There’s a scene in The Godfather Part 3 where Michael Corleone utters the most memorable line in an otherwise entirely forgettable drama when he says, his voice dripping with a level of righteous anguish that only an old gangster can summon, “Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in.”
Here in Detroit, we thought (hoped, prayed) we had put that white horse of heroin to sleep more than 30 years ago, but now that horse is back and bucking like a demon with a nail in its shoe.
Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in.
Rev. Gregory Guice is pastor of Detroit Unity Temple, which is located right in the heart of the Palmer Park/ Woodward corridor area between McNichols and 8-Mile, an area that has become a recent hotbed area of some very unwelcomed heroin trafficking. Guice’s concerns and worries reflect those of the neighborhood that is working together with the 12th Precinct to uproot the cancer before it gets the chance to lock in and spread.
One thing Guice and other neighborhood residents have noticed is significantly more drug paraphernalia scattered about, particularly throughout Palmer Park, which is one of the largest parks in the city. The fact that much of Palmer Park is a wooded area doesn’t help, since it is easy to conduct activity far out of plain sight. Guice said that Palmer Park has become an area where dealers and users congregate to transact their business.
“There are two major parking lots where they gather. You can drive by and see the trafficking going on,” he said. “We’re trying to work together to bring activities and to combat the problem. I have to say the 12th Precinct is really working hard to support us.”
Captain Ken Balinski and Lt. Jevon Johnson of the 12th Precinct confirmed that the department has been making an extra effort to eradicate the problems cited by Rev. Guice, further increasing street enforcement since the recent drug raids prompted by the Federal investigation into the Woodward corridor area that Balinski says has become known as the “heroin pipeline”. The area near State Fair was particularly active and a target area of the investigation, said Balinski.
Separate from the investigation, Lt. Johnson cited the recent police closing of the gas station located at 15 West 8 Mile that was actually selling heroin ‘kits’. Police are also working together with the grass roots group No More Broken Windows to erase graffiti and improve related quality of life issues.
But despite the recent focus of media attention, Balinski doesn’t believe the problem is as out of control as it was during Detroit’s heroin hey ‘daze’ during the ‘70s and ‘80s.
“You very seldom hear about heroin anymore,” he said, as compared to drugs like crack cocaine.
Once upon a time, in the late ‘70s to early ‘80s, Detroiters will recall an extremely violent and notorious gang of young criminals who called themselves Young Boys Incorporated (YBI). They adopted the name because, being the standup sort of morally ambiguous individuals that they were, the older gangsters employed very young boys to run drugs for the gang, thereby insulating the older criminals behind the kids who were legally too young to be prosecuted for drug crimes. In their heyday, YBI was said to be responsible for at least 80 % of the heroin trade in Detroit between 1978 and 1982, according to Wikipedia.
Detroiters will also recall that, even for a city that had become recognized as more dangerous than most for quite awhile, the reign of YBI marked some of the city’s worst years in terms of gang-related violence and drug abuse. Detroit has always been a tough town able to bounce back from just about anything, but that battle with heroin – and the gangsters who trafficked in it – practically destroyed many Detroit neighborhoods. And what is Detroit without its neighborhoods?
But now, today, when Detroit is said to be on the comeback trail, here comes heroin riding back into the arena.
In October 2011, in Pontiac, the Drug Enforcement Administration made what it called the largest heroin bust in Michigan’s history. The DEA said the value of the drugs seized amounted to roughly $150 million, not including $560,000 in cash and drug distribution equipment that was seized from the home on Pike Street where the drug operation was being run. Two years later, according to a June 2013 report from WXYZ Channel 7:
“A heroin epidemic is being reported in at least three metro Detroit counties. In Washtenaw County, health officials say there were at least eight heroin overdoses including a death during a recent two-day span. EMS workers tried to save a 27-year-old saline man, but could not revive him.
Oakland County is also reporting an increase in overdoses. Late last month emergency responders downriver reported an increase. Henry Ford Wyandotte Hospital reported a 20-fold increase in overdoses.”
And according to the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services, there were 369 heroin-related deaths in 2013, compared to only 37 in 1999.
The following year, WXYZ came back with another report, this time highlighting the use of public transportation as the mode of choice for suburban kids anxious to get their heroin and other drugs from Detroit’s east side:
“With prescription pills harder to get, heroin is becoming the drug of choice for more and more younger people across Metro Detroit. Along Gratiot Avenue on the East Side, the SMART bus is a lifeline for thousands, but for some drug users it’s a pipeline – their ticket to get high.
“Saturday afternoon, our cameras were rolling as we followed the bus when it made stops in cities like Roseville and Eastpointe. Then it’s a short walk across 8 Mile into Detroit. Time and time again, we watched as young people from the suburbs made the walk down the street. With a nod of the head and a pass of the hand, they get what they came for.”
Now fast forward to June, 2015, where the Detroit Free Press reported that “nearly two dozen local law enforcement agencies are fighting back by combating the heroin trade in Operation Smack Down, a crackdown to combat heroin use and trafficking in Detroit and Macomb County.
“More than 100 people, mostly heroin users from Macomb County, were arrested; nearly two dozen search warrants were conducted at suspected drug supply houses on Detroit’s east side, and authorities seized more than $237,000 worth of heroin and counting.”
Community activist Malik Shabazz, of the Marcus Garvey Movement and the New Black Panther Party, has no doubt that heroin is back in a big way in Detroit. More specifically, Shabazz identified the prime real estate for drug trafficking as being “near a freeway, a bus stop, near the county line and near the city borderline” because “you can increase your loot” in such strategic locations.
“Yes, heroin is king and it’s here,” he said. “And once again we’re not having the necessary conversations. Heroin is all over the place. And crack is still present and relevant. And Tylenol 4. And Oxy.
“The criminals are organized, but the decent folk are not. We’re not even talking to our neighbors. We’re not talking about what we need to do; don’t snitch just tell.”
