Where Delaware gets its heroin

PHILADELPHIA - Most know it as the end of the Earth.

Just a short drive north of the Liberty Bell sits a dozen-block area of hopelessness. Most homes are either boarded up or falling down. Drug users shoot up wherever they can and wander the streets aimlessly. Hypodermic needles – thousands of them – litter the ground.

Drugs are sold out in the open, practically 24 hours a day. Drivers pull up – many with Delaware plates – and, after a quick exchange of cash, pull away with their next high.

In the shadows of a graffiti-covered overpass, a young woman, standing on piles of used needles and orange syringe caps, stared into her reflection fragmented in the broken mirror tacked onto a tree. Her eyes focused on the needle stuck in her neck.

But something wasn't working. The vein wasn't right.

She pulled the needle out and carefully tried to stick it in the vein again.

"Please don't show my face," the 25-year-old said quietly. "I don't want my family to see this."

It's easy to go unseen along the railroad tracks that cut through Philadelphia's West Kensington and Fairhill neighborhoods. Thousands of people pass through the community every day on Frankford Elevated commuter trains, which bring some of the city's most prominent doctors and lawyers from the affluent suburbs into downtown Philadelphia.

Most barely notice this neighborhood, the epicenter for heroin sales and what is considered the largest open-air drug market on the East Coast. On nearly every street corner, men and women with drugs bulging in their pockets hand out small bags of heroin for cash.

The sheer volume of heroin that moves through these streets also makes it a prime location for larger drug deals.

Take Abdul Haye, a Delaware man investigators say purchased about 50,000 bags of heroin per week in Philadelphia to fuel a First State drug ring. Haye was one of five people charged with running one of the biggest heroin operations in northern Delaware.

The Drug Enforcement Administration, as well as other local police departments, busted the organization in February 2016 after determining men and women were driving up I-95 to purchase heroin in Philadelphia to distribute to buyers and other sellers in New Castle County, said Special Agent Patrick Trainor with Philadelphia's Drug Enforcement Administration office.

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Nearly all of the heroin associated with that drug bust – described as a state record seizure for Delaware – traced back to the Fairhill neighborhood, Trainor said. Federal, state and local law enforcement seized more than 48,000 bags of heroin packaged for sale in the raid at a Bear industrial park.

"We've seen a similar trend in other parts of the state as well," Trainor said. Most of Delaware's heroin is coming from these neighborhoods, known as The Badlands, "due to the proximity of Philadelphia and the accessibility of major roadways like (Interstate) 95."

Law enforcement agencies have been trying for decades to limit the flow of heroin from Philadelphia to Delaware. Police departments say heroin is their No. 1 crime driver, accounting for most of the burglaries, thefts, shoplifting reports and violent crimes. And the large majority of that heroin comes from this neighborhood, about 45 minutes away from northern Delaware, Trainor said.

The heroin crisis has changed the landscape of policing, forcing officers to do much more than arrest people. Now, they're charged with actively saving lives of people they find overdosed.

Last month, four fatal overdoses hit New Castle County in five hours. Immediately, law enforcement scrambled to figure out where the heroin was coming from and if the deaths – spread throughout the county – were linked. Toxicology reports would take weeks, but the clear indicator at every scene that Sunday was simple: the white, powdery substance known as heroin. And most of the heroin comes from Philadelphia.

In December, Fairhill and West Kensington saw a similar outbreak of overdoses with 35 fatalities in a five-day span, Trainor said.

Overdoses typically spike a dealer's sales, especially when heavy users catch word that the drug was potent enough to take lives, said Sr. Sgt. Allen Herring, with the New Castle County Police Drug Control Squad.

"When you OD on something, it ups the interest," Herring said. "Heroin has really changed the whole game."

The road to Philadelphia

It is not difficult to find heroin and get high in West Kensington.

Drug dealers dot almost every corner. Users simply pull up with cash ready for the hand-to-hand exchange. Then any road overpass or abandoned home – or even front stoop – offers enough privacy to shoot up. They are all littered with spent hypodermic needles, syringe caps, trash and graffiti.

It's the closest thing the city has to a legal shooting gallery, left largely untouched by police because most of the people are either users or small-time dealers. Those who make the most money from the potent drug stay far away in the suburbs, Trainor said.

"It doesn't get worse than this," Trainor said. “No one here actually wants to be here. This is people at their absolute lowest.”

The young woman, clad in a tight, violet sweatsuit, pulled the needle back out of her neck in the mid-afternoon sun and tried again, this time in her already bruised arm. Her speaking slowed as she focused on the syringe and pushed, the skin bulging where the needle went in.

When asked how long she had been using, her eyes floated up for a minute as the drug coursed through her.

"On and off for two weeks," she said.

But her scarred arms indicated longer drug use.

Most come to this neighborhood only when they have nowhere else to go.

The woman's eyes darted toward a group of men clustered around an abandoned desk a few feet away. One pulled at the waistband of his pants, lowering them enough to find a spot on his thigh to stick a needle. Another lay splayed along a concrete slab, the orange cap of the syringe still in his mouth while he shot up.

The city of Philadelphia and Conrail, which owns the railroad tracks running through the neighborhood, are battling over who is responsible for cleaning up the discarded syringes and other trash that has accumulated over the years. The city wants a security fence installed to keep out drug users.

The hope is that the barrier would push those with addiction into the open where police can see it and intervene, said Philadelphia Police Inspector Raymond Convery, who oversees these neighborhoods.

"We're trying to work with Conrail," he said. "We need to clean it up and prevent people from going back down there."

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It's an area of the city held hostage by the tight grip of heroin. Those riding bikes and wielding brooms serve as lookouts for dealers, alerting them when police move through the neighborhood.

Women walk unsteadily up and down side streets, poking heads into windows of slowing cars for a moment. Some get inside.

The pace of life is slow – almost as if the opiate depressant has slowed everything.

"I've seen people overdose and die, and people walk over them like they weren't even there, like it was a rug on the ground," said a 34-year-old man recovering from heroin use in Delaware.

The man, whose name is being withheld by The News Journal as he tries to turn his life around, lived in abandoned homes in West Kensington, holing up for weeks at a time using heroin.

"It's like the Bermuda Triangle," he said. "Once you get there, you're stuck."

People come from the suburbs to score what law enforcement considers the purest heroin on the East Coast, Trainor said. The DEA has tested heroin as high as 93 percent pure on these streets.

Most of the heroin in the region comes from the Dominican Republic, according to law enforcement, and is smuggled into the country. Though the exact method – through local ports or by air – remains under investigation, police say the high demand has made for a lucrative business for drug cartels.

It's much easier, they say, to track the movements of those buying heroin in Philadelphia. Some ride in on SEPTA trains, while others drive up from Claymont and Hockessin. Out-of-state tags aren't uncommon, Trainor says, with one man coming as far as Michigan to get a fix.

"I hopped on freight trains and hitchhiked my way," said 31-year-old David, who started his journey east in Eugene, Oregon. He had been camping out along the tracks for about four months, he said.

By mid-morning, he had already used heroin and was looking for some food and a place to spend the day. Finding heroin wasn't hard, and he was in no rush, he said.

Some affected most deeply by addiction set up makeshift homes along the train rails, where vegetation is overgrown and makes for easy cover. Encampments, made of broken wooden pallets and scraps of tarp, boast signs: "Attention! Service must be payed before any is given! No exceptions!"

For those simply too scared or too strung out to inject themselves with heroin, a man known as "The Doc" will do it for them. Locals say he's been working underneath the overpass for years.

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Parents who have lost children to the heroin epidemic have heard these stories about this neighborhood. Some lost cars when their kids traded them for drugs. Other kids were badly beaten or refused to speak about what happened to them while they made buys.

Dave Humes – a board member with atTAcK Addiction, a grassroots nonprofit focused on ending Delaware's heroin and opiate epidemic – wanted to understand more about the heroin epidemic and what drove young people to a dangerous part of Philadelphia.

Humes, who lost his son to an accidental overdose, once asked him if he was "scared to death" traveling into these neighborhoods.

"Not at all," Humes recalled his son telling him. "I'm the safest person there. I'm a white kid from the suburbs, and I'm their customer. They're going to protect me."

There is an undercurrent of violence and danger that gives The Badlands its name. One to three people fatally overdose in these neighborhoods every day, according to the DEA. And everybody there wants the best drugs for the cheapest price.

Many who tell their stories glance around while they speak, rarely making eye contact. Knowing who is around and what they're carrying is an art of survival.

"The scary part is not being in that environment," said the Delaware man. "The scariest part is dying up there alone."

Catching them in the act

For three months, investigators from Philadelphia and Delaware worked together to track the movements of the Haye Drug Trafficking Organization.

They needed the help of informants – those close to the top people overseeing the drug ring – to cooperate and tip them off when large amounts of heroin would be driven down I-95 back to a Bear-area industrial park, according to court documents.

Through interviews, police learned that men and women would make the drive up to Philadelphia's West Kensington and Fairhill neighborhoods, where they would purchase more than 400 logs – or about 52,000 bags of heroin – from an unknown Dominican man, according to the criminal complaint.

After carting it back down I-95 and repackaging the heroin, a group of people distributed the drugs throughout New Castle County each week, according to investigators.

Five Bear and Newark-area men were charged last year by U.S. Attorney Charles Oberly and DEA Special Agent-in-Charge Gary Tuggle. The arrests were the result of the New Castle County High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area collaboration, which included county, Wilmington and Newark police in the 2½-month investigation.

"Folks will undoubtedly live now that would have gotten ahold of this crap and probably would have died," Tuggle said at the press conference.

Investigators determined that some of the heroin tested by authorities was laced with the potent synthetic opioid fentanyl.

This bust came just as fentanyl was making its way into Delaware. In 2016, the state reported 120 fentanyl-related deaths – a 186 percent increase from the year before. Fentanyl accounted for more than one-third of Delaware's 308 fatal overdoses last year.

The drug – which can be passed off as heroin because of its white powdery appearance but is considered 50 times more powerful – has ravaged the state and the nation, prompting warnings from officials and health concerns for treatment providers. Its prevalence remains an ongoing issue in Delaware as dealers mix it with other drugs.

"Heroin is probably the worst drug we've ever had to deal with," said Lt. Robert Jones, who has spent 21 years with Delaware State Police. "Usually, with other drugs, you can get off of it, but this ... it's the devil."

Delawareans continue to travel to Philadelphia for heroin – a trek some users consider a right of passage. Now, police here are trying to stop them.

New Castle County and Dover police departments have started programs that offer treatment for addiction rather than incarceration, but most agencies still don't have a method other than arrests for taking people off the streets. Nearly everyone agrees that the plan to "arrest our way out" won't work.

That's why law enforcement, treatment providers and the state all have to work together to find the funds necessary to support the fight against addiction and get everyone invested in the cause, Jones said.

"Everyone needs to come together and have a stake in it," he said. "We all have a stake in saving people's lives."

Contact Brittany Horn at (302) 324-2771 or bhorn@delawareonline.com. Follow her on Twitter at @brittanyhorn.