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US Attorney: Drug Ring Bust Means Less Heroin in Minnesota

Forty-one people are facing federal charges in an alleged drug trafficking conspiracy that distributed drugs across the Upper Midwest and on two large Minnesota Indian reservations, plus North Dakota.

U.S. Attorney for Minnesota Andrew Luger on Thursday announced what he calls the "takedown" of a multi-state organization that transported illicit drugs largely out of Detroit and Chicago and sold them to Indian communities in Minnesota and elsewhere.

The indictment says 37-year-old Omar Sharif Beasley recruited sources, supervisors, distributors and couriers from Detroit, Chicago and Minneapolis to aid in the drugs' distribution. He's accused of developing a drug pipeline to peddle the hard-core and highly-addictive drugs on remote reservations and beyond, "in 2014 87% of all fatal overdoses that occurred in the 7 county metro area were done so either at the hands of prescription drugs or heroin and the Beasley organization peddled both," according to Dan More with the Drug Enforcement Administration.

The indictment also says defendants transported heroin, methamphetamine, oxycodone, hydrocodone, methadone and other drugs to the Red Lake and White Earth Indian reservations in northwestern Minnesota.

Luger said the members represent the most significant source of heroin in Indian Country.

"Today, the Beasley organization is out of business, and Minnesotans are better off for it," Luger said. "There will be less heroin sold in Minnesota and less heroin available in Indian Country. We intend to keep it that way."

At least 10 people had been arrested as of Wednesday. All 41 defendants named in the indictment have been charged with conspiracy to distribute heroin, methamphetamine, oxycodone, hydromorphone, hydrocodone and methadone. Several of the defendants were charged with additional crimes as well, including weapons. That's because 10 guns were seized. The weapons are being run through a national ballistics database, "to see if any of those guns are tied to any other gun crimes throughout the US," according to Jim Modzelewski with the Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms.

"The Omar Beasley heroin and prescription drug trafficking organization cared nothing about the collateral damage it inflicted upon neighborhoods, families, and especially young children on tribal lands in Minnesota and elsewhere in the Midwest," DEA Minneapolis-St Paul Assistant Special Agent in Charge Dan Moren said. Randy Goodwin is with the White Earth Tribal Police, "many lives, communities and families have been damaged or destroyed from this poison." William Brunelle with the Red Lake Band of Chippewa went onto say, "the pain and suffering surrounding addictions and overdoses and increasing property crimes and burglaries is devastating in Indian Country."

The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, Indian Tribal Police, U.S. Attorney's Office and Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives have all been involved in the investigation.

The indictments are part of an ongoing commitment by the DEA to attack heroin by using law enforcement and stepped-up prosecution at the federal level. The feds have changed the amount of drugs someone has to have in order to be prosecuted at the federal level; in 2014, the Minnesota U.S. Attorney's Office prosecuted 50 people at the federal level compared to only two people in 2013.

 

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