Police traffic stops uncover drugs hidden in everything from body parts to baby car seats | Local News

Things aren’t much different a little farther north on Interstate 81, said Washington County Sheriff Doug Mullendore.

“People not only don’t know what kind of drugs are in the car next to them, they also don’t know the condition of the driver. We have so many opioid users but unfortunately these same people also have a driver’s license and are driving to Baltimore to get drugs,” he said.

“And what happens many times is that as soon as they get their delivery they will go into a bathroom or use right in the car, so they are certainly operating why they are high. There’s no question about it,” he said.

Area law enforcement officials agree that the widespread transportation of illegal drugs means removing them from area highways and streets is an important part of the ongoing war on drugs.

This kind of police work, officially known as drug interdiction, doesn’t just happen without proper training and the knowledge needed to make traffic stops that yield controlled substances ranging from heroin to marijuana, said Martinsburg Police Chief Maury Richards.

City police records show 177 traffic stops were made where drugs were seized in a one-year period ending May 8, 2019, he said.

Marijuana was found the most often, followed by heroin, methamphetamine, crack, cocaine, amphetamine and other drugs, according to city records.

As a result, departmental resources are being spent to address this problem, he said.

Several city police officers have attended drug interdiction training sessions, and two were sent to more extensive workshops considered to be some of the finest in the nation, he said.

Major Pete Lazich, Washington County Sheriff’s Office patrol commander, said he recently sent an officer for this type of in-depth training in Louisiana.

“We all know that there are drugs everywhere, and they have to get from point A to point B somehow. They are not flying them in here, they are driving them,” he said.

Marijuana is still the most prevalent in traffic stop arrests, and that’s partially due to efforts to decriminalize it, he said.

“A lot of people just tend to have it with them all the time, because 10 grams or less is a civil offense – it’s not even a criminal offense anymore,” he said.

Waynesboro (Pa.) Police Chief James Sourbier IV said traffic stops not only reveal illegal contraband, most commonly marijuana, but also shows drug traffickers’ creativity – or lack of it.

“The limitations for the places that they can conceal substances is limited only by their imagination, whether it is a false compartment or an add-on to a battery,” he said. “But we’re fortunate here in rural Appalachia that we find drugs in the common places because people don’t think we will look for them.”

The most common hiding spots are center consoles, glove compartments, above the head liner and between the seat and head rest, he said.

Traffic stops can also show a lot about the condition of drivers.

“For instance, if we get a DUI arrest we hardly ever have one that doesn’t also screen for multiple controlled substances,” he said.

“A lot of our DUIs anymore are of a mixed toxicology with both alcohol and drugs. As a matter of fact, people now tend to talk about the DUIs that are just alcohol related,” he said. “It very often is a matter of drugged driving now.”

Chambersburg (Pa.) Police Department Sgt. Shane T. Good agreed that he and other officers see a wide variety of narcotic in traffic stops but not all drivers hide them.

“The drugs have been located in various places on the driver and/or passenger,” he said. “When found in large amounts it was usually just hidden under the seats.”

Martinsburg Police Cpl. Justin Harper, who has been with the department nearly 13 years, said that advanced interdiction training has been invaluable while working city streets.

During his early days on the force, most traffic stops involved crack cocaine, he said.

“When I first started, for every 10 people you stopped you would have nine crack pipes. It was odd if you found a needle. Now it is a complete reversal, and we see a needle on practically every person for interdiction stops because we are targeting problem areas,” he said.

This continuing education has provided the knowledge necessary to recognize potentially problematic situations, and also deal with increasingly sophisticated efforts to hide illegal drugs from law enforcement officers, he said.

In late April he stopped a Hedgesville man for speeding on West King Street and found at least six forms of controlled substances which had been packaged for distribution, Harper said.

Not everything is obvious in a traffic stop, however.

In this case the driver admitted to having “coke and pills” inside his underwear, and produced a bag with several different kinds of suspected controlled substances, Harper said, adding that this is common among drug traffickers.

The haul included several grams of suspected illegal drugs including crack cocaine, loose hard rocks of powder cocaine, heroin, Suboxone strips, methadone tablets, MDMA (also known as molly) and crushed Percocet.

A backpack contained working digital scales which appeared to have crack residue on it, a small cup which contained a white substance and a folding knife in the console with suspected crack residue on the blade, he said.

A traffic stop he made in January led to two South Carolina women pleading guilty in federal court to possession with intent to distribute fentanyl.

Fentanyl is a synthetic opioid that’s similar to morphine but is considered to be 50 to 100 times more potent, according to the National Institute on Drug Abuse.

Twelve ounces of fentanyl was recovered in the early-morning bust downtown which happened because the car pulled out of a parking lot with no headlights on, he said.

