Yesterday in Part Four, I referenced a map published by KDVR which seemed to indicate 19 drug overdose deaths in Archuleta County this year. Apparently, the map was misleading, and there were likely fewer than 4 overdose deaths in Archuleta County this year, according to the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment. The final tally may not be available for a few months.
Here are few additional thoughts from Pagosa Springs Police Chief William Rockensock, before we move on.
About 12 years ago, the Pagosa Police Department and the Archuleta County Sheriff’s Office shared a narcotics investigator.
“It was TJ Fitzwater. And he actually did a really good job. We did a lot of work, and there was a lot of activity at that time that needed to be addressed. Unfortunately, we got to a point where there was such a lull in activity, that the Sheriff and the Chief, at that time, decided that the position was no longer viable, as far as funding. So it went away…”
And it has not come back. I asked if the Chief thought it might be time to talk about reviving that shared investigator position?
“It’s interesting, because usually one person can’t do it, alone. And unfortunately, what we found out last time was… almost every search warrant we did was out in the [unincorporated] county. I was part of the response time, back when we were serving those search warrants, and I think we did one house in town — and six or eight in the county?
“So it is a community-wide problem, but we have very little residential in town, and it’s very wide open and spread out in the county. That’s a big place, to try and take care of some of that stuff. Especially, with limited resources.”
About 85% of the community’s 13,300 residents live outside the town limits… spread out, as the Chief noted, across 1,350 square miles.
Archuleta County is not currently defined as a “High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area”, I was told, and so does not benefit from the enhanced federal funding available to those types of communities.
The High Intensity Drug Trafficking Areas (HIDTA) program was created by Congress in 1988, and provides assistance to federal, state, local, and tribal law enforcement agencies operating in areas determined to be critical drug-trafficking regions of the US. There are currently 33 HIDTAs, and one of them is neighboring La Plata County.
The 2021 HIDTA budget is $290 million. To qualify as a “High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area”, a county must meet the following criteria:
- The area is a significant center of illegal drug production, manufacturing, importation, or distribution;
- State, local, and tribal law enforcement agencies have committed resources to respond to the drug trafficking problem in the area, thereby indicating a determination to respond aggressively to the problem;
- Drug-related activities in the area are having a significant harmful impact in the area and in other areas of the country; and
- A significant increase in allocation of federal resources is necessary to respond adequately to drug related activities in the area.
As mentioned earlier in this editorial series, the Archuleta Board of County Commissioners heard a proposal, on December 7, to develop new land use regulations that might limit where marijuana could be grown for personal or medical uses, or perhaps require a ‘permit’ in order to grow marijuana. The plan is currently in a conceptual stage, but might be presented in a more detailed version over the winter months. As commissioner Ronnie Maez noted, there is always a cost to government regulation, in terms of enforcement.
“I’d like to see some thought given to how much of a budget increase this would entail during 2022, for the Sheriff’s Office. Because right now, the proposed budget from the Sheriff was for five additional personnel and five additional vehicles. Okay? And with this being added, it could come back, ‘We need five more cars and five more personnel’…”
Following that marijuana presentation, we heard a somewhat disturbing request from County Coroner Brando Bishop.
Apparently, the Archuleta County Coroner has been renting ‘cooler’ space from Hood Mortuary, for storing bodies while they’re in the Coroner’s custody.
Mr. Bishop:
“They made the comment that it’s probably time for the Coroner to find our own cooler. It’s nothing personal; nothing against the County Coroner’s office, it’s just that we’re constantly full, and there’s just nowhere else to put them.
“In the Durango office, they have over 30 people they’re caring for, at one time. And so we can’t even store in Durango, because they’re at capacity all the time. So I think it’s time for Archuleta County to have its own facility. Just makes sense… I think there will be a cost savings, over time, if we don’t have to pay for storage, and we have our own storage. So I would like to see a six-bay cooler, just so… like, I had a death last night, and my pathologist is ‘off’ for a week, so I’m storing an individual for an entire week at a cost… and if I get another death, we’ll have to store that individual as well. And the way things are going, there’s a good chance that will happen.”
Mr. Bishop quoted the cost of a cooler at perhaps $12,000, plus the cost of a backup generator. “A six-bay is a walk-in, with three beds on each side…”
How, exactly, are things going?… if there’s a good chance we’ll have another death this week?
“I’m at 30 cases in the past three months, which for me is substantial.” These are not COVID deaths, because Hood Mortuary does not accept COVID cases. Those individuals are kept cool, separately, in a large, refrigerated semi-truck in Durango.
“I didn’t put this [cooler request] in the budget for next year, because I didn’t think this was going to be an issue. Because it never has been. But over the past month, month and a half, it’s really been an issue…”
Not COVID deaths. But something else is causing an unusual number of deaths, as we close out 2021. Coroner Bishop did not offer an explanation, when asked.
I suspect they are not marijuana overdoses, considering that I’ve never heard of a marijuana overdose.
Bill Hudson began sharing his opinions in the Pagosa Daily Post in 2004 and can’t seem to break the habit. He claims that, in Pagosa Springs, opinions are like pickup trucks: everybody has one.