Captain Robert Warrick of the Morongo Basin Sheriff’s Station, was the guest on the Z1077 Up Close Show on Friday (December 16). As part of his conversation with Gary Daigneault, Captain Warrick discussed the dangers of fentanyl, which has caused a sharp increase in overdose deaths over the last few years.
When asked if fentanyl is on the rise here in the Morongo Basin, Warrick said:
“It is. It definitely is. When I was here in 2014 and 2015, I never even heard the word fentanyl.”
Captain Warrick explained how fentanyl overdose deaths lead to more thorough investigations of fentanyl producers and distributors.
“Especially if there is an overdose involved. There is so much fentanyl out there, it’s not like a Deputy can necessarily find some fentanyl during a traffic stop or search warrant, and we’ll bring out a whole fentanyl team to go back and track it. We’ll investigate it as much as we can here, but certainly when there’s a death behind it, it becomes a lot more serious and have some very skilled investigators who will do their best to go back, and a lot of times, if somebody dies here in the Morongo Basin, they might have had a similar incident somewhere else within the county, and maybe we can trace it back to the same supplier.”
To hear the entire conversation with Captain Warrick, you can listen to the Up Close Show as a podcast here:
