 and welcome to Quality of Life. The program where we look at different influences that can affect one's well-being, as well as ultimately their quality of life. In this episode, we're going to take a look at drug use and how it can affect one's quality of life. Joining us today from the Shboygan Police Department is Police Chief Chris Domigalski. Hi Dave. Hello, welcome. And Captain Jim Wieser, who's Captain of the Criminal Investigative Division, or CID. Welcome back. First of all, I'd like to thank both of you for taking times out of your schedule. You guys are really busy and being on the show to help talk about this subject, as well as giving us a good educational thing about drug use. Appreciate the opportunity. So I guess I'd like to start out with is, what are the types of drugs in our community that you're seeing are the most popular? I think there's obviously a variety of drugs, legal drugs and illegal drugs. So illegal drugs, we're talking about marijuana, cocaine, heroin, maybe a little bit of methamphetamine, and then legal drugs, which are also a very serious problem in the community. In there, we're talking about the abuse of alcohol and the abuse of prescription drugs. And I think it's important that we point out that probably the abuse of those legal drugs is probably a greater factor that has a detrimental effect on the community than even the illegal drugs that are more commonly talked about. Is prescription drugs fairly new to the list, or has that always been around? I think, to a large degree, it's probably always been around, but over the last, probably in the last five years, we've seen a much greater abuse of the prescription drugs. Okay. And I guess I can add something to that is that mention of prescription drugs. Due to the fact of that new formula for that, is that you've seen people turn to heroin because of that unavailability of that same addictive quality. Because I know when the times I was prescribed something for pain, Codon or whatever, Vika did, it's like, holy cow, you get a really easy or fast buzz on it. It's like, wow, it puts, knocks me off my feet. So, yeah, very potent, tight, potency, and also highly addictive. And that's why they're controlled at the level that they are is because of that potential to be addicted to it. Okay. What would you say is the number one drug appearance in our community that you have issues with? I would say quite clearly it's still alcohol, and that we have a culture of alcohol abuse both in Chihuahuan, Chihuahuan County and the state of Wisconsin as a whole. So that's probably the biggest issue that I see is confronting that culture and trying to change that cut down on the abuse of alcohol. That's the whole subject in itself. So as far as that goes, where would you say the drug traffic or how do the drugs get into our community? I guess there's a number of ways in regards to that. Number one is that someone that has easy access to supply or source cities, as they say, they are typically Rockford or Chicago, Illinois. And what happens is a person that is partaking in dealing those narcotics typically that moves to our community and then makes contact with people they know or starts to find new clients. The other way that people obtain drugs in our community is that a number of drug users, they get together, they pool their money and someone drives to either Milwaukee or Chicago to obtain those drugs and then returns them to the community to then provide them. You had mentioned prescription drugs and I guess that one is one where someone within the community is using prescription drugs legally, but then someone else might take those drugs and then distribute them illegally. So that would be another way that those drugs are gaining access to our community. Sure. And I would just follow up a little bit on what Jim said about distribution of some of the illegal drugs is really done along the same model that any product would be distributed by a business. So depending on what the source of those drugs are, marijuana, typically either Mexico, South America, or more recently, high grade marijuana from Canada would be distributed to source cities similar to any business, how they would try to source out their product and then move it through a retail chain. So very similar like that, same thing with cocaine that's coming in would go to major cities like Chicago and be distributed there. One of the things that we've seen over the last five years, I would say, is because law enforcement has gotten better at working together through some of multi-jurisdictional task forces such as the Shoeigan County Med Unit to a larger scale, the HIDAS that the federal government have set up. So HIDAS stands for High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area. It's a federal initiative tied together with enforcement and then other community assets to try to build up the community. So Chicago has a HIDA, Milwaukee has a HIDA that's tied together with a bunch of cities in Milwaukee with both federal and local partners. So bringing all that information together allows them to target better on some of the major dealers. And one of the effects of those HIDAS and the greater cooperation and partnerships that have developed is that there's a lot of pressure in the major cities on the major drug dealers. And because of that coordination, one of the things that it's done is push some of those drugs that are being distributed out of those major cities. So rather than finding it in Chicago, you might find it in the suburb of Chicago and rather than finding it in the city of Milwaukee, they might find some other place that they have connections and in Sheboygan might be one of those areas. And so we've seen that Sheboygan can be a source city has been identified as a source city in the past for cocaine. And recently in the last two or three years for marijuana coming from the West Coast and through Minneapolis down to Sheboygan. And recently we've seen that Sheboygan's been a source city for heroin to go to Manitowoc and Ozaki and some of these other surrounding counties around us. Wow, it really opens your eyes. If you don't know about it or you hear about it, it's like, nah, that can't be. It's really surprising. In my citizens academy when I attended that one, I know one of them was the presentation that you guys put on with the whole drug use and the different techniques or the different types of drugs that are out there was a great presentation. And how do you guys keep up to date or on top of the thing? Because one of the things that came out of the presentation is when you do arrest somebody for drug abuse, they go to