local.newsbreak.com Open in urlscan Pro
44.237.41.62  Public Scan

Form analysis
2 forms found in the DOM

<form class="py-2">
  <div class="relative flex mb-6 flex-row"><label for="email-compact-top" id="email-compact-top-label" class="hidden">Email</label><input type="email" class="px-4 py-2.5 border border-gray-300 rounded-l-md text-sm flex-grow" id="email-compact-top"
      name="email" value="" aria-labelledby="email-compact-top-label" placeholder="Your email address"><button id="btn-nl-submit_compact" disabled="" type="submit"
      class="bg-blue-link text-white border border-undefined font-medium text-md lg:text-lg py-2 px-3 lg:px-8 rounded-r-md border-l-0 disabled opacity-60">Subscribe</button></div>
  <div class="pb-4 mt-1 text-sm text-slate-600">By signing up for our newsletter, you agree to
    our<a href="https://www.newsbreak.com/terms" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" class="underline mx-1">Terms of Use</a>and<a href="https://www.newsbreak.com/privacy" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" class="underline mx-1">Privacy Policy</a>.
  </div>
</form>

<form class="py-2">
  <div class="relative flex mb-6 flex-col"><label for="email-compact-bottom" id="email-compact-bottom-label" class="hidden">Email</label><input type="email" class="px-4 py-2.5 border border-gray-300 rounded-l-md text-sm rounded-r-md mb-4"
      id="email-compact-bottom" name="email" value="" aria-labelledby="email-compact-bottom-label" placeholder="Your email address"><button id="btn-nl-submit_compact" disabled="" type="submit"
      class="bg-blue-link text-white border border-undefined font-medium text-md lg:text-lg py-2 px-3 lg:px-8 rounded-md disabled opacity-60">Subscribe</button></div>
  <div class="pb-4 mt-1 text-sm text-slate-600">By signing up for our newsletter, you agree to
    our<a href="https://www.newsbreak.com/terms" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" class="underline mx-1">Terms of Use</a>and<a href="https://www.newsbreak.com/privacy" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" class="underline mx-1">Privacy Policy</a>.
  </div>
</form>

Text Content

Open in App
|
Search
Sign in

Modesto

See all locations

Close

Modesto

See all locations

LOCAL
Top Stories
Safety
Food & Drink
Sports
See more

ADDITIONAL CONTENT
National News
Local Newsletter

NEWSBREAK CORPORATE

About Us
Contributors
Publishers
Advertisers

© 2023 Particle Media.

 * Terms of Use
 * Privacy Policy
 * Do Not Sell/Share My Info
 * Help Center

Sign in

Get Modesto, CA updates delivered to you daily. Free and customizable.
EmailSubscribe
By signing up for our newsletter, you agree to ourTerms of UseandPrivacy Policy.
The Modesto Bee


ARE PROP. 47, OTHER LAWS TO BLAME FOR FENTANYL CRISIS? HERE’S WHAT STANISLAUS
OFFICIALS SAY

By Trevor Morgan,

11 days ago

Modesto police Officer Mark Ulrich first noticed fentanyl during an arrest in
2019. He’d been used to finding heroin and identifying it by its tarry viscosity
and strong vinegar smell. But this substance was different.

“I did what we always did, took a little whiff, and boom. I got immediately
dizzy and was like, ‘Whoa, whoa, whoa, OK, that’s weird. What the heck is
that?’” Ulrich said. “Well, what they were doing at the time was they were
mixing fentanyl into the heroin. So you couldn’t tell the difference.”

He can tell the difference now. That training has become crucial as fentanyl
overdoses and poisoning have reached crisis level.

After President Joe Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping met in the Bay Area
this month to discuss a variety of issues, fentanyl was the first one brought up
by Biden in his news conference afterward.



He remarked that China “took action to greatly reduce the amount of fentanyl”
shipped into the United States in 2019 and that the nations’ joint focus now is
to target the chemical ingredients that go into making the drug and prevent pill
presses from entering the U.S.

The Biden-Xi meeting in San Mateo County was held ahead of the Asia-Pacific
Economic Cooperation summit at the Moscone Center in downtown San Francisco.
It’s just under a mile away from the Tenderloin District, which the Stanislaus
County District Attorney’s Office said has been a major distribution hub for
fentanyl sold here in the Valley.


STANISLAUS DEALERS BUYING “FENTANYL BY THE POUND” IN SAN FRANCISCO

“You had a bunch of cartels essentially set up shop in San Francisco and the
dealers in our county would drive to the Tenderloin, they would buy fentanyl by
the pound and then they would drive it back here to sell,” Deputy District
Attorney Patrick Hogan said in an interview with The Bee. “That’s because it was
just so easy.”



Hogan said this information was provided to him during a debriefing of a drug
dealer a few years ago when “color fentanyl” — fentanyl pills in colors other
than white — first arrived on the market. Hogan said his source could double his
money with a day trip into the Tenderloin. He also referenced other San
Francisco Bay Area cities as easy places to pick up supply and drive it back
into the county.

Biden said in his news conference that more U.S. residents ages 18 to 49 die
from fentanyl than from guns, car accidents, or any other cause.

In Stanislaus County, there were 129 overdose deaths this year as of October.
More than 60% of those deaths were due to illegal fentanyl. Bee reporting in
late October said the county Coroner’s Office had recorded 81 fentanyl-related
deaths since New Year’s Day, 34 of them since July .



County officials expect the death toll to rise above 200 by the end of the year,
surpassing last year’s total of 176.


WHAT’S FENTANYL’S EFFECT AT THE STREET LEVEL?

As Ulrich noted, police officers now are trained to recognize fentanyl and
handle the drug with care. For instance, heroin mixed with fentanyl has a
“glassy” sheen to it. But Ulrich said he hasn’t seen heroin at all recently,
even heroin mixed with fentanyl. It’s now just fentanyl in a white powder form,
which is easily identifiable, he said.

For the end user, that might not always be the case. Both Ulrich and Hogan
confirmed they’ve seen cases where fentanyl is being mixed into cocaine, meth
and other drugs. A drug user might not always be seeking out fentanyl but can
die from it regardless.



Fentanyl is getting cheaper, too. Hogan said the street value now sits around
$40 a gram and about $500 for an ounce. It can be cut into a more expensive drug
such as cocaine to increase a dealer’s profit margin.

Law enforcement officials and prosecutors including Hogan point to California’s
laws as the reason the crisis has escalated. Ulrich and Hogan complained about
Proposition 47 and believes it’s the reason drug dealers are being rotated out
of the system and back onto the streets and why the fentanyl crisis has become
so bad.


WHAT IS PROPOSITION 47?

Proposition 47 was passed in 2014 in an effort to reduce prison populations in
California. It made some nonviolent crimes, such as drug possession,
misdemeanors and made other nonviolent crimes subject to resentencing or
restructuring. Changes to violent and serious crimes were unaffected, according
to the California Judicial Council’s Criminal Justice Services.



It aimed to use the taxpayer funds saved from not jailing and imprisoning those
convicted of the nonviolent crimes to instead pay for community programs like
ones for at-risk K-12 students. $68 million in savings for the 2016-17 fiscal
year were reallocated to drug and alcohol rehabilitation, mental health
treatment and truancy prevention programs, according to its website.

But Hogan said that the domino effect Proposition 47 had on legislation wasn’t
worth it and that prosecutors can’t send drug dealers to state prison like they
once could. Instead, they can only be held in county jail for a maximum of four
years or as little as one year.

“To be honest with you, my big frustration is trying to tell people that the
sentencing structure for fentanyl sales is frankly inappropriate, given the
gravity of the crisis,” said Hogan.



Hogan believes this because, hypothetically, if someone were convicted of
possessing two pounds of fentanyl intended for sale, he can send them only to a
local jail unless they have a prior strike on their record.

Ulrich said that usually means a dealer would spend four years or less in jail,
be released downtown and could potentially start the process over again. “I
think people were lied to, they kind of (had) the wool pulled over their eyes
when they were told about voting for it,” he said.

Both Ulrich and Hogan acknowledged that other systemic issues are worsening both
the fentanyl and homeless crises, including lack of affordable or free rehab
services, lack of affordable housing and lack of harm-reduction efforts for
users. A simple definition of harm reduction, from the Johns Hopkins School of
Public Health, is “reducing the harm associated with using drugs through a
variety of public health interventions.”

“I’m not the guy who’s sitting here saying that there’s no place for harm
reduction. I don’t believe that. Harm reduction is really important,” Hogan
said. “But harm reduction is not going to be the way out of this, either. We
need all the tools in our arsenal to be able to handle it. That includes
appropriately punishing the people that are responsible on the dealing end.”

As a prosecutor, Hogan said he doesn’t want to create a “punishment regime” that
oppresses, but rather wants the tools to prosecute appropriately, especially
when trying to charge a dealer with murder who’s customer had died.


CAN A DEALER BE CHARGED WITH MURDER FOR A FENTANYL DEATH?



Homicide cases based on fentanyl overdoses or poisonings are tough to prosecute,
Hogan said. A direct link between the dealer’s supply and the drugs found on a
dead user has to be established.

This can get complicated, Hogan said. Sometimes users have drugs on them from
different dealers or have no phone record to prove they got the lethal dose from
a specific person.

There have been two cases where the Stanislaus DA’s Office charged men — Anthony
Taft Lee and George Foster Keene —with murder because they allegedly supplied
fentanyl to someone who died from an overdose.

Connor Hoffman died of a fentanyl overdose in May 2021. Contributed by Christie
Hoffmann

Lee, 36, was charged with murder after allegedly supplying a lethal dose of
fentanyl to 21-year-old Connor Hoffman in 2021. Lee’s case was the first time in
Stanislaus County that prosecutors charged an accused fentanyl dealer with
murder.

