HUNTINGTON, W.Va. — Huntington Police say a new initiative targeting small time street level drug dealers has been highly successful during the past three months. Since launching Operation River to Jail, the city has arrested 226 dealers who were selling a variety of drugs in Huntington’s residential neighborhoods.
“We’ve seized over 800 grams of heroin, crack, and cocaine,” said acting city police Chief Jim Johnson. “Over 100,000 dollars in cash and 33 guns.”
Johnson said fighting drug crimes in the city is nothing new, but this was a different kind of operation. Johnson said federal or state investigations or those involving joint task forces do a lot of work and a lot of good, but they are often time consuming. While those investigations take months or years to develop, the neighborhoods where the dealing is happening are going to ruin.
“These are the ones where you have a neighborhood of 100 to 150 thousand dollar houses,” Johnson said. “They destroy those houses and destroy the value on what in many cases are peoples’ biggest investments.”
Johnson said they aren’t finished. The crackdown on street level dealers is an ongoing campaign for the city police and Johnson said in discussions with incoming Chief Joe Cicarelli, he expects the effort will continue under the new administration.