jail, it's like going to school and getting better when they come out. How do you guys stay on top of that? I guess one of the things that you see is first of all, the chief had mentioned some agencies that our officers attend training to pay attention to the trends and other things that in regards to delivery of a controlled substance. And one of the other ways that we've learned how to stay on top of things is we talk to the people that are involved in these things. They provide information on that. And so then we're prepared for something new, a new tactic that someone might use or other types of means of distributing narcotics in our community. There's a lot of information gained when you talk to people that are involved in it, whether they be in jail or not. Which brings us to the next point is if I'm a citizen and I see illegal activity going on either in exchange or let's say random people coming and going from a house that don't belong there, what should I do as a citizen? Should I go in as Batman and say, hey, I'm gonna stop this or report it or what should I do? No, I guess in regards to that is that, that's a common question that we do receive. And there's a number of citizens within the community that are willing to provide that information. And you can look at that two ways. Some citizens will wish to remain anonymous. So the thing is, is that if you do see some suspicious activity and you feel it warrants a call to the police department because you feel it might be drug activity or other criminal activity, then they should do that. Now they have every, they don't have to leave their name. They can be anonymous. But on the other hand, it's nice to have a named citizen because then that lends some credibility to the call. It's a contact person for us to see if that activity is continuing. In regards to anonymous information, we have crime stoppers within our community. It's very beneficial to our police department and other law enforcement agencies in the county. There is good information that's provided and it's anonymous. And in case of crime stoppers, if something is found to be substantiated is that you can get a reward for that. I guess then then finally, if I was a person within a neighborhood and I wanted to gain or provide some information to the police, I would, on top of placing that call, I would gain a lot of information prior to that. I would pay attention to the residents. Maybe writing down license plates, descriptions of people that enter and exit that residence. And also just the time of day that this activity seems to pick up. Now that information can be provided to a neighborhood officer who can then act on that. But in regards to the, I think you mentioned Superman, I don't want people to do that because the thing is, is that I understand the logic behind that. You want to do something to help your community but it's also can be very dangerous. So calling the police or providing the information is the best first alternative, I believe. Okay, thank you. To follow up on that a little bit, I think Jim hit a lot of the major points really well and that's be the eyes and ears for the police and really try to gather that information and find out when the activity is happening to really try to narrow it down for us to be successful. That's gonna be one of the keys. We have limited resources and so it helps if we can target those resources to the best times to try to interdict or interrupt whatever is happening. The other thing that I would just mention a little bit is really the setting expectations is kind of what I would call it. So if somebody's gonna be dealing drugs in a neighborhood, they're really, again, going back to the business model that we talked about, they're really looking for a good place that they're gonna be able to operate their business. And so again, they're looking for a neighborhood where people aren't paying attention and those kinds of things. So while I would agree with what Jim said, not to be confronting them or confrontational with them, I would definitely make myself seen is, I guess, the easiest way to do it. You wanna occupy the public spaces. So when you're outside working on your yard and doing those kinds of things and getting your neighbors to do those same things, it's harder for them to do their business because they're trying to move into a neighborhood where people are hiding in their houses and doing those kinds of things. So if you're out and about doing things and waving to them and saying hi, hi, you doing and maybe even, I see what you're doing or something without being confrontational, those things alone might convince them that they really need to find some place less hospitable to carry out their business. And I guess just to add a point to that is that I've seen that happen with the neighborhoods where when neighbors band together, I mean, they're a very powerful source to deal with any situation and we've seen that within our community where like the chief says is that you don't stay within your house, you get outside and interact with your neighbors. That's a good thing, you know, take back your neighborhood and yeah, you're right. Confronting them and saying, you know, we don't condone that activity really goes a long way. Okay. At what age is usually someone exposed to drugs or drug abuse involved in their drug use? I guess in the sense of that's a very good question but it's a very broad question. What I mean by that is that it depends on your circumstances and your environment. Now, you might be a young child that sees your parents being involved in some type of drug activity. I've heard of stories or been told stories where a student goes to school and tells their teacher. So they're being exposed to that at a young age. Now, I think students or young adults as they grow older, they come across a situation where they have to make the right choice, whether they want to be partaken at or not. And then of course, people that are adults. I mean, the same thing is, I don't think there's a particular age in regards to where you start to be involved in some type of drug situation because it's so wide ranging. I mean, it depends on the circumstances. I mean, typically, from what I understand in the research is that, I mean, people that have used drugs, in the Midwest is that there's been an 8.3% increase in substance abuse with children 12 years and older. So that's a very young age. I would say that's really the target age there. You really wanna know what's going on with your kids and really have those conversations and understand who their friends are. It's really in that middle school age, it's kind of the