The Fort Worth Police Department and the Tarrant County attorney’s office have launched an aggressive campaign against fentanyl in a bid to curb the mounting number of deaths associated with the drug.
Reacting to an uptick in fentanyl-related deaths, Tarrant County will start to see more prosecutions of drug dealers on murder charges thanks to the district attorney’s office’s new Narcotics Unit and the Fort Worth Police Department’s (FWPD) fentanyl response team, according to the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. This aggressive course of action was made possible by one of four state laws passed during the 88th Regular Legislative Session to fight the growing fentanyl crisis: Senate Bill 645.
As previously covered in The Dallas Express, Tarrant County first applied this law in December 2023 when prosecutors filed murder charges against Jacob Lindsay, who has been accused of peddling a fentanyl-laced drug that led to a fatal overdose. The poisoning victim in this case was 26-year-old Brandon Harrison, who died after taking what he believed to be Percocet. Harrison had been staying at a sober living facility at the time, trying to recover from substance abuse.
Harrison’s death was one of many linked to fentanyl in Fort Worth in 2023.
In an interview with the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, Sgt. Benjamin Scott Banes said that FWPD responded to roughly three fatal fentanyl poisonings a week last year. As a result, the department is stepping up its game to see fentanyl peddlers prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.
“This is basically a reaction to an unprecedented situation,” Banes explained. “With the new law, it finally gives law enforcement something to work with.”
The illicit fentanyl trade is characterized by pills made to resemble popular prescription drugs, such as opioid painkillers, anti-anxiety drugs, and ADHD medication. However, in the case of fentanyl, just a small dose of this potent synthetic drug can be deadly.
FWPD’s fight to get fentanyl pushers off the streets faces the significant challenge of having to wait for toxicology and autopsy reports from the medical examiner’s office. The office also conducts autopsies for Denton, Johnson, and Parker counties, creating an extensive workload.
Noting that it could take up to two months to get these crucial reports back and pursue murder charges, Banes stressed that there is still work to be done.
“Everybody’s kind of behind the eight ball with this thing. We’re talking about big bureaucratic entities like the [Tarrant County district attorney’s] office,” he said. “The learning curve that we all gotta go through to figure out: how do we respond to this?”
The creation of the DA’s Narcotics Unit in November is a good start, with DA Phil Sorrells issuing a warning when it first opened, “If you deal fentanyl in Tarrant County, we are coming after you.”
In Dallas, drug crime has plagued several neighborhoods, including Downtown Dallas, which regularly logs far more criminal activity than Fort Worth’s city center. A dedicated special police unit patrols the latter in concert with private security guards.
A total of 10,253 drug offenses were clocked in 2023 — up 4.6% from 2022 — and the new year had already seen 609 reports as of January 23, according to the City’s crime analytics dashboard. Drugs are often involved in, if not the catalyst for, violent crimes, the victims of which have overwhelmingly been black and Hispanic individuals.
Efforts to curb crime have been hindered by a significant staffing shortage within the Dallas Police Department (DPD), which currently only fields around 3,000 officers despite a City analysis recommending roughly 4,000. This year, DPD has been budgeted only $654 million, far less than the spending on police operations seen in other high-crime jurisdictions, like New York City, Los Angeles, and Chicago.