Photo Courtesy of DEA
The new DEA initiative Operation Overdrive will target the rising rates of drug-related violent crime and overdose deaths plaguing American communities.
By Forum Staff
The Drug Enforcement Administration on Monday announced a new initiative, Operation Overdrive, aimed at combating the rising rates of drug-related violent crime and overdose deaths plaguing American communities.
Last fall, DEA initiated a data-driven approach using national crime statistics and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data to identify hot spots of drug-related violence and overdose deaths across the country, in order to devote its law enforcement resources to where they will have the most impact: the communities where criminal drug networks are causing the most harm.
Operation Overdrive, which launched on Feb. 1, uses a data-driven, intelligence-led approach to identify and dismantle criminal drug networks operating in areas with the highest rates of violence and overdoses. DEA, working in partnership with its fellow federal, state, and local law enforcement agencies, has mapped the threats and initiated enforcement operations against those networks in 34 locations across 23 states—including NYC and Buffalo in the Empire State—in the initial phase of Operation Overdrive.
Today, the United States faces an unprecedented overdose epidemic claiming 275 lives every day. Violence, often associated with drug-related activity, is also rising sharply nationwide: in 2020, homicides increased a record 30 percent, and 77 percent of the murders in the United States were committed with a firearm. In 2021, DEA and its law enforcement partners seized more than 8,700 firearms connected to investigations of drug trafficking organizations.
Operation Overdrive revealed alarming trends about the networks that DEA has mapped. The vast majority of identified criminal drug networks are engaged in gun violence. A majority of identified criminal drug networks sell fentanyl or methamphetamine. And almost all of the identified criminal drug networks that sell those deadly synthetic drugs (fentanyl or methamphetamine) are also engaged in violent gun crimes.
“DEA’s objective is clear,” said DEA Administrator Anne Milgram. “DEA will bring all it has to bear to make our communities safer and healthier, and to reverse the devastating trends of drug-related violence and overdoses plaguing our nation. The gravity of these threats requires a data-driven approach to pinpoint the most dangerous networks threatening our communities, and leveraging our strongest levers across federal, state, and local partners to bring them down.”
“The consequences of drug trafficking have become evidently clear in New York, increased overdoses, crime, and violence. While we will continue to target the world’s most prolific drug traffickers, DEA will initiate Operation Overdrive in two cities: New York City and Buffalo,” added Tim Foley, DEA Acting Special Agent in Charge, New York Division. “By working with our law enforcement partners, DEA utilizes its many resources to seize illegal drugs and guns from the streets and remove violent drug organizations from neighborhoods within these cities.”
Operation Overdrive Phase I locations:
Atlanta, Georgia
Baltimore, Maryland
Baton Rouge, Louisiana
Bronx, New York
Buffalo, New York
Camden, New Jersey
Chattanooga, Tennessee
Chicago, Illinois
Cincinnati, Ohio
Cleveland, Ohio
Columbia, South Carolina
Dayton, Ohio
Detroit, Michigan
Flint, Michigan
Indianapolis, Indiana
Jackson, Mississippi
Kansas City, Missouri
Little Rock, Arkansas
Memphis, Tennessee
Miami, Florida
Milwaukee, Wisconsin
New Orleans, Louisiana
Newark, New Jersey
Oakland, California
Peoria, Illinois
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Pine Bluff, Arkansas
San Juan, Puerto Rico
Richmond, Virginia
San Bernardino, California
St. Louis, Missouri
Tulsa, Oklahoma
Washington, D.C.
Wilmington, Delaware
