Grassroots Rally Team

Police seek Northland Community Council's help in stemming heroin sales
(Columbus, Ohio - October 6, 2010)

Heroin deals are going down daily in quiet Northland neighborhoods.

Residents probably barely notice a thing.

A Mexican drug cartel pushing cheap black tar heroin in the United States has hit upon a method of selling the drug that almost resembles a pizza delivery operation, according to Columbus Division of Police officers who spoke at last week's Northland Community Council meeting.

"Obviously we're up against something that's well funded, highly sophisticated," Officer Wesley R. "Wes" Hettinger told NCC members.

The cops were on hand to alert residents to what's been going on in subdivisions throughout the area that's in close proximity to state Route 161, busy Morse Road and Interstates 71 and 270.

And to ask for assistance.

"Spread the word," said Commander Larry Rod. "Get people involved. We need the community's help."

"These people are coming to your neighborhoods," Hettinger said. "They're doing their deals in your neighborhoods."

The sellers are driving nondescript cars, Toyotas or Hondas that blend in with the thousands of other foreign sedans on the streets and highways of central Ohio. The Hispanic men are neatly dressed and clean-cut, and might lead seemingly unremarkable lives in the very neighborhoods where they ply their illegal trade.

Often illegally in this country, they are paid $400 for a six-day work week by the Xalixco Cartel, which takes its name from a city in the Mexican state of Nayarit, an area that produces opium poppies from which the heroin is derived...

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