LITTLE ROCK — Heroin arrests in Arkansas are rare.
The long-term success of a heroin ring purportedly operating in Cabot and involving at least eight people now facing federal charges is even more of a surprise to local law-enforcement officials.
“To be honest, I wouldn’t rank [Cabot] that high” in likelihood for a heroin operation said Carl Minden, spokesman for the Pulaski County sheriff ’s off ice. “Cabot has a reputation of being smaller, quieter. It’s a bedroom community. ... But the way it is with drugs, you never know where to find them. You can find meth labs in the Heights [neighborhood in Little Rock].”
The expense of the drug and, as a corollary, its potency, make the arrests of seven of the targeted eight suspects in central Arkansas aberrant in a state that is more versed in methamphetamine and marijuana than in heroin, Minden said.
“It’s unusual,” Minden said. “Take meth. You can do a ‘shake-and-bake’ arrest anywhere. ... Here, it’s expected. A large amount of heroin, that’s a big deal. You don’t see that much around here.”
Despite encountering “several” arrests for possession of heroin over the past few years, Cabot Police Department spokesman Lt. Brent Lucas said his investigators didn’t sense anything akin to a distribution ring operating in the city of 24,000.
“Usually it’s always been meth or marijuana, probably the same anywhere else in the state,” Lucas said. “Nothing really jumped out and said there was an issue here.”
Exact numbers for heroin arrests in Cabot and Pulaski County were not available Friday.
But according to a 2011 substance-abuse study by the Department of Human Services, law-enforcement agencies in Arkansas made only three arrests for the sale or distribution of heroin in 2008, the most recent year figures were available, compared with 1,002 arrests for marijuana, 427 for methamphetamine and 322 for crack cocaine in the same year.
The Cabot investigation began last October after the fatal overdose of a 20-year-old whose father told Arkansas State Police his son had obtained the drug from a Cabot man known as “Wiley.”
In all, investigators linked six other heroin overdoses, including another fatality, to the purported ring in the Cabot area.
The nine-count federal indictment, filed July 11 and unsealed Thursday, charges the eight men with distributing or possessing with intent to distribute more than 3.5 ounces of heroin between May 1, 2011, and June 26 of this year.
Chief among them was Wallando “Wiley” Onezine, 40, who informants working with investigators identified as the “source of supply” for heroin in Cabot.
According to an affidavit, Onezine did much of his dealing out of his home at 210 S. Linden St., where he lived with his girlfriend, Tracey Hayden, only half a mile from the Cabot Police Department and City Hall.
He worked with Hayden’s 19-year-old son, Devon Mc-Clain, the affidavit said. The family’s home was often the meeting spot for informants, and according to investigators, a spot where a “high volume of vehicle traffic” moved in and out quickly, “indicative of drug trafficking,” the complaint states.
McClain was indicted on two counts, as was Keith “Key” Sanders, who was described as Onezine’s connection to heroin supplies in Memphis and the only member named in the indictment still at large, according to Cherith Beck, spokesman for the U.S. attorney’s office for the Eastern District of Arkansas.
According to the affidavit, Onezine routinely took trips with members of his organization to Memphis to get drugs, including one trip in late 2011 where he paid $5,000 for an ounce of heroin.
On one such trip on June 1, investigators followed Onezine and Hunter Gladden, 25, of Ward as the two made several stops throughout Memphis, the affidavit said.
On their return, they were pulled over by state troopers, who didn’t find any drugs but did find syringes and scales, reports said. Police arrested the pair, who were charged with possession of drug paraphernalia.
According to the affidavit, Onezine was recorded on a trip later that week where he bragged that the troopers didn’t find the heroin “he had concealed on his person” and that Onezine actually used some of the drug while waiting to be released from jail on bond.
The heroin taken to Cabot also made its way to Maumelle and Ward, the affidavit states.
Drug Enforcement Administration officials did not return calls for comment and neither Beck nor Lucas knew whether there might be more arrests ahead or just how far the operation extended.
A veteran Little Rock narcotics detective said the DEA arrests were “unusual” because heroin trafficked through Arkansas usually runs up to St. Louis, Chicago and the Northeast, he said.
That pattern might be changing, he said.
“We have been seeing it more in the last few years,” the detective said. “And by that, I mean in grams, we’re finding it five or six times a year” in Arkansas.
Dr. Charles Kokes, the state’s chief medical examiner, said he hasn’t seen a statistically significant bump in heroin overdoses that might point to a growing trend, and that there is no uniform system for recording such deaths statewide.
Kokes said there have been a few heroin deaths this year, though he couldn’t give a specific number.
“In the greater scheme of things, [heroin] is not nearly as much of a problem as, say, prescription narcotics, and historically that’s always been the case,” Kokes said. “We don’t see much of it. ... But it’s always a concern that it could get more of a foothold in the state because it is such a dangerous drug.”
The Little Rock narcotics detective said whatever heroin scene there is in central Arkansas is kept fairly secret. According to him, the drug is so hard to get that users guard the supply.
“It’s a tight-knit group, the users. ... They’re not wanting more customers,” the detective said. “It’s about supply and demand and there’s not much supply, so they want to keep demand down.”
Arkansas, Pages 15 on 07/29/2012