Hot Spring County Sheriff's Office works to eliminate community drug problem
HOT SPRING COUNTY, Ark. - The Sheriff of Hot Spring County his office is working to eliminate a drug problem in the community.
Sheriff Scott Finkbeiner said it’s a large problem the county and state is dealing with. He said deputies are doing more patrols in specific areas looking for two things.
“Methamphetamine is the most popular drug, fentanyl is picking up over the last couple of years,” Finkbeiner said. “We unfortunately had a fentanyl overdose about a week ago.”
He said the problem of narcotics has been growing worse for 10 to 15 years, pointing to the availability of drugs as one of the issues.
“The drug cartel is starting to manufacture methamphetamine and sell it very cheap, which really exacerbated the issue, and they started shipping it up here,” Finkbeiner said.
Finkbeiner said that since the beginning of the year, they have made more than 30 drug-related arrests, it was only last week they made 10 arrests in three separate drug-related searches.
“Once we get our intelligence on a place selling narcotics, we start working on it,” Finkbeiner said. “We have to do a series of things to get a search warrant.”
He said they’re focused on trying to arrest the big suppliers, hoping one of the new laws that went into effect in August helps.
“The ‘death by delivery’ statute really makes it dangerous for a drug dealer because if someone ODs they could face life on parole,” Finkbeiner said.
Finkbeiner said he wants more to be done to slow down the problem.
“We really, as a county, as a country and state, need to look at these problems so find the root causes of this, how can we address these issues,” Finkbeiner said.
He said they're hoping to get more deputies so they can create a street crime unit and they're looking into getting a K-9 unit that specializes in narcotics.
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