key age where they're making adjustments and so you wanna teach them how to resist peer pressure and make the right decisions. In our schools, how young would you say they're exposed to in our school system right now? Drugs or what they appear in? Is it in elementary school, junior high, high school? Probably middle school into high school but the middle school is where it would probably start in most cases and again, that the things that you would wanna do as a parent or an aunt or an uncle or a grandparent or something is, yeah, that was gonna make a comparison but I'll leave it alone. Don't be afraid to talk about it because not talking about it, it's not gonna be a secret. They're gonna be running into it and dealing with the situation so you wanna talk about it, you want them to be aware of it and you wanna set those expectations with those children so that they understand what your expectations are and how you're against it and explain those reasons why and then really kind of set them up with the tools to be able to resist peer pressure. One of the things that's offered in the county now is a program called Strengthening Families for families that have some issues with trying to set boundaries and such with their children and so we teach some of those skills on how to confront and resist peer pressure and really some very simple skills that can be learned. Nice. When somebody's using drugs, how does it affect their life? As they get deeper and deeper into it, what are some of the factors that are affected? Well, I guess the first factors that are major factors is that what you see is someone that starts to become involved in that is they might lose their job, they lose their marriage, they lose friendships. So I mean, those are very big events in someone's life as you go on, but as an individual that's involved in narcotic uses, you have to deal with depression because these things might have occurred to you and now you have to deal with that situation. Obviously, if you're involved in narcotics, you may go to jail. So I mean, that's a very big possibility. And the things that we see now and that we're trying to deal with this is in regards to heroin use is that we have a number of overdoses and which obviously can lead to death. So those are some of the things as you become involved in it that are gonna affect your life, obviously. So physically, you're gonna start to see signs. If I was a family member and you were involved in some type of drugs, specifically heroin or some other type of hard drug, I mean, you're gonna start to see the difference. I mean, a person's gonna start to, their attitude is gonna change, their physical appearance is gonna change. So there's a number of things you're gonna see that affect a person that gets involved in that type of activity. Right, well that leads us into the next question is how can someone tell? The signs, early signs, or that they are using? I would just really answer to both that question and the prior question, especially with juveniles, some of the things that you're gonna look for is really changing behavior. So they're gonna become withdrawn. You're gonna be able to notice they're hanging out with different friends, really just simple signs like that are things that you're looking for. Maybe they're not interested in some of the same things and you don't know what they're doing. Some of that withdrawing and changing friends are two of the big indicators. You know, and that's that old statement is, Billy used to do this and now Billy's not like that anymore. You know, it's a very true statement and the state of Wisconsin has a heroin initiative going on called TheFlyEffect.com and one of the testimonials on that website talks about a father who ended up, his daughter, overdosed and when the EMTs were on scene and trying to resuscitate his daughter is the EMTs made a comment when they looked around the room is that there were sporting event trophies and other things and then the father talks later about that how his daughter changed. Once was very involved and became non-involved and it was very evident that something was going on in her life and in this case it was drugs. How can one help either a family member or a friend or somebody who they know who's using? Do you wanna help turn their life around? How can someone help this person? I guess the first thing is, and the chief mentioned it before, is that it's almost to the point of like how can someone, it's before someone can help. You have to talk about things. You have to talk about things that might make you uncomfortable, such as drug use and abuse. Talk with your children about that. So as you talk about that, that hopefully will prevent that from occurring. But if you do observe that, you have to confront that issue. You can't say I'm gonna deal with that later or it's gonna go away. You have to have early proactive involvement in the situation. Be persistent with the person that's involved. They might not acknowledge that problem initially, but be persistent saying I think that you've changed. I think that you have an issue and get them on board with you in regards to that. We can do this together. We can find you assistance. So and within our community, we have a number of resources that's through the social services and through our professional healthcare providers in the area that they can provide treatment or counseling. So you have to start to look for those resources and use them. I guess the first starting point also would be is that person has to admit they have a problem. That's the first big step in that communication like you were talking about, but then to get them to admit they do have an issue or a problem with it. So, okay. Moving on, I just need to get my question up here. What are some of the programs that the civilian police department is instituting as far as education about drug abuse, drug use, working with the neighborhoods and such? I think there's a lot of different programs and resources that we have. Number one thing is what you mentioned, our neighborhood initiative. So we have officers assigned to every neighborhood, encouraged neighborhood meetings are willing to show up and talk about different topics. We have the Sheboygan County MEG unit who's also a resource to show up someplace and provide a presentation and share information. Right now because of the issue that we're having with heroin in the city and the county and again the state and all across the country, we've started a heroin initiative that we're working with all kinds of partners throughout the community. Jim can talk about that a little bit but they're putting together