This week on Houston, newsmakers Harris County, District Attorney. Kim
are her office, has been in the news recently for
the kind of reason she welcomes making big Headway in the
very big backlog of criminal cases
and also in the efforts to crack down on Fentanyl
and the Texas, Black Expo is celebrating 20 years of helping
business dreams. Come true.
Earvin Magic Johnson will help celebrate this year and Expo. President,
Jerome love
is here to talk about next month’s big weekend.
From KPRC to this is Houston.
Newsmakers with khambrel Marshall. Good
morning, and welcome to Houston. Newsmakers where I’m pleased to welcome, Harris, County,
District Attorney, Kim argh.
Good to see you.
Great to see, you have been here in a while. I’m a little, I’m feeling
a little left out. Hey, we started together as that when I was the anti-gang
task force director and you were new to Houston and it’s all history. Since
then, 25 years, almost 25 years, it had we’re both still
young vibrant, right?
Hey, let’s talk.
You’ve had a really busy couple of weeks
before we’re going to talk specifics about the backlog that you’re
trying to make it inroads into
and also the fentanyl collaboration. You have now to cut back on that,
but I was surprised I listened to some of the news conferences about just how
busy your office is about how much
goes on on a day-to-day basis. What’s your day today? Look like
for your office prosecute? You know, we’re a large Public Law
Firm
and really, I’m the managing partner of about 375
prosecutors
And then another 600, support staff investigators,
and
we handle
about 300 cases,
new cases coming in every day.
So your backlog is the number
left at the end of the year that you haven’t resolved
and our lawyers
carry enormous caseloads.
And they face
problems with a backlog because it makes it hard to
try those cases and move those cases. And I know there’s been
something over the years. You look at that and it doesn’t
judge very much and that’s why you’ve done what you’ve done to try to do something about
that. We’re going to talk more in depth about that little later on, but one of the examples
of
your
office is the kind of crime that you have, you leveraging,
a lot of things going on. One of them is the impact of fentanyl
in our community. It’s very interesting to see what you’ve done there.
I want to get into the specifics of what’s going on with the
partnership. You have with DEA and others, but I have a
bill Barajas, who did a package who looked at your news
conference. Gives a little recap of what went on in there.
News conference here.
It was a joint press conference.
Daniel como the special agent in charge of the dea’s. Houston division,
saying
the newly created task force is already up and running.
This task force is working on over 30 investigations
right now.
District attorney came along explain just how fit in all was affecting the
Houston area.
She says in 2021 69% of Overdose
deaths, involving 14 to 25 year, olds were connected to the
opioid
in 22, that number jumped to 74 percent
ethanol. As you all know,
Is a powerful opioid,
maybe 50 times stronger
than heroin and 100 times stronger than morphine.
And
it’s been responsible for nearly half of the 1096.
Overdose deaths
in Harris County
in 2022 in response to the task force will be going
after those responsible for supplying the drugs, including
the cartels,
our
prosecutors will be providing
As experts
legal support for the investigation
of fatal
overdose cases
delivery of drugs causing death or they can be
prosecuted as negligent homicide, manslaughter
or
even murder.
A unique partnership. How unique is what’s going on here? Is this
something that other communities have done? Is this something going on here?
That’s kind of starting a trend that maybe others should follow. This
is unique in Texas. I can’t speak for the rest of the country,
but fentanyl is hitting every major urban area. And
I think we’re all areas to because
the pills that are being illicitly, manufactured
are
almost always, now
some
Poisonous.
They have some poisonous
contaminant like fentanyl
methamphetamines, other drugs are used, but fentanyl
is the Killer
and because they’re processed, in homemade
plants.
If you will with pill presses,
we have no idea how much fentanyl goes into
each pill, nor does the user.
And so, we’re seeing
death after death
about 75% of these overdose deaths by fentanyl
are people under
This whole process. Now the coordination with these
with the DEA and others who they making the arrest, I mean a lot
of
your success depends upon people being arrested as well. There’s an on it
does and what we’ve never done before is investigate
as law enforcement, overdose deaths,
like homicides,
that’s what’s new?
And so,
now many crimes are solvable often through the
victims phone.
And so if police respond to an overdose scene, now,
they
are
Are
being trained to
gather the evidence
provided to this special Squad,
and let the squad investigate the case as a homicide,
it’s not hard, you can usually find who they got the drug from.
And then we just work the chain of responsibility
and legal accountability up.
And we’re looking of course, for the cartels that traffic it,
down to the mid-level dealers, who distributed
down to the street, level
pushers,
who
give people or sell people pills. So,
A lot depends upon the people out there making the arrest and you guys
get a chance to prosecute.
The challenge is getting those things. I know that
this is already underway. The DEA had said, you guys are already doing
this. Yes, our partnership with DEA came
about because their leadership
already was dealing with parent victims, wanting
these cases investigated
HPD got involved. Our lawyers were providing
counsel, but I’ve added more lawyers to the staff
because we already have
30 cases that are appropriate for
a homicide like investigation.
A lot. Depends on the cooperation of the victim’s family
but the investigation is a new
tactic of law enforcement in terms of drug enforcement.
So they’ve combined homicide, investigators
and Drug investigators
in this task force and our legal counsel has that
dual experience to
homicide, prosecution and Drug prosecution.
So I noticed that Congressman
Dan
Earnshaw has proposed floated in Congress wanted to get military
involved in, trying to
apprehend some of these people DEA, of course is federal.
He’s talking about military,
your
sense to they need more help but
you know you can only prosecute when you get the people in. Do you think that’s
a good idea or you haven’t given that much thought?
Well, I had not heard about the bill but
the military is a you know, is a
real Hammer
more for enforcement and this requires nuanced
investigation.
So overdose
Is des haven’t been treated criminally,
that’s the difference.
And because parents are so distraught over the
deaths of
their loved ones who often didn’t know, they were taking fentanyl.
Thought that they were taking a pill
that is marked, Adderall
or xanax.
We’ve
in our society, often blamed the user.
And what I want to do
along with this task force of law enforcement
is hold
the people accountable, who are profiting
These deaths you have a lot going on in your office, for sure,