Heroin's Popularity
Pushes Drug Dealing to A New Level in the Region
A drive-thru drug store in an East Bay Township motel parking lot? That’s what police thought their subjects’ activities looked like during a surveillance operation last February. Detectives turned up evidence against the man and woman they were observing that led them up the supply chain to a bigger fish: Ronald Norfleet, one of the most significant drug dealers ever captured in Grand Traverse County.
As heroin surpasses methamphetamine and prescription painkillers as the predominant illegal substance problem in the area, the Norfleet case demonstrates how the drug is bringing more complex and dangerous dealing operations to the region.
FROM USER TO DEALER
The case began when heroin addicts Alysha and Bryan Nerg became dealers to support their $200-a-day drug habit. Police pulled over one of their customers during the February stakeout. That person told them she bought drugs from the couple after calling Norfleet to arrange the sale. Later, Traverse Narcotics Team officers used a drug informant to test this claim, ordering drugs from Norfleet and purchasing them from the Nergs.
On Feb. 13, TNT raided the couple’s motel room and found bindles of heroin, scales and a drug ledger. They also raided Norfleet’s rented home on Indian Trails Boulevard and found $8,000 in cash, packaging material and five cell phones. Two sisters, ages 18 and 20, who Norfleet had picked up at Wal-Mart a few days earlier, were also at the home.
The Nergs were connected to hundreds of heroin sales; they struck deals with prosecutors and agreed to testify against Norfleet. Alysha Nerg, 25, was sentenced to six months in jail. Bryan Nerg, 34, who had a previous felony drug conviction, was sentenced to 23 months to 20 years in prison.
In June, Norfleet, 46, was sentenced to 55 to 200 years in prison.
"He’s a guy that probably shouldn’t have ever been out of prison to begin with. He has two convictions on his record for shooting people: one, he shot a guy in the back seven times. I guess it was a drug deal gone bad," said Grand Traverse County Prosecutor Robert Cooney. "He was out of prison after a few years and then he shot a guy in the arms, legs and neck 14 times, also in Wayne County."
TEENAGE DRUG RUNNER
When he was released from prison, Norfleet moved to a motel in East Bay Township.
He purported to be a physical trainer, spending evenings gambling at the Turtle Creek Casino, hitting on teenage girls. One of those girls was an 18-year-old housekeeper who eventually became the mother of Norfleet’s child.
"He was showing me karate moves and he picked me up and he kissed me, and we made plans for a date," the woman testified regarding the first time she met Norfleet.
The woman said she inadvertently became a drug runner for Norfleet; authorities agreed not to charge her in exchange for her testimony.
She said at first she would collect money from Norfleet’s clients, $500 or $1,000 at a time, from people she thought were physical training clients. Later, she would also drop off packages of a substance she said she thought was protein powder.
"Now, at some point did you become suspicious that you weren’t dropping off protein powder, but dropping off drugs?" Assistant Prosecutor Christopher Forsyth asked at Norfleet’s preliminary hearing on March 17.
"Yeah, I had suspicions, I guess," the woman said.
Cooney said Norfleet stands out among dealers because he acted like a businessman.
"Someone like Ronald Norfleet, he’s not a heroin addict. He doesn’t use cocaine," Cooney said. "He knows better than to use those drugs, because that interferes with his business."
PAID IN HEROIN
Bryan Nerg testified that he’d been a heroin addict since he was 18 and that he started dealing for Norfleet in June 2014. Nerg said Norfleet gave him heroin and told him where to deliver it. He or Alysha, his wife of four years, would meet buyers inside a grocery store, in a motel parking lot or sitting in stalls in restaurant restrooms.
Tom’s Food Market in Acme was a typical location. Nerg said he’d spot the buyer and they’d stand in the snack aisle until there was no one nearby. The buyer would put a wad of cash behind a bag of chips and Nerg would grab it, leaving behind a package of heroin.
Nerg said he sold up to $3,000 worth of heroin per day at $200 per gram; he and Alysha earned three-quarters of a gram of heroin for their work. They used some of the drug to get high and they sold some to cover their living expenses.
Cooney said this is common; addicts have to find some way to pay for the drug.
"How do you think the typical heroin addict is supporting that habit? They are getting other people hooked on narcotic drugs so that they can sell to them and it’s kind of like a pyramid scheme," Cooney said. "The other way is that they are stealing."
AN OVERDOSE IN A HOSPITAL
A twist in the Norfleet case shows just how high the stakes can be in the heroin trade. Two people were charged with attempting to murder the police informant who was a primary witness against Norfleet. The alleged attempted murder occurred the day after his preliminary hearing.
