Knox City Police Detective Dave Combs explained that he and the other officers in Starke County are aware of the new epidemic and are doing what they can to get the drug out of the hands of dealers and users.
“The first thing we’re doing is we’re working with a couple of guys assigned to narcotics cases and they’re doing a pretty good job,” explained Combs. “We’re trying to get information passed along to the patrol officers so they have a little more awareness of what we’re looking for. We’re taking some training efforts for the officers since it’s a fairly new epidemic we’re dealing with.”
As with every investigation, the officers are following up on tips and leads to apply for search warrants in which they hope lead to arrests and the eradication of the drug. Combs noted that those tips and leads come from the public.
“We’d like to get a lot of information from just concerned citizens. That’s often times where we get a lot of our information. We have voice mail set up here at the city police department – just call 772-4122. It’s helpful if they leave a name, but if they don’t that’s absolutely fine. We’re happy to get any information from anyone, anytime,” Combs explained.
Combs is looking for all information possible and urges you to be a neighborhood watch for suspicious activity and don’t hesitate to call police so officers can follow up on your important call.
“When you start seeing things like heavy vehicular traffic and pedestrian traffic in and out of a house, that’s always something we try and pay attention to because that’s typically outside of the realm of normal. We’ll take any information that we can get,” Combs said.
Heroin is a more powerful drug than the highly addictive methamphetamine.
“It’s more deadly than what we run into with meth. We’ve had several cases of overdoses here recently. Typically what it (heroin) does is it knocks out one’s respiratory drive. If they don’t get medical care quickly, it usually ends up in a fatality,” said Combs.
If you have any information you can supply to the Knox City Police Department to help curb the drug problem in Starke County, call (574) 772-4122 and leave an anonymous message on the drug tip line.
