locals to find out what they have and what they need,” Lenz said.
Peterson said the goal of the ‘Life or Meth’ initiative is to showcase a statewide effort to combat the spread of methamphetamine and to ensure that every law enforcement agency has the resources they need to address the issue.
Lukens said the resources available through the initiative will be valuable in the effort to keep the community safe.
“There are certain individuals that are very dangerous to our community,” Lukens said. “I talk about that one to three percent. Those are the people we have to get out of circulation because they are causing major disruptions in people’s lives. That’s what we want to get stopped.”
Peterson said this effort will help to address other drugs that have been seen increasing throughout the state, such as fentanyl. He hopes to address that through increasing the availability of treatment, which he believes will make a large impact on the issue. Lukens said in most of the cases they see, there are multiple drugs involved.
“We don’t just see meth, or we don’t just see fentanyl,” Lukens said. “It’s normally a collaboration of all of that in the situations that we deal with. One leads to the other in many cases.”
Lukens said community members can aid in this situation by sharing any suspicious activities with law enforcement.
“If you see something, say something,” said Lukens. “We’ve been working with our neighborhood meetings encouraging people to talk to the officers and give us feedback. When something seems suspicious, or something seems awry, people should contact us to check it out. All of that information gets collaborated together and it ends up going to our representatives on the WING Drug Task Force, up to the Attorney General’s Office, or the FBI, or the DEA, anybody else that we need to get involved so we can do an effective job with the information we get.”