The 27-year-old witness did not testify at the hearing because she had been admitted to Munson Medical Center with a serious stomach ailment. She told police that two people she didn’t know very well visited her hospital room on March 18. After they left, the woman suffered a near-fatal Fentanyl overdose; her life was only saved because of the quick reaction of hospital staff.
Norfleet was never charged in connection with the event. The two suspects in the case pled guilty to drug delivery charges. Cooney said he couldn’t comment on whether police suspect Norfleet attempted to murder a witness in his case.
"I’m not going to comment on that.
There was certainly some investigation done of whether Mr. Norfleet might have had something to do with that, but he was never charged," Cooney said.
THERE’S ALWAYS ANOTHER ONE OUT THERE
Cooney said taking a supplier like Norfleet off the street doesn’t necessarily staunch the flow of heroin.
"The problem is we keep knocking off substantial dealers like Norfleet and we think this is going to take care of the problem and we find out, nope, there’s another one out there and another one and another one," he said.
There are several pending cases that mirror the Norfleet case. In each, a heroin dealer with southeast Michigan connections recruited northern Michigan addicts to be street-level dealers.
In one case, an addict moved into a house at 515 Franklin Street in Traverse City and started selling heroin for an out-of-town supplier. William Robert Campbell, 43, was arrested after a TNT sting. An informant allegedly purchased heroin from him three times over a two-day period in August. According to a police report, Campbell met the informant at three locations: the Cherryland Center parking lot, the pedestrian bridge near the library and the Civic Center track.
Execution of a search warrant at Campbell’s house led to three more arrests. Elbert Oclauius Dowdell, 45, admitted to being a "controller" who watched over Campbell, according to police reports.
Two other people were arrested because they texted Campbell during the raid.
Jennifer Lynn Childs, 25, was hauling 20 grams of heroin and 7 grams of cocaine to Franklin Street, according to a police report. She told police she made weekly deliveries from Detroit for several months and that each time she was paid a gram of heroin and $50. Another man was arrested at the Bay Area Transportation Authority transfer station. Shawn Shanks, 24, told police he had just arrived in Traverse City to relieve Dowdell as enforcer.
There are at least two other similar cases with multiple co-defendants pending in Traverse City.
DEALERS DEPEND ON CUSTOMERS
There would not be so many heroin dealers if there weren’t so many heroin users, said Christopher Findbaugh, chief executive officer of Addiction Treatment Services in Traverse City.
It’s difficult to know how many heroin users there are; the county health department does not keep track of overdoses. Many users are never caught. Cooney said criminal cases involving heroin are way up in the past few years and Findbaugh said the number of people seeking treatment has significantly increased.
Findbaugh said most of the people who seek treatment at ATS are not desperate drug dealers; they are ordinary people who have developed a dangerous addiction.
"Actually, we’re seeing a ton of people that are middle income, middle-aged folks, no history in the past, or current, with any legal troubles," he said.
Most commonly, a person becomes addicted to prescription painkillers after an illness or injury, and then turns to heroin because it’s cheaper and easier to get, he said.
Unfortunately, the treatment system is not equipped to help people in this circumstance. Most health insurance companies deny claims for long-term opiate addiction treatment, he explained.
"We try our hardest," he said. "We’re fighting because we’re so small. We don’t have the resources to fight the insurance companies, to be quite frank."
ATS began taking insurance last year and they have $150,000 in claims on their books for which they are waiting to be reimbursed, Findbaugh said.
AFFORDABLE CARE AND THE COURTS
It might be easier to obtain help for heroin addiction if you get arrested or if you are considered low income than if you are a middle class professional.
"We’ve got a treatment system that is built around the criminal justice system. It’s very punitive," Findbaugh said. "Folks can’t get treatment until they are in trouble. That’s the lineage and the history of our field."
If a low-income individual comes to ATS for treatment, the staff work to get him/her covered through the Affordable Care Act. Also, once a person is in the court system, rehab can be ordered and the courts will find ways to pay for it.
Yet, people will not necessarily get the best treatment through the courts.
Courts have historically embraced abstinence-only treatment, while the medical community favors medicated treatment for opiate addiction.
Suboxone, a less potent heroin substitute, is gaining traction as the preferred treatment for recovering addicts, said Bob Peltz, support services manager at ATS.
"What’s happening is, you’ve got a lot of sobriety courts around the country that were saying, if you wanted treatment, you had to be abstinent-only," Peltz said.
Sobriety court for the 86th District Court, which covers Antrim, Grand Traverse and Leelanau counties, is abstinence-only, but those courts have been mostly focused on addressing alcoholism, not opiate addiction.
"If a client comes to us and it’s determined by the client, by the therapist, by our medical staff that a Suboxone treatment is the best form of treatment, and that’s what they want to do, we have no problem with that because it’s best practices," Peltz said. "You will find that you get much better longterm results."
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