This was because investigators had text messages they felt proved that Hoffman
bought fentanyl from Lee about an hour and a half before his death. Prosecutors
alleged they knew Hoffman didn’t have any other fentanyl on him because he had
just gotten out of rehab.

“They were the only family that we had ever been able to meet with where we
could tell them, ‘We know who the dealer was responsible for your son’s death,’”
said Hogan. “And we did what we could to prosecute to the best of our ability.”

Hogan said the case became complicated because the public sentiment,
particularly on social media, was questioning whether it was right to prosecute
someone for a user’s death who asked specifically for fentanyl from their
dealer. He cited a “tort,” or an argument, called “assumption of risk.” Hogan
said this tort doesn’t exist in criminal law, but that people could “consciously
or unconsciously apply it anyway,” making a jury trial more difficult.

Lee took a plea deal for a lesser charge of manslaughter.

Bethany Borges is shown at work at Harvest Moon restaurant in downtown Modesto
in this undated photo. Provided by Summer Warthan

In Keene’s case, he is accused of supplying the fentanyl responsible for the
Aug. 17 death of 24-year-old Ceres resident Bethany Borges . Details of the
incident have not been released.

Hogan said Keene’s case is a prosecution he “very much believes in.” The
defendant’s next court appearance is Dec. 11.

“For every every 50 cases like this that we look into, we will be lucky to find
one where we really can prosecute, and it’s not because people aren’t trying,
it’s just because of how difficult it is to create that direct line between the
dealer and the death,” said Hogan. “It’s super, super tough.”

Modesto police Officer Mark Ulrich Mark Ulrich



Sign Up for Local Breaking News



39+

Comments / 12
Add a Comment
butteredcornhole
11d ago
Free free free and no arrests for drug use makes it easy to use in California.
So of course it’s the laws.
Reply

6

Mike
9d ago
Prop 47 definitely contributes to the problem, but I’m not sure the over zealous
response to the opioid “crisis” may be contributing more and now there is a
seemingly endless supply of snowflake, which is absolutely due to the heavy
handed approach to prescription meds.
Reply

0

View all comments
YOU MAY ALSO LIKE
Local California State
Over 17 pounds of Methamphetamine and 13,500 pills of Oxycodone Seized, Two
Arrested in Eagan
Eagan, MN3 days ago

Most Popular
See Inside the First Modesto, Stanislaus Raising Cane's Chicken Fingers
Modesto, CA23 hours ago

Watch Highlights of Patterson's 56-34 Win Over Roseville
Roseville, CA23 hours ago

A reporter looks at 26 years. A farewell to The Bee, but not to supporting local
journalism
Modesto, CA5 days ago

Why Was the Mall of America Built in Minnesota?
Bloomington, MN3 days ago

The Florida City Said To Be The "Roachiest" Has Also Been Named Among Its
"Dirtiest"
Tampa, FL19 days ago

Local Restaurant Closes 9 Months After Opening
Phoenix, AZ25 days ago

Pitt County Drug Bust: Narcotics, Guns, Cash
Robersonville, NC22 days ago

Large Buffet Chain Is Reportedly Closing Another Florida Store To Make Way For
New Development
Orlando, FL26 days ago

Man taken into custody at downtown crash scene
Shenandoah, PA25 days ago

A small town in Missouri reminds people of Christmas and the post office has a
special tradition
Noel, MO22 hours ago

What visiting a classical Christmas is like in Fredericksburg, Virginia
Fredericksburg, VA6 days ago

Federal Charges Against 23 Suspects in Major Meth Trafficking Operation Linked
to Transnational Gang
Los Angeles, CA24 days ago

Modesto’s Timothy Olyphant gets best actor nomination for ‘Justified: City
Primeval’
Modesto, CA10 hours ago

NEARBY CITIES
Empire, CA
Hughson, CA
Riverbank, CA
Ceres, CA
Oakdale, CA

Close
This site uses various technologies, including third-party cookies, pixels, and
codes, to personalize our website functionalities, measure website usage and
performance and provide targeting advertising. Information about your site visit
may be stored or shared with third parties as identified in our Privacy Policy.
By continuing to use this website you consent to our Privacy Policy and Terms of
Use. If you select Reject Cookies we will not set cookies on your browser except
for cookies that are strictly necessary to operate our Site and a single 'Reject
Cookies' preference cookie.
Accept CookiesReject Cookies
Get Modesto, CA updates delivered to you daily. Free and customizable.
EmailSubscribe
By signing up for our newsletter, you agree to ourTerms of UseandPrivacy Policy.
NEARBY CITIES
Empire, CA
Hughson, CA
Riverbank, CA
Ceres, CA
Oakdale, CA



COMMENTS / 0

Close
Community Policy