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Many of you probably have some family member or know someone who has become a meth head. I have a nephew who has been a meth head for more than 20 years. He has done time, and doesn't seem to get his life straightened out.
This story is 12 years old. I went on a mission trip to Rosebud Reservation in South Dakota 15 years ago and heard about this very infiltration of meth onto reservations. The last thing that any reservation ever needed was meth.
http://www.nbcnews.com/id/18390628/...Xb_HtWH_HvddmA2FTRQ7KGYDG3d7jZvg#.XdLlBVdKg2z
updated 4/30/2007 5:17:32 PM ET
WIND RIVER INDIAN RESERVATION, Wyo. — Just off the deserted highways, the silver pickup truck eases down quiet streets, its driver offering a numbing tour of a remote reservation framed by the beauty of snowcapped mountains.
There, Leon Tillman says, over there — the house on the right, a white, two-story building set off by itself. It used to be a big drug house. Now it's shuttered, its owners in prison.
A man dressed in an army green shirt and pants appears on the side of the road, his thumb up, looking for a ride. "That's a meth head," Tillman says. "He's bumming right now."
A few more drug houses and Tillman's tour of the despair of methamphetamine ends.
Not long ago, most people here had never even heard of meth. But today, most know someone on meth or in prison because of it. Tillman, 39, knows too many to count.
"It's everywhere," he said.
Indeed, American Indians have been especially hard hit by meth. Drug cartels have targeted Indian Country because the people are vulnerable, and law enforcement struggles to keep up.
But the story of how meth came to this remote reservation is really quite remarkable.
Like a cancer, a Mexican drug gang permeated the reservation and its families. It left behind a landscape strewn with broken lives.
Salesman learns his territory
Some 12,000 Indians — members of the Northern Arapaho and the Eastern Shoshone tribes — live on 2.2 million acres, an area so vast many homes are separated by miles of barren land.
Poverty and unemployment are high, alcoholism is rampant and the police department is so understaffed — patrolling such a large area — that the average response time is 15 to 20 minutes.
Jesus Martin Sagaste-Cruz knew that. And he knew the reservation's isolation would be perfect for his business.
Authorities learned of the Sagaste-Cruz drug ring back in 1997. Sagaste-Cruz and his Mexican gang had already been selling around Indian reservations in South Dakota and Nebraska.
But it was an article in The Denver Post that changed the way they did business. The story talked about how a Nebraska liquor store near the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota did millions of dollars in business. Sales were especially high immediately after Indians received their per capita checks — their share of their tribe's income.
Sagaste-Cruz figured if there were already so many Indians addicted to alcohol, it would be easy enough to addict them to methamphetamine.
So around 2000, the Mexicans moved in and near Wind River Reservation.
"They came to a place where people don't have anything," said Frances Monroe, who works in the Northern Arapaho Child Protection Services office.
The first one is free
They started with free meth samples. The men pursued Indian women, providing them with meth even as they romanced them and fathered their children. Eventually, the women needed to support their habit, so they became dealers, too — and they used free samples to recruit new customers.
It was all part of the plan.
For the next four years, the gang sold pounds and pounds of meth, much of it 98 percent pure. The drugs came from Mexico, then on to Los Angeles; Ogden, Utah (where Sagaste-Cruz lived); and finally Wyoming, where gang members had a handful of local distributors, each with his or her own customer base.
Customers became dealers and recruiters, and their customers did the same.
Before, meth was barely mentioned on the reservation. Police reported only sporadic arrests.
But now the reservation was saturated with it. Crime soared. From 2003 to 2006, cases of child neglect increased 131 percent. Drug possession was up 163 percent; spousal abuse rose 218 percent.
more to the article
This story is 12 years old. I went on a mission trip to Rosebud Reservation in South Dakota 15 years ago and heard about this very infiltration of meth onto reservations. The last thing that any reservation ever needed was meth.
http://www.nbcnews.com/id/18390628/...Xb_HtWH_HvddmA2FTRQ7KGYDG3d7jZvg#.XdLlBVdKg2z
updated 4/30/2007 5:17:32 PM ET
WIND RIVER INDIAN RESERVATION, Wyo. — Just off the deserted highways, the silver pickup truck eases down quiet streets, its driver offering a numbing tour of a remote reservation framed by the beauty of snowcapped mountains.
There, Leon Tillman says, over there — the house on the right, a white, two-story building set off by itself. It used to be a big drug house. Now it's shuttered, its owners in prison.
A man dressed in an army green shirt and pants appears on the side of the road, his thumb up, looking for a ride. "That's a meth head," Tillman says. "He's bumming right now."
A few more drug houses and Tillman's tour of the despair of methamphetamine ends.
Not long ago, most people here had never even heard of meth. But today, most know someone on meth or in prison because of it. Tillman, 39, knows too many to count.
"It's everywhere," he said.
Indeed, American Indians have been especially hard hit by meth. Drug cartels have targeted Indian Country because the people are vulnerable, and law enforcement struggles to keep up.
But the story of how meth came to this remote reservation is really quite remarkable.
Like a cancer, a Mexican drug gang permeated the reservation and its families. It left behind a landscape strewn with broken lives.
Salesman learns his territory
Some 12,000 Indians — members of the Northern Arapaho and the Eastern Shoshone tribes — live on 2.2 million acres, an area so vast many homes are separated by miles of barren land.
Poverty and unemployment are high, alcoholism is rampant and the police department is so understaffed — patrolling such a large area — that the average response time is 15 to 20 minutes.
Jesus Martin Sagaste-Cruz knew that. And he knew the reservation's isolation would be perfect for his business.
Authorities learned of the Sagaste-Cruz drug ring back in 1997. Sagaste-Cruz and his Mexican gang had already been selling around Indian reservations in South Dakota and Nebraska.
But it was an article in The Denver Post that changed the way they did business. The story talked about how a Nebraska liquor store near the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota did millions of dollars in business. Sales were especially high immediately after Indians received their per capita checks — their share of their tribe's income.
Sagaste-Cruz figured if there were already so many Indians addicted to alcohol, it would be easy enough to addict them to methamphetamine.
So around 2000, the Mexicans moved in and near Wind River Reservation.
"They came to a place where people don't have anything," said Frances Monroe, who works in the Northern Arapaho Child Protection Services office.
The first one is free
They started with free meth samples. The men pursued Indian women, providing them with meth even as they romanced them and fathered their children. Eventually, the women needed to support their habit, so they became dealers, too — and they used free samples to recruit new customers.
It was all part of the plan.
For the next four years, the gang sold pounds and pounds of meth, much of it 98 percent pure. The drugs came from Mexico, then on to Los Angeles; Ogden, Utah (where Sagaste-Cruz lived); and finally Wyoming, where gang members had a handful of local distributors, each with his or her own customer base.
Customers became dealers and recruiters, and their customers did the same.
Before, meth was barely mentioned on the reservation. Police reported only sporadic arrests.
But now the reservation was saturated with it. Crime soared. From 2003 to 2006, cases of child neglect increased 131 percent. Drug possession was up 163 percent; spousal abuse rose 218 percent.
more to the article
.