“It was a shock to find that much fentanyl on a stop like that, because it was laying right on the passenger side floorboard inside a knitted cap. It was right out in the open,” he said.

“But we came to find out they were from South Carolina and were traveling to Philadelphia to pick up drugs for a third party and they were traveling back to South Carolina to deliver them. Essentially they were mules.”

Martinsburg Patrolman Ryan Fritz has nine years with the department and is its canine officer/handler. He works alongside Atlas, a German Shepherd/Belgian Malinois mix that is used for sniffing out drugs.

They initiated 53 drug-related vehicle stops from March 30 thru Dec. 31, 2018, that resulted in 42 arrests.

The estimated street value of the drugs seized in these stops was $124,435.

As a result, he routinely sees local drug traffickers hiding contraband on their bodies.

“The ones we deal with who live here and are pushing in Martinsburg with the drugs from Baltimore, Philadelphia, and a lot from Delaware anymore keep it on their body – male or female,” Fritz said.

Larger traffickers employ different concealment methods but some of them have been adopted locally, he said.

“Occasionally we do see larger amounts that come off I-81, say a pound or two in a car battery because the car can still be operable,” he said.

Some folks use commercially-available hollowed out cans, sometimes called banks, that resemble routinely used products such as foot power or even popular soft drinks to conceal drugs, he said.

“I’ve had times when I could smell weed in a car and couldn’t find it until I picked up a fix-a-flat can. I just started messing around with it and the bottom unscrewed,” he said.

Other possibilities include head rests, center consoles, and even fast-food containers.

Both Harper and Fritz agree the saddest stashes take advantage of children.

“I’ve found stuff inside Happy Meals on traffic stops with kids in the car. In that case it was loaded needles and heroin in the Happy Meal box. It was in the back seat with the kid. We’ve even found it in a car seat where a guy threw it under there,” Harper said.

A drug interdiction stop on John Street involved a man who was on federal probation, he said.

“I found a small amount of drugs on one person and underneath a baby seat, next to where the felon had been sitting, was a loaded handgun,” he said.

Shaking his head, Fritz added, “I found a bunch of weed in a Happy Meal one time and the guy said it came like that. We hear all kinds of stories.”

Lt. Joe George, commander of the Maryland State Police Hagerstown Barrack, is no stranger to the collaborative efforts within his agency to reduce the flow of drugs on Interstates-70 and -81.

“We do have teams who are dedicated to this – interstate criminal interdiction guys. They work out of Washington County and you will see them here frequently,” he said.

“And we have one trooper here that we try to modify his schedule because his primary duty is to be a criminal drug interdiction specialist even though he also has to answer other calls as needed,” he said.

This kind of focused enforcement is necessary due to the amount and variety of drugs being transported locally – especially on the two, heavily-traveled interstates, he said.

“I am sure you have heard I-81 called the heroin highway and that happens for a reason. Heroin is a big deal and fentanyl is too,” he said.

I-70, with its high traffic volume, also has problems, he said.

“There’s just no doubt drugs are moving over these roads and that includes everyone from low-level user/dealers who are going back and forth to Baltimore to criminals working for much more sophisticated drug organizations,” he said. “And we do make a lot of arrests when they are west bound on I-70.”

A traffic stop about two years ago yielded six kilos of cocaine, “and that could have ended up being a heck of a lot more if it had made it to the street and was cut with something else,” he said.

Troopers are increasingly finding large amounts of money on stops, and it’s not unusual to also find guns, he said.

All of this should matter to even law-abiding motorists, he said.

“It is a dangerous world, and you don’t know who is driving beside you, what’s in their vehicle, or what they’re capable of,” he said.

“That could be bad news for say, an average Joe who’s had a bad day and flips someone off when another car cuts them off in traffic. What he doesn’t know is that he’s messing with a hardened criminal who has drugs, cash and guns right there beside him,” he said.

Sgt. John Martin of the Washington County Narcotics Task Force, is no stranger to how hard dealers will work to hide drugs from police canine units because he previously did interdiction work.

“Most of the methods are the same as far as concealing them especially now with the heroin epidemic. As far as the interdiction of heroin is concerned when it comes to the lower quantities it is mostly people hiding it on their person,” he said.

“When you start going up the chain, dealing with larger distributors hiding larger quantities then you are going to get into people concealing it in traps and things like that in a car,” he said.

They try to hide contraband in an engine part such as an air filter that wouldn’t normally be searched, he said.

Traffickers are also adept at masking odors from illegal drugs, especially those with stronger odors like marijuana, he said.

“There have been people who would vacuum seal it, and then wrap it in grease-soaked rags before vacuum sealing it again,” he said.

People have also hid it in laundry detergent containers to prevent detection, he said.