At the crossroads of the drug trade
Durango rated ‘high intensity’ for drug trafficking

Cars make their way down a sleepy Main Avenue in Durango recently. According to local and state law enforcement, an increasing number of drug traffickers are using the relatively uncrowded thoroughfares of Southwestern Colorado for doing business./Photo by Todd Newcomer.

by Dean Powers

Near the end of last year, Durango Police Sgt. Deck Shaline spotted a familiar 1986 Subaru traveling southbound on Camino Del Rio. He had ticketed the driver several nights earlier for driving with a suspended license. This night, Shaline pulled alongside the Subaru and looked inside as the two cars coasted side-by-side down the desolate boulevard.

Inside, beneath the yawning reflections on the windshield, the driver and his passenger sat next to three handguns, marijuana and more than 100 grams of methamphetamine, an amount estimated to have a street value of as much as $10,000. They appeared to be maintaining their cool, but suddenly the street lit up with flashing blue lights.

Those occupants, locals with mixed reputations, are one link in the chain of drug proliferation that begins with producers and ends with consumers. It is likely that these drugs were intended for local distribution, a problem well noted in this area. Less conspicuous, however, are transporters moving increasingly away from the heavily patrolled Front Range to the smaller 160 and 550 highway corridors. The area is classified as a high-intensity drug trafficking area.

K-9 Sgt. David Santos, with Colorado State Patrol investigators in Denver, reported only three major seizures in calendar year 2004 in Montezuma, Dolores and La Plata counties. "I would say that three seizures in that area is really low," he said, "I would attribute that to one of our officers who does it actively being injured."

The extent to which law enforcement can successfully combat drug traffic depends on experience, something ordinary enforcement often lacks. During that particular recent traffic stop, Shaline followed routine procedure.

"Hi Ed, have you gotten your license yet?" the trim affable sergeant asked.

"Nope," the man replied.

Shaline looked across the driver and recognized the man sitting silently in the passenger seat as well as the man in the back seat. With backup officer Doug Blalack keeping an eye on the occupants, Shaline checked all three through dispatch. When the voice from dispatch came back on the radios of Shaline and Blalack, who stood near the car, it turned out that the front seat passenger had two warrants for his arrest. He seemed to hear Blalack's radio because he began removing his jacket, a move not lost on Shaline.

Shaline and Blalack approached this man first, asking him to step out.

"Yeah, yeah, I know," he said, shedding his jacket and leaving it behind, despite bone-chilling cold.

Blalack held the suspect while Shaline reached for the jacket.

"I didn't give you permission to take that," the suspect said. "That's straight-up illegal, dog!"

Shaline found marijuana and a pipe inside his jacket, and due to the warrants was placed under arrest. As a result, portions of the car could be searched. Ultimately everything the man possessed was seized.

Squad cars line up outside the Durango Police Department on Tuesday. Although no strangers to drug busts, Durango Police, busy with other nondrug-related cases, often refer drug investigations to the Southwest Drug Task Force for further questioning./Photo by Todd Newcomer.

Shaline found marijuana and a pipe inside his jacket, and due to the warrants was placed under arrest. As a result, portions of the car could be searched. Ultimately everything the man possessed was seized.

The chain of events leading to the seizure could hardly have been avoided by a rookie. Arrest warrants and the presence of contraband in the jacket led to a thorough search of the vehicle. However, regional and interstate traffickers who use the area highways are often far more professional, and typical protocol may fail 4 to catch these types.

Some transporters never meet anyone else in the operation; they may use a motel, leaving their keys on the table while departing for a few hours. The pay can be good. One transporter caught by the Southwest Drug Task Force was earning between $15,000 and $20,000 per trip carrying marijuana.

"Highway officers learn to pick up signs," said Kelly Davis, director of the Southwest Drug Task Force. The Task Force is charged with investigating the distribution and traffic of drugs in the environs of La Plata and neighboring counties.

Davis, with 22 years of service, knows how to pick up signs and which questions to ask. "Why are they here?" he said. "You look for little things that don't add up."

Populated areas like the Front Range have more resources to throw toward the training of their highway patrollers. "As the patrol gets more effective, transports move to smaller roads," Davis said.

Task Force agents bring the wisdom and experience of Front Range investigators to Southwest Colorado, where sheriff's offices and local police tend to be overwhelmed with nondrug caseloads. "We have investigators who generally focus their efforts on fraud, burglary investigation, sexual assaults those types of things," Shaline said. So the police refer many narcotic cases to the Task Force for further questioning and investigation - even small ones.

Davis said that the Task Force's numbers for 2004 have gone up for every category except methamphetamine-lab seizures. "This could mean that there are more drug deals, or that the Southwest Drug Task Force is getting better at what it does," he said. In four years, the Task Force has come to know Durango the way Broncos fans know the faces and names of the starters on the Kansas City Chiefs, owing to the small population and informants who cooperate with the agency.

While Shaline waited for the tow truck to arrive to impound the car that night, and with three officers on the scene, he offered the man in the back seat respite from the 10-degree temperature in the back of his cruiser. That man was not under arrest and was free to leave at any time, Shaline told him, but he accepted the seat.

The man then rode back to the police station with the sergeant and accepted an invitation to speak with Task Force investigator Jeff Copeland, who arrived at the same time. Shaline reiterated that the man was free to leave at any time, and he said he understood. Speaking with Copeland, Shaline summarized the conversation he had with the man in his cruiser.

Shortly after, the officers invited the man into the room and verbally advised him of his Miranda Rights. He waived his right to remain silent, and spoke to Copeland while Shaline bustled in and out of the room.

"Ninety-five percent of the people questioned are involved," said Davis, referring to informants upon whom the success of his agency depends. Names of suspected drug dealers and traffickers can be common knowledge among agents, even though the suspects themselves are oblivious to this fact. A Task Force agent, working in plain clothes, can knock on doors, question a witness and visit the jail. Sometimes agents wait to bust someone until the time is right. "We're not interested in the guy with a gram of meth in a traffic stop," he said, but they will question him and take the investigation as far up the chain as it will go.

As it enters its fifth year, the Task Force continues to benefit from experience and funding from the Ignacio and federal governments. It continues to operate in hopes of stifling the trend of operators exploiting the sparsely populated southwest corner of Colorado.