all kinds of resources. One of the places that wasn't mentioned to the last question, if somebody's trying to confront the problem and is really looking for somebody as a resource, if you have health insurance obviously you can go through your health insurance provider and your doctor to try to find resources but if you really don't know where to turn for some of these resources, Mental Health America is one of the resources that we would offer up. The phone number is 920-458-3951 and their website is www.mhasheboygan.org and they can ask you essentially a series of questions to find out how best to direct you to what resources might be available to you so that would be a good place. And I guess I'm glad that you brought that up because that was kind of what I was gonna get to in regards to one of the major persons to call our organizations is that Mental Health America to get you going in regards to finding the help that you're looking for. Now there are resources in regards to finding that help. Some other things I just wanted to mention was is that they are not 24-7 but you can also call the Sheboygan County Mental Health Crisis Line at 459-3151 and also there's a great website called under SAMHSA which is SAMHSA and their website is called findtreatment.samhsa.gov that has a lot of information about not only addiction problems, I mean actually drug addiction problems but also alcohol and other issues. So those are some good resources but what I really wanted to talk about too was is a while back we ended up applying for a grant to the City of Sheboygan Police Department in regards to a heroin initiative. We did receive that grant and then on top of that the Acuity Foundation donated $100,000 towards the efforts. That allowed us to expand our scope of what we would like to do outside the City of Sheboygan and so what we ended up doing was is that we got a number of service providers what I mean by that is that we got healthcare professionals, social services, law enforcement and non-profits and other agencies involved together at the table to talk about how can we deal with this problem together and what you'll see now is it's titled Sheboygan County Service Providers and what we've been doing we've been meeting to find means to how can we address this issue within Sheboygan County. Now one of the main objectives is education because what we wanna do is we wanna go into the schools and educate the teachers, the students, their parents. The other one is is that we'd like to find, we'd like to provide educational talks to members of our community outside the schools and we're gonna be putting that on our website where you would contact the Family Resource Center and I can provide you that number in your future but to call them and schedule that appointment to have an educational talk for whatever type of organization you'd like. So we have a number of things that we're trying to do within the community and we're moving forward with a number of those objectives. That sounds like an excellent plan as like I said I saw the presentation that you put on through the Citizens Academy in that short segment and that was very informational. I thought you guys did a great job on that as far as that goes. So we have the education where that'll be coming out so people can go for education. Any other advice that you may have as far as drug use or somebody you know is using drugs, any other advice that you may have? It's specific advice, that way I would say no but I would say it's called quality of life and so what we're really talking about is recognizing how drugs impact the community and the quality of life in the community and I think it's done on many different levels. It can be on the individual and family level where you see the abuse of alcohol or legal, non-legal drugs can really break down the family unit and cause all kinds of problems on that level. That same abuse can tear apart neighborhoods and that's why it's important that neighbors are working together to set those expectations in their neighborhoods. It can really have an economic effect on the community based on the effects that it can have on the workforce so people with drug and alcohol problems really don't perform the way that we want them to do at work so it really disrupts the community that way. So it's something that it's important that we understand really happens at all levels. It's just not some stranger in a dark alley that's really doing this. It's happening all around us and it's affecting everybody in the community so it really takes a community wide effort to address it. I guess the point, I'm sorry Chief. I guess the point, in October we had a national drug drop off date and that was one of the things, we got the information out to the community. Not only us, the whole community was involved in that and we had a record number of prescription drugs dropped off. So that's just one thing that the community can do that's very simple to avoid issues that are associated with that. I mean use those facilities to get rid of those unwanted or unneeded medications. The other thing is take advantage if you see something where there's an opportunity to attend one of those educational talks. Take advantage of that. Bring a friend, bring your children to listen to this issue and then discuss it on your way home. So I guess take advantage of things where you can learn or do something that you might not think it impacts the community but it does. So I guess I would like to see that and I think a lot of people having that showed during that drug drop off. People took advantage of that. That's excellent. Yeah, I would just say too, I think Jim makes really the most excellent point about doing something as simple as checking your house for those drugs and getting them out of there. So focusing on prevention is really the key to this, not just reactionary things like enforcement after. Yes, we have a responsibility to uphold the laws and do enforcement action but we can't be working downriver all the time. We gotta try to get ahead of it and work on some of that prevention. Some of those things upriver that are gonna prevent the problem down the line. So I think it's important that we as a community recognize that a lot of our work really needs to be upriver and not just reactive things downstream. I'd like to thank you both for appearing on the show. I mean, I'd love to continue talking about it but our time is up. So I'd like to thank Chief Domagalski and CapVeaser for appearing on the show and educating us on how drugs can affect our quality of life. Thank you for watching. I'm Dave Augustine and we'll see you next time.