State grant funds area’s anti-drug task force efforts

A $43,000 grant issued by the Louisiana Commission on Law Enforcement will be used to renew an anti-drug task force initiative between the Houma Police Department and Assumption Sheriff’s Office.

“This helps the officers go out into high crime areas and target drug enforcement,” Houma Police Chief Todd Duplantis said.

Houma police have an existing anti-drug program with the Terrebonne Parish Sheriff’s Office as well as the Assumption Parish Sheriff’s Office. Having multiple agencies involved in this initiative helps expand the area of coverage by law enforcement.

The three-year allocation will put extra officers on the street with the expressed objective of targeting high crime areas.

“The reason we went with this particular task force grant is because through Louisiana Law Enforcement Commission there was a grant that [financed] street jump operations,” Houma Police grant writer Lt. Bobby O’Brien said.

Street jumps make use of two officers that target drug areas at any given time. By forming a task force, law enforcement agencies are able to continue funding beyond the regular three-year limit.

“You have to have two law enforcement agencies to be able to apply for the task force grant,” O’Brien said. “The Assumption Parish Sheriff’s Office was not linked another law enforcement agency in reference to forming a task force. The Houma Police Department already belonged to the Terrebonne Parish Sheriff’s Office task force grant to target drug issues parish-wide as well as in the city. Our agency also linked-up with Assumption Parish sheriff’s Office to form this second task force.”

“We do a lot of the street jumps and [sheriff’s offices] do a lot of the undercover operations,” Duplantis said. “If they need resources we help them and they help us. That’s how we utilize the funding.”

O’Brien explained that drug dealers operate in a businesslike design of street level, mid-level and upper-level operations. The sheriff’s offices focus on mid and upper-level targets. “Their investigations take a lot longer than anything else in terms of investigation,” he said. “They normally get the big drug busts. The level we want to target is the first level of drug enforcement, which [includes] all the problems we have on the street. This way both of our agencies can benefit from a multi-agency task force.”

“Anytime you combine resources with neighboring agencies, there is more strength with numbers,” Assumption Parish Sheriff Mike Waguespack said. “A lot of the drug trafficking we see in Assumption [Parish] will cross over to Lafourche and Terrebonne [parishes.] It gives us the ability to combine our intelligence and we can do better investigating of narcotics trafficking throughout the region.”

Duplantis said that in 2009 there was a spike in violent crime for the region and that much of it was directly related to illegal drug activity.

“Anytime we can receive grant funding and work with another agency to target drug activity definitely does play a significant role in crime reduction,” he said. “That’s how critical these task forces are [because] the criminal element has no boundaries.

“A lot of times Assumption Parish drug dealers are coming through Houma. It is good that we work together like this,” he added.

Waguespack said his office was able to make 64 arrests this year by utilizing task force efforts with other agencies. “Our objective is to rid mid-level as well as upper-level players from trafficking in our area.”

O’Brien said that the Houma Police Department is also working toward getting the Thibodaux Police Department included in a multi-agency task force with them to address the same street level drug dealing issues.

The Thibodaux Police Department has a task force arrangement with the Lafourche Sheriff’s Office, but O’Brien said expanding the coverage network could only help all communities involved.